Summertime in Gambier

Issue No. 6 Jun./Jul. 2007

It has actually been almost exactly one year since we sent out our first newsletter. Kelly was in her second trimester, I had just finished CCO’s New Staff Training, and we were trying to learn our way around Mt. Vernon and Kenyon College. We received a phone call inviting us out to dinner with a few students who had been working for Kenyon’s Summer Conferences. We were very excited and very nervous. This would be Kelly’s first interaction with Kenyon students and only my second interaction. We went out to eat at Hoggy’s Bar and Grille – a place with delicious, barbeque meals – as a going away meal because one of the Summer Conference student workers was leaving the next day. We had a great time and were grateful to have met these students, but we certainly weren’t really in their lives at that point.

Well, one full year has passed. Kelly and I have had a great school year here at Kenyon, and we’ve had a great summer, too! This summer, we worked alongside those Summer Conferences students, most of whom we knew from the school year. And the same student who we went to Hoggy’s for last year, came back after already graduating, and worked one last summer here at Kenyon. Furthermore, we went out to eat at Hoggy’s as a going away party for him – again. Looking at this picture makes me think of how grateful I am for how far God has taken us into relationship with Kenyon students since that first, somewhat awkward, meal, and the awkwardness shown in the after-meal picture from last summer’s Hoggy’s trip.

Our first newsletter talked about the first Core Value of the CCO, All Things Belong to God. The CCO’s third Core Value is, We Love College Students. Loving these Kenyon College students is integral to what Kelly and I do, and is made possible with your prayerful support. Whether they’ve always been Christians, or if they’re new Christians, or if they don’t know Christ at all, God loves them and desires that they know him. And we pray that God will use us as instruments of his love towards them. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” ~ Romans 5:8

Ways to Build an Altar

by Lucia Pizzo
Issue No. 5 March-May 2007

Choosing Kenyon was a struggle for me. I had so foolishly assumed that as a Christian I would best grow with God at a Christian school. And since Kenyon was far from this, my decision to attend was in part rebellion against God and His Christian schools and in part a plea that God would follow me even to these dark depths. Of course, when I rationalized my decision to attend Kenyon, I neglected to remember that everything is God’s—not just things that are Christian in name. I forgot that I was God’s, that he would never leave me.

Coming into Kenyon, I thought I had a decent idea of what a Christian was and should be, bound by rigid rules with little room for opinions. But this year, I’ve cultivated a love of differences, noticing how Christian churches, like Christians, don’t often differ in belief but in emphasis. Throughout the year, students have met as a big group to read God’s Word once each month. Ephesians has taught us to break down the barriers between Jews and Gentiles, between different sectors of Christianity.

I am also reading Lauren Winner’s book Mudhouse Sabbath, from which I’ve learned how Jewish practices can enrich Christianity. Additionally, I’ve spoken often with my Amish professor. He has taught me so much about how he came to choose the life he leads and has explained the reasoning behind many of his practices. For instance, the Amish don’t use phones not out of a fear of the evils of technology but to avoid the temptation to gossip. Becoming educated about that which is foreign to me has cultivated greater acceptance and understanding in me, deepening my own faith.

We are all part of one body and must move together. By recognizing and valuing different churches and seeing the God that is big enough to hold them all, I’m beginning to find my own footing in Christianity, apart from my parents, apart from my assumptions. I’m finding God for myself, submitting my adoration in bits cut and pasted together.

The preceding was an essay written by a student who attends the weekly Sophomore Bible Study as well as the above mentioned Big Group Bible Study. She’s also a student leader for Saturday Night Fellowship, and she’s one of a few students with whom I’m doing a group book study of Mudhouse Sabbath before the end of the year.

I praise God for the opportunity to minister to students like Lucia and for the joy I have in witnessing them see just how big God is. Please celebrate with me that these Kenyon students are developing a Biblically-based view of the world, rooted in their life changing relationship with Jesus Christ.

Real Sex

Issue No. 4 Jan./Feb.

In Sophomore Bible Study (SBS) somebody requested last semester that we study purity. So we did. Since then we’ve moved on to studying 1 Peter, but I’ll get to that later. Megan and Lucia, who both attend SBS, wanted to discuss purity further than was possible in SBS, so together we read a book by Lauren Winner, which we recently finished, entitled Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity.

Megan and Lucia read Winner’s book and met weekly with me, always intent to discuss what they read and how it applies to them. Winner showed us how to better understand our foundation and what God wants for us. Through these times together, we began to see more clearly the broader framework of God’s story of His love for us, including Jesus Christ, and how we fit into that, and not simply additional rules to add to our lives which are frequently unhelpful. Some things we covered include: how in Gen. 1:31, “God saw all that he had made,” including humans with physical bodies, and declared, “it was very good;” a few lies our culture tells us about sex, as well as lies the church tells us about sex; how what we do with our own bodies matters not only for ourselves, but it matters to our community, the Body of Christ; and why, as one of the chapters discussed, we have any right to ask our neighbor what they did last night (see Gal. 6:1-2). As the Body of Christ we believe that we cannot simply be autonomous (see 1 Cor. 12:12-26), but that everything we do – including sex – affects the community of which we are intimately a part.

(Remember, in SBS we’re in 1 Peter now.) One of our last weeks together studying Real Sex, Lucia was incredibly excited. During the previous SBS part of what we read was 1 Pet. 1:15-16, “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’” Lucia said that when she read that she thought of what we had been discussing. It really struck her and everything fell into place for her why that applies to everything in our lives, including sex.

I praise God that I am able to be witness to what He is doing here at Kenyon College and for letting me share it with you.