I am currently about to embark on my third Welcome Week for Upper Room as the Public Relations team leader. This year, I am scheduled to be tabling 12 hours this week, as well as attending all 7 Welcome Week events, and spending tireless extra hours dealing with the extra logistics, and attending 2 days of class.
Welcome Weeks have been exhausting ever since I started doing public relations, and last year I barely made it through (though I have to admit, it was quite fun!) It was quite stressful, especially the first day when we kept running out of flyers, our rave cards were late, we had no table, etc. While we are definitely better prepared this year, I still expect a lot of chaos that will keep me on my toes.
So since I know this is going to be happening, why am I doing this exactly?
Because I care passionately about what I am doing. I gave a talk to the entirety of our leadership team about why public relations work is important, and why campus ministry is important in general. Here are the points summarized in a nutshell:
"We are therefore God's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us." - 2 Corinthians 5:20. But who are ambassadors? We have the ambassador to France, the ambassador to Spain, the ambassador to Lesotho, and so on. They represent U.S. interests in a foreign country.
But who are we ambassadors to? The UCSD campus. We are God's people who have been called to be His ambassadors on a secular campus. We represent Jesus Christ to those who are searching for meaning and purpose.
According to Lifeway Research, roughly 2/3 of those who attended church in high school left church for at least a year during college. Now, at the adolescent stage, if you're not attending church, you're usually not following Jesus. This 2/3 has the chance to get into really bad stuff while they are away from the church, such as sex, alcohol, drugs, or even just accepting the empty and hollow philosophies of this world. That's bad in itself because many of these people will regret this for the rest of their lives. But 2/3 of that 2/3 never return, which is roughly half of all "Christians" leaving high school. This is a very concerning statistic in my book.
In my talk, we further established that 25% of these people left because of going to college, which was the third most popular reason why these people left. Also, most left during the ages of 18-19, the first year of college.
A fundamental question I asked was... What if we could prevent this somehow? What if we could get people plugged into an environment where they could be encouraged and supported in their walk with God?
So I see this first part of our mission as a form of damage control, to try and thwart the world's attempts to encourage the rejection of a relationship with Jesus in exchange for what the world has to offer.
In addition to this, not everyone grows up with a Christian background. But what if they came to know Jesus? They then have the potential to really be transformed by God's love, and then tell of this transformation to their family and friends. So in this way, Upper Room is more than just a college ministry; we have the potential to reach everyone.
What an opportunity to reach people who may never be open again to the Gospel! It's college - we have a lot of shared experiences, such as the same dorm rooms and the same classes - and in this way, we can relate to people from different walks of life. In addition to this, people are more open to diversity in college and open to checking out other belief systems and religions, so they may be more willing to discuss Christianity and check it out.
I briefly talked about taking opportunities by reading through parts of Acts 3-4. In summary, Peter takes his opportunity (the influence that he gains by healing the man) and uses it to tell people about Jesus. God comes through by causing thousands of people to believe! Peter takes the opportunity, but it's God who comes through. But Peter had to take the opportunity in the first place, or none of this would have happened.
I see Welcome Week as a such opportunity. We can invite people to fun events where they can meet people who are truly genuine and who reflect God's love. And when they ask why we do this, we can use our influence to bring them to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
I know what I'm getting into, and I know that it's going to be a difficult week. In times past with weeks such as these where we're promoting large ministry events, I know I've faced spiritual warfare as Satan does not support what we are doing. I know I've faced so many spiritual attacks in the last few weeks, but I know that He who is in me is greater than he that is in the world. (1 John 4:4)
We would appreciate your prayers as we go through this week and try to reach all of the incoming freshmen, and virtually the entire campus.
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