Reflections on Upper Room

The rest of the PR handbook was written as an instructional guide to the PR team after my departure from the team, Upper Room, and UCSD in summer 2012. I wrote it from a professional standpoint, since its purpose was as a manual, not as a reflection. But now that Upper Room has ceased to be, the purpose of the manual has now changed, to serve as a reflection of the years I spent doing college ministry. Thus, I would like to tell the story of the final year of Upper Room, from my perspective, being more raw and honest than I have been in the rest of the handbook.

I finished the 104-page PR Handbook on August 15, 2012. During the next few weeks, I packed up all of my Upper Room files and uploaded them to Dropbox, so that the next year’s leadership team would be able to use the information contained in them. During the final weeks before school started again at UCSD, I uploaded the final worship night video to YouTube, and took care of a few final odds and ends before removing my access to most of the Upper Room infrastructure.

I knew that when I left Upper Room for good in summer 2012, that it was ailing badly, and had been for several months. Oh, the infrastructure to deal with the university that I left in place was better than when I had received it in May 2010. But overall I saw the signs of the typical unraveling student organization: sharply declining attendance, a widespread lack of motivation among the “leadership”, and a large mass of graduating seniors with no incoming freshmen to take their places. Over the snow trip in February 2012 I was growing very concerned over this, and by May I wondered if Upper Room would survive much longer, with the size of the leadership team decreasing by a factor of three.

For a while, I held out hope. I drove down to San Diego for a visit in November 2012, during my first quarter away from UCSD. There were quite a few new freshmen and transfer students, and it looked like the leadership team would at least be able to renew itself with a similar number of students, and continue into the 2013-2014 year.

But by March 2013, it was unclear as to whether Upper Room would even finish out the year intact. Of the remaining student leaders, half of them were unable to finish out the year, due to other outside commitments, and the rest were not able to keep the ministry going. The attendance of those not on leadership slowly dwindled as well. Tyler was able to host a few movie nights, but there were no other events for the rest of the year. With the graduation of all but two of the remaining leaders, Upper Room ceased to exist by the end of the year, though Jennifer has continued to run Love the Homeless into the 2013-2014 year.

I found this out over my spring break, after having avoided the conversation for a while since I feared that it would bring the bad news that it did. Throughout the four years that I was a part of Upper Room, and my two and a half years on the public relations team, my goal was to have Upper Room continue on for a long time, to provide Christians at UCSD the same opportunity to grow in community that I had as a college student. Thus, while I feared that this would happen in the near future, I was quite shocked at how quickly things had fallen apart.

By now I think that it is fairly well known that I spent a large chunk of my time and energy during my final two years in Upper Room keeping many aspects of the ministry running: public relations, booking, funding, running slides and media, and also participating in the Core meetings and providing input. But there is much that is not widely known, and that I cannot and will not make known, scattered among tucked-away Word documents, emails, and chat logs, and in my prayer journal and memories of the time, out of respect to the sensitive information involved. I have a hard time even today believing that I made it through so many hardships, doing everything that I did (with God’s assistance, of course), and that I very nearly quit leadership and Upper Room entirely, twice, within the span of a few months.

So it was quite disappointing to find out that, at first glance, that all that work, all that struggle, had been for naught.

For a while, I blamed myself for Upper Room failing. But eventually, I realized that one person does not a Christian ministry, especially one that thrives on community, make. And as I knew even in 2012, while I certainly wasn’t perfect and made mistakes, the problems were way too systemic that removing myself from the picture wouldn’t have improved matters.

That was back in March 2013. And now, in January 2014, the answer to “Why did this happen!?” still is the following: I don’t know.

There have been plenty of bad things in my life that I still don’t understand. Sometimes, well after the fact, God does eventually reveal to me reasons why these things may have happened, and He has done so here. Do I claim that this is the complete and full answer to the question? Certainly not. But it’s a starting point.

Back when Upper Room started, there were fewer medium- to large-sized Christian organizations on campus, especially following the near-demise of Campus Crusade in 2007. But from 2009 on, many new ministries started, including Acts 2 Fellowship, Origins, and the relaunch of Campus Crusade with entirely different staff and members. I believe that God used us to fulfill a need during this short period of time.

I also believe that God has called many of us away to serve a greater purpose, as graduate students, as med school students, as husbands and wives, as military officers, and so much more; specifically, representing God’s interests in these arenas, and making a positive impact there. I can definitely say the same for my life, though in my case, God’s full plans are not known to me at this time.

I personally hate clichés, and the cheesy clichés that I find on Facebook / Instagram / Twitter etc. are even worse in my book. But I find one particularly applicable here, and so I’m going to go ahead and use it: “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”

For a ragtag group of amateur students with no experience whatsoever in campus ministry, and for the short time (five years) that we existed, we did an awful lot. We managed to reach over 200 students, through Bible studies, events, and large groups. We led countless service trips to feed the homeless downtown, and organized an event of 350 people where evidence was provided for there being a God. Many made lifelong friendships, even meeting their spouse through Upper Room. But most importantly, we helped people grow closer to God – even some who had never really trusted Him for salvation before, or those who turned away from God during the chaos of freshman year. For the role that I played in this, or more specifically, that I was able to play, I am eternally grateful.

I am glad that I was a part of Upper Room, and I would choose to do it again were I given the chance.