World Vision night recap

Wow, what a night! So much work, prayer, and preparation was put into this night. Maybe you’re wondering what “world vision” even means. Well, our hope and prayer for this night was that students would come to our weekly meeting and gain a bigger vision for how God is working and bringing salvation around the world. With the help of Kirk, Elise, Luke, and Alex, students who are leading our Global Connect ministry team, we were able to put together a night that we think will impact not just the students who came, but hopefully also thousands of other people who will hear the gospel because of these students being challenged to take the good news of Jesus Christ to Cal Poly, Cuesta and the world.

The night began with 15 students showing up two hours early to help setup for the night (picture to the left). We posted signs, hung curtains to set the somber mood, placed prayer cards and name tags underneath all 800 seats, and prayed lots. With everything almost finished we could feel the energy building and kept praying that God would come meet us in unique ways and that Holy Spirit would really lead us, convict our hearts, and give us compassion for the billions of lost people in the world.

As students started pouring in we gave them different color wrist bands with which we used to represent the different groups of people-groups. The white bands – 41% – represent where the gospel is prevalent and people have open and free access to hear about Jesus (i.e. America). The red bands – 18% – represent where the gospel and churches are still formative yet also growing (i.e. East Asia). The black bands – 41% – represent where there is little to no chance of someone hearing about the good news of salvation in Christ (i.e. Middle East). With these sobering stats in mind, we go to frame our night with more of an urgency.

After singing great worship songs such as “In Christ Alone” and “Give Us Clean Hands” we heard from Alex about how the gospel motivates us to action, which is evident in so many passage but probably most clearly in 2 Corinthians 5: 14-21. Alex shared her story of deciding to forsake pursuing an architecture internship and go on another summer project to El Salvador this summer. With that in mind, we showed this video from Ruben, a student in El Salvador, whose life has been changed because of a few students from Cal Poly who decided to give a year of their life to serve God in El Salvador:

So many students were touched to hear directly from Ruben and how he has been completely changed by the love of Christ. All of this because of the obedience of a few students who were determined to believe that God was great enough to use their life for his kingdom. THAT is why I love STINT and encourage any and every college grad, or even upperclassman, to consider giving up a year of their life to serve Jesus.

We also heard from Luke who is going back to East Asia this summer to help launch a movement on brand new campus. We have no clue if there are any Christians there, we just know that God wants to rule in that place. So we’re sending a team of about 50 Americans to a city without a Starbucks. Come on, that’s suffering by California standards. Brent Freeby, a professor at Cal Poly, spoke about how God humbled him when he was asked to lead a trip to Albania to build houses, which ended up falling through and never happening. Daniel, one of our CORE student leaders for next year, shared a very emotionally charged story about his grandfather passing away over spring break and how he and his sister got to share the gospel with him in the last hours of his life. His grandfather responded to the gospel with heart-felt desire and told them to “share this with the other family members, I want them to be in heaven with us.” Needless to say, it was a night filled with very hard realities, joys, and new hopes born.

To finish the night, we asked everyone to pray and ask the Lord where he wanted them to invest, or “adopt”, a country or people-group; for them to pray, give, or go to that place. It was a really powerful time that many students were impacted by when they saw that their peers were also committing to be used by God. Here’s a snapshot of that time:

Overall, the night was a huge success. God indeed gave us a greater picture of his glory impacting the nations! Here’s a few snippets of how God used the night:

- students stepped up to organize and run a large portion of the night; as a result, it gave a greater sense of ownership for the movement and inspired other students to serve within SLO Crusade
- gave an opportunity for a professor to connect with students on the heart level; thus creating a greater scope of who we are reaching on the campus, and inspiration that not all professors are out to damage the name of Christ
- created a more realistic urgency that not everyone lives in a beautiful coastal California city with multiple opportunities to hear the gospel and attend a local church

Thank you to so many people who prayed for the Lord to move in bold ways. Your prayers were definitely heard, and will continue to echo in heaven as the Lord works out salvation for so many unreached people here and all over the world. Also, thank you to the many amazing people who support me financially. You made it possible for me to be here to coach the Global Connect team, the team of students who organized this very impactful night.

Til the whole world hears,
Matt