It has been an incredible start to the semester. For starters, we’ve seen large numbers at our campus meetings. Of course it’s not all about numbers, but I believe we are seeing consistent large crowds at our campus meetings because of the incredible faith of our students to be bold and invite others. I think this partially stems from how we kicked off the spring semester with our annual Winter Conference.
Winter Conference has always been about giving our students a boost of faith and great vision going into the semester. This year we focused on what it means to be a disruptor on each of our different campuses. Why you might ask??? Because the times demand of it if we are followers of Jesus! More on this later…
I was given the opportunity to preach on this topic during the conference. There is a very short video clip above that I’ve posted for you to check out! And I’ve attached my message notes as well.
I loved thinking through and writing this message. It was honestly a lot of fun to wrestle with how I was going to go about writing about this theme of being a disruptor. I mentioned this in the beginning of my talk, but if you are like me the word “disruptor” has had some sort of a negative connotation to me. I would have never thought that being a disruptor would be something that is almost necessary to seeing the peace and love of God come to people’s lives. Disruptor and peace?? Makes no sense.
I soon found out being a disruptor is not a “negative” thing. I love the way this word is seen in a business context. If a company is considered to be a disruptor, it “causes radical change in an existing industry or market”. I think you can take this far beyond just the corporate world setting.
Most of this included in my message notes so I wont spend to much time on this, but if you want to talk about causing radical change, look no further than the life of Jesus. I would encourage you to check out the story of Jesus flipping tables in the temple (John 2:13-17). In his day, this would have been seen as absolutely INSANE. Jesus, how could you do this??? Isn’t it being a little rude? Maybe over the top? People are celebrating the passover, why would you come mess everything up??
Jesus knew something (duh!!). A love for God and His ways will look like disrupting the cultural status quo of our day and age. And this is exactly what he is doing. And what happens as a result? People wake up. Freedom is found. Lives are shaken up in the best way possible. Truth prevails. God uses it for His glory.
And this is what we want to see happen on our college campuses!! We want to see students wake up to God’s reality. We want to see students experience God’s love and truth for maybe the first time. We want to see students that have been sleep walking their way through college come alive. We want to see students give their lives and allegiance to King Jesus. (I could keep going!)
Being a disruptor out of a love for God and people is one way we will see this come to fruition.
And this is the charge we gave students at the winter conference.
Students were encouraged and challenged to not allow fear grip them, but to rise up to the challenge that this day and age requires of us.
I have recently been spending a lot of time with a sophomore at KU. He is really an awesome dude who has just recently began to commit himself to growing and wanting to commit to Jesus more. So amazing! He came to the conference and I was following up with him on what he thought. He said that a part of my message really challenged him. The part about fearing man and not allowing fear hold us back.
I say this because this is the challenge for a lot of students (myself included!). But God gives us everything we need in Christ to push back on this and take on the challenge.
And it is a wonderful challenge! What an amazing time to be alive and be a part of what God is doing on the earth.
We cannot wait for what will happen on the KU campus as our students lean into being a disruptor like Jesus!
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