Archive for the ‘Illini Life’ Category

The Land Between

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Posted 24 Aug 2010 — by nick
Category Family, GCM, Illini Life, Jesus, Ministry, Scripture, Spirituality

As I type today, I’m reminded that it’s just been 2 short weeks since I started my regular trips to the Chicago suburbs. Yet in just two weeks a rhythm has started, there is a flow of my week and time seems to pass quickly now. I miss being in Champaign, especially this week as classes get started at U of I and I-Life gets moving again. There are stories almost daily of new friendships being formed as our students, leaders and staff step into the dorms and initiate with other students.

Life-long friendships, mutual discipleship, Christ-centered relationships – all forming as the faithful pick up the phone or send a text message.

“Hey, this is Nick M. from Illini Life Christian Fellowship. Hoping to see you at the Fall Preview tonight @ Illini Union 8:00PM”

Faithfulness for me this year looks a little different. I’m not on campus meeting new students this fall – the first time in 9 years. For me faithfulness looks like dialing the phone for the 50th time this week, to see if I can connect with another person in an effort to share about my work as a campus missionary.

I miss campus, I miss my wife, I miss my friends and my own bed; but this is good. It’s The Land Between.

Just as Israel had the desert to cross between Egypt and the Promised land, so a missionary has support raising between the initial calling and released to assignment. It’s The Land Between where God chisels away at the rough edges, softens the hardened heart and strengthens His call. The Land Between is where God speaks softly and quietly, reminding of His goodness and provision.

In The Land Between I have the choice to embrace and trust a God who I know is good or run to quick fixes to numb the pain of rejection, boredom of idleness, and loneliness of isolation. If the story of Israel teaches me anything, I’ll take God over the quick fixes, they just leads to wandering for longer.

Facing Fears

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Posted 10 Aug 2010 — by nick
Category Family, GCM, Illini Life, Jesus, Ministry, News, Spirituality

Amy and I just celebrated our 1 year anniversary this past weekend. It was a time to look back and be reminded of the sweetness of our marriage and the good gift God has given me in a dear wife. Not to be all gushy and all – well actually yeah that’s what I had intended 😛

That set the stage for me leaving on the first support raising trip without her. Most of the next weeks and months will be this way. I’ll be in the Chicago suburbs raising support while she’s in Champaign working in the schools and seeing each other for a short weekend each week.

I can feel a sense of urgency to finish support raising as quick as possible, it is stronger, almost new. Certainly God provides in His time and I’ll be doing this until He tells me otherwise, but nonetheless my heart speeds and my pace quickens.

“Just drove away from Champaign without my wife, one of the hardest things I’ve had to do so far while raising support. 9:50 AM Aug 9th via Twitter”

The hard thing about leaving has less to do with separating from her – that’s tough for sure – it’s the not knowing for how long. How many weeks will we be following this routine, how many more times will I drive away from our house watching her eyes fight back tears as mine do the same?

As I prayed through all this, it became evident to me the urgency, the questions, the worrying were all rooted in the fear I was feeling. I haven’t had to be alone for the past year, I’ve had a companion. As I pull away for the week, I’m alone again: me, my thoughts and my work. Lucky for me I follow a God who meets us in that place of alone.

August 2010 Update

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Posted 04 Aug 2010 — by nick
Category Friends, Fun, GCM, Illini Life, Jesus, Ministry, News, Spirituality

Hello friends below you should find our update letter for August 2010.

Download (PDF, 236KB)

We Made It!

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Posted 26 Jul 2010 — by nick
Category Family, Friends, GCM, Illini Life, Ministry

Thanks for all the prayers and help from all our dear friends and ministry partners. Just a few days ago we rolled into our driveway back in Champaign after being on the road for 1 month. God really provided over this past month, but we’re still hard at work in the support raising process.

The next couple weeks will have us in Champaign meeting with people in the area. We’re really asking God to continue to provide and give us rest as we go into the next season of support raising.

Amy’s job in the local schools starts back up in a few weeks and I’ll begin traveling back and forth between Champaign and the Chicago Suburbs weekly to continue raising support. The details of how that looks week to week are still being figured out, but it will definitely look in some way like us being apart the majority of the time. We’re hoping God provides our needed support quickly!

The Support Raising Process

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Posted 20 Jul 2010 — by nick
Category Fun, GCM, Illini Life, Ministry

Within GCM we refer to support raising as ministry team development – MTD. We really see partnership in ministry as the goal, people partner in several ways, finances being one but also in prayer, in getting us connected with others and in donating their time, abilities and resource. I love the idea that it takes a team of folks supporting a missionary for God’s work to be accomplished. What better picture of the Church?

Which explains some of what Amy and I are doing right now. We’re meeting with individuals who are interested in hearing about what God is doing through GCM and it’s missionaries and explaining my role in all of that. I thought it’d be fun to run some stats on all the people I’ve met with or tried to get in touch with over the past 2 months.

231 – the number of times we’ve tried to initiate with people to see if they’d like to meet. That could be anything from an email thread, a text message thread, facebook message thread, phone call or in person.

76 – the number of people committed to praying for us regularly.

46 – the number of appointments we’ve kept. Quite a few of those folks were couples so more specifically it is 71 individuals.

23 – the number of people interested in supporting us financially with a repeating gift. There are 3 additional people that have given special gifts with no commitment to repeat.

8 – the number of homes we’ve stayed in besides ours along this journey.

I can think of few things that force reliance on God more than this process, as an introverted engineer, at times I can feel like I’m in a foreign place watching myself dial the phone another time. Tiredness comes to mind and passes, excitement replaces it.

“Hi! this is Nick Modrzejewski campus missionary at University of Illinois…”

The Secret Powers of Time

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Posted 13 Jul 2010 — by nick
Category Friends, GCM, Illini Life, Jesus, Ministry, Scripture, Spirituality, Technology, Videos

This video has inspired a lot of dialogue between several close friends and colleagues in ministry. We’re asking questions of one another like “How do we change to meet this culture?” “Should we change to meet it?” “Are we called to stretch them out of a short attention span?”

Throughout my years of working with college-aged folks it’s become apparent that in order for me to get someone’s attention I need to be communicating in the medium they do. This is essential for the initial phase of getting to know someone but quickly dissipates as a relationship is formed.

I don’t think college-aged folks are hurting as far as relational interaction anymore today than they were 5 years ago. But the question this video raises for me is how do we get to a relational interaction? How do we move from strangers in the Starbucks to sanctified students of Christ?

I believe we continue adapting the way we communicate at SNG (our Saturday night large group gathering where we teach on topics relevant to college-aged folks), we hold their attention with story and interaction – bringing to life the Gospel in all it’s richness. We adapt the way we interact and exchange small talk and build our friendships. And in Home Fellowship (our community groups focused on sharing our lives together) and discipleship times we work to stretch their patience and teach them to be nourished spiritually apart from fast food and microwave spirituality. We teach them to slow down, we teach them to listen for a God who whispers in the silence.

I’ll end with an example that I think illustrates my point well. Several years ago the Home Fellowship I was apart of didn’t have any students willing or able to lead a dorm based outreach group, so I went back into the dorms to lead at 25 years old – noticeably out of place. As my fellow “old people” and I called through our list of students interested in attending we hardly reached anyone. Noticing that most were cell phones we decided to try texting to reach each person, in many cases we received immediate responses.

We adapted our communication medium and style to that of the natives and it was more fruitful. Several of those text messages resulted in friendships, none of which remained in a discipleing over text message medium, but rather patience-stretching one-on-one times. At our weekly times I watched as the semester progressed and they started to put away their cell phones and not answer text messages while we discussed. Still initiating a meeting or a ride to service was always best done over text message – their native language.

The last thought or question I have would be, do we sacrifice The Gospel, truth about sanctification, etc by adapting the WAY we communicate these truths? IE putting it in movable type for a printing press to be read by individuals instead of handwritten and orated to the people.

I’m sure readers familiar with Marshall McLuhan will have much to say on this topic.

July 2010 Update

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Posted 07 Jul 2010 — by nick
Category Friends, Fun, GCM, Illini Life, Jesus, Ministry, Photos, Spirituality

Hello friends below you should find our update letter for July 2010.

Download (PDF, 312KB)

A Changing Demographic?

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Posted 28 Jun 2010 — by nick
Category Blogs, GCM, Illini Life, Ministry, News

I scrolled across this article in my google reader this morning, admittedly I was behind on several of the key blogs I subscribe to. This post dates earlier this month from the ever insightful Chuck Bomar of College Ministry Thoughts.

What I find fascinating is how shocking these stats were to me. Maybe it’s the proximity to a major land grant university, complete with 40,000 students.

USA Today reports that nearly half of students at a four-year degree school don’t complete their degree within 6 years. Which translates to high drop our rates. And nearly half of college students attend a 2 year degree school such as a community college.

This got me thinking. I trust USA Today’s stats. The trends I’ve seen on campus are more students taking summer school classes at a community college where it’s cheaper, a higher pressure for students to maintain a part-time job while in school to offset the expense, more pressure for high paying internships in the summers. I’m sure the list goes on.

This demographic of college-aged students aren’t any different from you and I and our families. The economic downturn of the past few years has a lot of folks scared and we’ve tightened our belts in a lot of ways. I’m wondering how much of these changing stats are in reaction to such things.

Or maybe simply with the prevalence of online college programs and night school, our population of college students boomed overnight. Either way, I’m passionate about reaching college-aged people regardless of where they go to school (University of Illinois or otherwise).

Warrior Dash

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Posted 20 Jun 2010 — by nick
Category Creation, Friends, Fun, GCM, Illini Life, Photos, Running

This weekend Amy and I met up for our good friend Alan (also a GCM missionary that we work with at U of I) and ran in the Warrior Dash, it was muddy goodtimes.

We ran 3.17 miles, through mud, over abandoned cars, wooden barriers, through a mud pit, over a 8 foot hay bail wall, cargo net, hills, fire, and under barbed-wire (to name a few obstacles). As you can see we were covered in mud at the end.

Running has grown to be a hobby Amy and I enjoy doing together and share with a lot of our friends and students here at U of I.

June 2010 Update

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Posted 17 Jun 2010 — by nick
Category GCM, Illini Life, Ministry, Photos

Hello friends below you should find our update letter for June 2010.

Download (PDF, 343KB)

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