RUF Orientation.

When I got off the plane and into my sister’s car I said “this past week changed my life, I think”. Why, with a laugh is what she said. Its possible to say its changed my life for numerous reasons but I think that mainly it has enhanced every reason I didn’t know before about why I want to work for RUF. Spending a week in Atlanta sounded like this cool vacation that I would get to have, however I could not have imagined the week without spending 10 hours a day in those freezing cold conference rooms.

To start off I got to meet probably 35 of the coolest people my age from around the country. I cannot praise God enough for calling them all to serve with RUF and to have them available to me as friends! They were kind, loving and supportive the moment we exchanged names and which schools we would be working at. I felt like it was summer camp almost with the amount of time we got to spend sitting next to one another, but overall I now have many more close friends to confide in as a result.

We spent time going over the logistics of insurance, how tos of this and that, who to call with a problem and who not to call. While all this was so refreshing because it now made this huge idea of working for RUF a reality, my favorite part of the week was the POM.

No we didn’t sit around and drinking that expensive pomegranate juice called POM, although I wouldn’t had minded. POM stands for philosophy of ministry and this is what I already see God using to work on my heart. We learned that ministering isn’t some big cloud of just sharing the gospel, but has purpose, goals, and principles.

The purpose of RUF is to reach students for Christ, all students not just Christians or non-Christians, but we all are in need of Christ everyday. And then to equip them to serve. RUF is a ministry of purpose not methods. No two campus are exactly alike. We then accomplish our purpose by working toward four goals. Growth in grace where students grow in understanding of the gospel and their need for the grace of Christ. Fellowship and service is where students are involved in genuine relationships to one another and looking for opportunities to be inconvenienced in love. Evangelism and missions is where students are using their gifts for reaching others and growing in their concern for the lost throughout the world. The fourth goal is a biblical world and life view that students will have when seeing everything in relation to God and His word. Those goals alone changed how I was approaching ministry.

The four principles that underlie our goals and purposes are Scripture, Justification, Sanctification, and Glorification. These are the four things that we as interns have to be more and more aware of as we desire to serve. Its not that I haven’t already extensively studied these things, but that I heard new and fresh ideas behind them all this week. How my sin can get in the way of me believing in all of them and that I will be growing in knowing and understanding how God works in them and through them for the next two years. This isn’t even a crumb of the cake we attacked this week. At points it was information overload and I am still trying to sit and process it all.

I am so thankful for God and his goodness to me and the 41 other interns who are in the new class of 2009! Please continue to pray for fundraising and all the things that are on my plate for the month of June.