As I move into my second year as ICS in New Zealand, I discover more or more how much I really don’t know about following Christ and yet God has called me to lead a staff team overseas! This year, I’ve seen a deep desire emerge in my heart and in the hearts of my teammates to truly live a missional lifestyle – where ministry is not our life, but our lives are ministry. Personally, I feel like I struggle far less with the conceptual side of following Christ than I do with the action side. And I’m not talking about the daily “Ministry to Do” checklist, but really living out my faith day by day so that Christ would be seen and known through my life.
As we’ve felt this tension in our hearts, we have hoped that students within our movement would begin to grapple with it as well while their own journeys to becoming disciples of Christ. To help facilitate this, we’ve formed a once-a-month gathering point (instead of a weekly meeting) to bring students together from all our campuses in Wellington to deeply explore their faith in the context of community. This evening (which the students call Fuse) entails a dinner together, a faith discussion, communion, and fellowship. Recently, we have been dialoguing about the “isms” of New Zealand culture (e.g. consumerism, syncretism, designer paganism, etc.) and how they influence, for better or worse, our faith in God. So often, the ideologies of our cultures seep into our faith and affect it without us really being aware. Hopefully as we uncover these “isms”, it will serve as a catalyst for life change and produce creative ideas for how to engage our campus and community.
Ultimately, as our student movement comes together at Fuse and other connecting times, our goal is that we are considering “how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” [Hebrews 10:24] We want Jesus to be known and the Gospel to be within arm’s reach of every student… everywhere.
