I’m working on a project to put together the infrastructure for our campus fund raising effort. The goal is to have our paper resources work well with our online properties. We want both to do a great job telling the stories of how people’s donation can make a difference. Here’s a sneek preview of the info card and our website.

After that is done, I have this dream of tweaking our give site to be branded better and fit our giving situation better. All this is done with the intent of supplementing our face to face fundraising effort.

There’s still lots of questions if this is worthwhile or not but it can’t hurt right? Does anyone else have examples of how your ministries online presence has helped with fundraising?

Some days the task list can wait. Some days I just need to be around the energy of students who are trusting the Lord for something beyond themselves.

Since Tuesday is our movement coaching/launching day, I had the chance to make the trek up to Washington State University – Vancouver to visit with a few of our student leaders today. I hadn’t been up there since last term and I had no idea what to expect.  WSU-V is on the edge of our scope and I’ve been coaching them via email/phone and occasional visit. It’s all student run with limited interaction with us. We resource and do our best to put fuel on the fire.

I could have said no to this trip. I have a ton of other tasks, phone calls and emails I could have worked on…but I drove the 40 minutes in the pouring rain in I-5 traffic to get some face-time with these students.

I met up with some “Coug Cru” students at a promotional table and I immediately began to get a taste of the flavor of things by asking a new girl who was helping out how she got involved. She responded by saying, “I met Phil and they seemed to talk about outreach a lot and that’s something I care about so I got involved. Also, I love that they pray a lot!”

I think that’s a good sign.

After we’re done with the promo table I sit down with two student leaders and begin to ask questions. The responses are about as ideal as you can imagine in campus ministry. They want to see believers connected in community…a community that is involved in the mission of seeing their campus reached for Christ. They want their friends to know Jesus. They want to courageous with the gospel.

Woah, woah, woah…settle down people. We’re just starting another Christian club here.

I walked away from our brief time in the bone chilling rain reflecting on the fact that a year ago there was no one on campus with the intention of making Christ known and now the environment of the campus is changing because some students started praying. Praise the Lord.

I was working on prepping for mobilizing 600 college students to minister to the city of Portland over Christmas break and found this video of Portland. It sets the stage well I think. For your enjoyment…

My super cool wife got me this poster for my birthday. It reminds me that each little nook and cranny of the city matter. I’m hanging it in the home office to keep the vision of transforming the city hovering over my work. If you dig cities check out Ork Posters to see if you’re neighborhood made the cut.

These are my notes from Greg Lillestrand’s brief interview at Movement Day Conference in New York City. He’s leading a Cru initiative in cities and these are his thoughts on ministry in cities.

1. We must believe that people are on a spiritual search. Then they must see and hear what it looks like to follow Christ. This is not necessarily a one-time event or conversation.
2. We must show up in the world of those we’re ministering to.
3. Gut check on our passions. Our passions cannot be about growing organizations, rather about bringing the kingdom of God to earth. If you’re jealous of another organization, your vision for your city is to small.
4. Anchor our hope in the Jesus and the mission he’s called us to.

I loved these powerful thoughts on our perspective as we seek to transform cities. Any thoughts?

There has to be some sort of metaphor here. Technology, spiritual, whatever. What do you think?

This was taken over labor day weekend on the Oregon coast. The fog moved in in about 20 minutes after a beautiful day!

We’ve been talking a lot about expectancy on our team this year.

Showing up to campus, the computer or staff meeting expecting the God of the universe to work. Taking Him at his word that he is active and working in our lives and the students lives of this city.

I Samuel 14 caught my eye this morning in Dale Ralph Davis’ commentary.  It was the story of Jonathan boldly charging into the Philistine camp full of faith inspite of circumstances. His eyes fixed on Yahweh. The following is an excerpt from Davis…

Faith arises in such a situation because it looks not to circumstances but to God. Jonathan has clear conviction about God (“for nothing can keep Yahweh from saving”) producing great expectation of God (“perhaps Yahweh will act for us”) and recognizes God’s “normal” manner of working (“by many or by few,” i.e., through his servants).

Jonathan is not trusting his own daring scheme. He does not say, “Perhaps Yahweh will act for us, for we are rather clever.” If anything, his daring is an expression of his trust in Yahweh.

The beauty of Jonathan’s faith is its imagination (Come, let us go…perhaps Yahweh will act for us”); and the beauty of that imagination is its balance (“perhaps”). If is if Jonathan says, “God can do mighty works with very small resources, and God may be glad to do it in this case; and how can we know, dear armor-bearer, unless we place ourselves at his disposal?

How refreshing.

Perhaps God will show up for us!

We just returned from the Lake Tahoe Summer Project with more than 100 students and staff! It feels good to be home, but it was so fun to watch our students lives change right before our eyes!

Every wonder about the content we talk about  and train in while on summer project? Check out our resource page here for a glimpse!

In a few days we’ll head out to our national staff conference, where we’ll get the chance to hear Francis Chan speak and David Crowder bring it. We’ll also get the inside scoop on the new name of Campus Crusade for Christ. Lot’s of blog content coming down the pipeline!