Proud of our students…this is only the tip of an iceberg of awesome.
Tag Archives: BU
SojournBU
This year I spend most of my time at Boston University. I have loved every minute of reshaping our culture and community on this campus. I am especially proud of our leadership for the work they have done, for their faithfulness, and for their ability to lean into the future. Here’s some of my favorite pics from the year:
Nailed It
Well, we are still on cloud nine because of this. But, the world keeps on turning, and one of the great events of the last couple of days (non-parenting category) was Sojourn’s first leadership community of the new semester. Last spring we introduced the “Golden Hammer” as a way to celebrate one of our teams that “nailed it” during the past month.
SojournBU won the golden hammer for the first time, and I am so proud of them! They’ve done a solid job inviting new people into the community and we are starting to see some good stories come in. Like this:
We held a welcome/intro event during the first week of class…I had a few students leave our set up time to randomly pass out fliers to people nearby. This was a bit of risk, and you can always look and feel stupid doing these kinds things. But they were up for the challenge and a handful of people who received fliers ended up coming to the event. One of the girls who came ended up joining a small group, at which she shared about her desire to connect more deeply with Jesus. She just didn’t know how to do that at BU. So, it was quite fortuitous that she happened to be handed a flier. Now she’s a part of a conversation about Jesus and Acts and the early church at one of our small group gatherings! Very cool…BU hasn’t had a ton of these kinds of stories but because our students are taking risks and making invitations they are going to become a much more regular occurence.
A Weekend of Awesome
Some pics from two great days: SojournBU students participating in NotForSale’s Abolitionist Walk on Saturday, and then the craziest Free Student Lunch of all time (We jammed close to 100 students in to the office space and it was cozy to say the least). Awesome!
First Week (So Far…)
Some pics from the very beginning of a new year:
Dallas, Full Circles, and High Church
It’s been a whirlwind week! Two full days of work last Monday and Tuesday followed by an early morning flight to Dallas for part 2 of our Leadership Network experience. Our time with the University Ministry Leadership Community continues to be an overall good experience (there are some frustrations…I sat through maybe the worst presentation on multi-cultural ministry I’ve ever heard in my life). I think we are seeing some tremendous progress organizationally as we “operatationalize our values” so that we actually do what we say we do, as opposed to saying a bunch of nice things.
Saturday morning at 1:15 am I got on a plane and flew back to Boston, came home, took a 30 minute nap, made some coffee, then headed to BU for an Earth Day/Clean Up project with our students. Being around students was energizing which helped me make it through the day. The funny part of the experience was our project was at the Hale Reservation where I spent two summers with Bird Street Community Center’s camp program. It was a little weird to be back, but also fun to be able to show people around and even connect with an employee who remembered me. Felt like a full-circle moment for sure.
Finally, I got to be a reader at Marsh Chapel’s Interdenominational service on Sunday morning. Marsh Chapel functions as the center for Spiritual Life at Boston University and it was a good moment to strengthen relationship with the school now that I am a campus minister at BU. I usually do the offering moment at REUNION so it was kind of funny/ironic to be the “Offertory” reader during the Marsh service. Very different context and yet a similar role.
A couple more weeks and the pace slows down!
Spring Break (Flash Forward)
It’s official: everyone is back and the spring semester is on. UMASS-Boston starts today, BU’s first official gathering is tomorrow night, leadership community is going down on Friday, and yesterday we had the first of 3 Spring Break prep meetings. Excited for the trip this year (two trips actually) and for the ways it is connected to a place (Joplin, MO) that supports us and cares about what we do in Boston. It’ll be great to serve folks there.
Updates Abound
Just sent my sister, Beth, off on a train to Virginia. She came out for a visit and to check out two Dietician programs at Beth Israel and Mount Auburn Hospitals. We rocked Boston hard…a free Harpoon tasting, a tour of the ICA, program check out day, Angela’s Cafe (Rino’s was closed this week), McGreevy’s with friends for the Niners game, REUNION, and some good chats around the dinner table. We are not so secretly rooting for her internship process to lead her out here!
Amy’s sister, Stacey, arrives on Thursday…a permanent move! We are excited to have some family move closer and, even more, we are excited for this new adventure for Stacey.
Boston University starts class tomorrow and UMASS-Boston gets it going next Monday. It’s go time! I am looking forward to many things this semester, but perhaps the thing I am looking forward to the most is the leadership development plan we are putting into action. In particular, Amy and I are prepping (see pic) to spend 10 weeks with 7 prospective leaders at BU reading this and talking about this and this. I CANNOT wait to get started!
