So I wanted to follow up with that email that I sent out last week. A couple of people responded back to me and told me what they thought about it. First of all, I want to tell you the reason why I wrote it. Nothing big happened in CCF if anyone thought that. I wrote it because of what I (as well others) just feel about CCF this quarter. Now, I don’t want to give the impression that CCF is not doing alright. There have been good reminders of what God’s been doing in our lives this past year. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that. I needed to be reminded myself of them. We’ve been growing in our men’s/women’s group. Retreat was awesome. But I wanted to make sure that we don’t get comfortable with where we are at as well. My last email talked about some of things we have studied in the past and what we hoped to build up to as a body of believers. By studying about Christ and some of the disciplines of a Godly Christian (aka the wheel), we hoped to lay a foundation towards building up stronger Christ-centered followers. But what are we trying to build you up towards? There’s a lot we can focus on in the wheel! I mentioned witnessing. Witnessing comes in many forms. There’s cold contact evangelism, going out on the street and preaching God’s Word. The one that CCF has always been good at is relational witnessing. There’s also fellowship. Koinonia, the Greek word for sharing or communion and intimacy between believers. These two topics have to do with the people around us so I want us to focus on these two for now. (Nevertheless, the other spokes are important as well)
I stress on witnessing because I want us to be a presence on this campus for the Chinese community. There’s a good portion of Chinese students on this campus that probably have not heard about CCF, let alone God. Jesus spent a good portion of his ministry teaching and preaching to the public about the kingdom of God. At the same time, He also built up a community and fellowship of disciples around Him. We ourselves need to be community that is building each other up and spurring one toward love and good deeds. To me, these two are related. If we are a community that is building each other up in God’s truth and Words, then we are being a witness of that same truth and Word to this campus. The first part of our mission statement says just that: to be a community where people can encounter God and become followers of His Son Jesus Christ. The word community emphasizes the point of a fellowship of believers whereas “people can encounter God and become followers” emphasizes the witnessing aspect. Now where does the problem lie? Is it that we’re not being enough of a community so that we’re not doing enough witnessing? The community is there, but how many of us actually know how each other is doing spiritually? If it seems that we are being more of social group, then the root issue is our focus. Is it Christ-centered? In the way we speak, the things we talk about, the things we watch, the things we “consume”. All of us like to have fun, and in a college environment, it’s easy to get caught up in all fun. Of course, fun is not bad, but part of being a Spirit-led follower is to have self-control to know when there is too much fun going on that it takes the place of God.
What can we do to fix this? Honestly, pray and go to God first. Then, pray and wait some more. Then, practically, we can focus on discipleship and meeting up with people you don’t usually talk to one-on-one. These conversations should at least have some talk of God, in one form or another. Granted, some conversations may not be the right time for it. But if you find that you want to avoid talking about anything spiritual, you need to ask yourself why and then fix that.
It’s late right now and I didn’t mean to write a whole essay, but I hope you guys get where I’m coming from. If you have more ideas, you can respond to me by email or talk to me directly. (The comments are disabled on the website cause we’ve been getting some spam from bots on our comments). I’d love to hear what you guys have to say. Remember we’re here for each other in this community. God bless!
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