48 part deux.

Well, I guess it's been a little more than a week.  Sorry about that.  We've been in the post-event fog/hangover (as predicted), so I would not have had two intelligible sentences to string together for you. Still don't, but I'm going to try because I don't want to lag behind on the Chronicles of the Pate family :)

So the event went off pretty well.  We had people blitzing the campus Tues/Wed/Thurs pretty much all day long.  They were using an evangelism tool called the God Test, which is basically just a survey that gets a conversation going. The first question is "Do you believe in God?", then depending on how the person answers there are two different paths to go down.  This is not the cheesy outdated gospel track method of evangelism, but rather an engaging and relevant discussion with people about religion. Our generation really does like to talk, especially about what they think they know. And I wish I could share just some of the stories we had from people.  Let's just say that U of H is not largely Christian. Religious, maybe, but I don't know if I'd even go that far. There was a lot of answering "yes" to believing in God, but aside from that not much actual correct Biblical understanding at all.  Not to mention they met and visited with many atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Muslims (lots of those), and others. The responses were pretty typical of our post-modern universalistic society- i.e. all streams lead to the same ocean, just be a good person and accept everyone type philosophy. There were many great opportunities with this one on one interaction, and then they were also invited to the evening events we had with the food and giveaways.

The really cool part was the fact that over the two evenings we registered 117 students that came and were able to hear about Jesus. And those were all new people they had just met that day or day before, most of them not saved.  It wasn't like they met a lot of other good little Christian kids that wanted to come to a Jesus rally- most of these students came probably because they wanted a chance to win an iPad. All of these students left with more than what they came for, even if it's just the thought planted that wasn't there before. It was really a beautiful thing. Honestly it's very refreshing being around people hearing about the legit truth of the gospel as perhaps they've never heard it. The gospel works. You can have a bunch of fanfare and tricks to get them there (which we certainly and shamelessly did), but there doesn't have to be fanfare and hype with the gospel. Good news is good news, especially if you're really needing some good news. And what made the scene even more beautiful was the overwhelming support and turnout of our church there to be a part of it all and serve those students. We are so thankful to have a group of people that truly value this generation and are passionate about reaching the campus.

Only time will reveal the fruit of this event, but for us now the real work begins. Getting these students connected into the campus ministry, and hopefully some ultimately into the church. There were many that spoke with Jermaine and seemed genuinely interested and excited about the weekly meeting on campus.  At the end of the day events don't really mean that much unless there is some real disciple making and connecting people afterwards.  It was every bit as stressful and chaotic as I predicted it to be.  There were those small details that didn't work out, and big details and circumstances out of our control but it all worked out in the end. I wish I had some better pictures to share with you, but I don't.  My camera is just okay. And we had somebody with a better camera taking pics, but he only took them the first night when it was a much smaller gathering and the church wasn't there.  But I guess you can get the idea from the few I have. It was a great week, and we're looking forward to seeing what God continues to do out of it.

We had our meeting in this open underground lounge- there were people all along the back walls also.

Worship team, doing our thing- with freaky eyes. (couldn't edit those out for some reason)

And Rice Broocks doing his thing. The gospel thing.  He actually went on campus doing the God tests, too which was really cool.  He did a great job.

That's all I got.  There's plenty more to share about it, but my brain checked out a long time ago tonight. I'll be back tomorrow for the obligatory birthday post :) Peace out from the Pate house.