Chi Alpha Blog

It’s Jesus Week at UL Lafayette!  Incredibly enough, our university allows the campus ministries here to host a full week of events aimed at lifting up Jesus on our campus and spreading awareness of His message.  It is certainly an incredible act of divine favor, and we take full advantage of it.  In the image below you can see some of the events and outreaches that we are doing this week:

What’s even crazier is that the university is allowing this man to speak at all of these events:

That’s right.  Curt Harlow has flown in all the way from California to bring his no-holds-barred approach to sharing the Gospel.  He’s speaking in the dorms, at a free lunch in the quad, and has even managed to get an audience with the fraternities and sororities.  Please pray for Curt and for Chi Alpha this week, that all of this seed-scattering will find some good soil.  Pray for our students, that they’ll be able to reap the harvest, long after this week is over.

This is the one week of the year that our campus gives the student ministries free rein, and we believe that God is doing something great in it!  And check back here next week for some good reports and photos from all the events. Thanks!

Imagine you’re part of a church, and your church is one with a very strong vision for reaching your community.  Very likely scenario, right?  But now imagine that the unique thing about your community is that every year, around the same time each year, a few thousand new people moved in to your community within the course of a few days.  So when that time comes, the focus of your church would probably to meet and connect with all those new people, right?  How would you go about doing that?

Perhaps you would give out free food?

Or host events with fun and games?

Or give them more free food?

Or more fun and games?

Or, if you were really gung-ho about it, you might even help them move in.

On a university campus, this is exactly the kind of scenario we live in.  Classes have begun, and there are thousands of new faces to get to know.  The pictures above are just a small sampling of all the things Chi Alpha is doing on the ULL campus to reach the new freshmen class.  BBQ’s, karaoke, games, moving people in; all in an effort to serve these new students and get them connected with the students in our Chi Alpha, that they might hear the good news of Jesus and become his disciples.  Please pray with us that God would be with us in these efforts, and that the lives of the students would be touched and transformed.

Some of our student leaders after some team-building exercises.

The staff, interns, and student leaders of UL Chi Alpha just returned last night from our annual Leadership Retreat in Woodworth, Louisiana. Over the course of a little over 24 hours, we planned and shared vision for the quickly-approaching Fall semester. We encouraged and exhorted one another as we sought to come together as a team, committed to trusting one another in the common goal of reaching our campus for the cause of Christ this semester.

We mapped out our strategy, which, as always, includes the primary goal of reaching the incoming Freshman class. From a staff perspective, what excites us is to see our new leaders, students who were freshmen last year, get the vision and get excited. “We are the future,” said one of them, realizing that they are indeed the future of our group, as well as the ones who will ensure the future growth of the group and the growth of our influence on our campus. By the end of the retreat, each of our student leaders, new and old, committed themselves to reaching and discipling at least 2 freshmen, to entrust with the Gospel those who will also be qualified to teach others. It is with this tangible and feasible goal in mind that we advance towards the new school year.

Chi Alpha has been impacting the lives of college students and reconciling them to Jesus Christ for decades. As I reflect on the last 24 hours, I know that our students are ready to do it bigger than ever this semester. Please pray for them, that they will truly be Christ’s ambassadors to the UL campus.