June 2010

On Sunday, June 13, Steve Lutz visited University Bible Fellowship and delivered a sermon titled Made for Mission based on Jeremiah 29:4-14. This passage is a letter that the prophet Jeremiah wrote to the Jewish exiles in Babylon. Instead of telling them to oppose the idolatrous Babylonian culture, he gave them advice that seemed counterintuitive:  “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jer 29:7).

Steve is a full-time campus minister for CCO at Penn State who specializes in reaching out to students who are culturally distant from Christianity.  Steve has been successful in forming relationships with these students and engaging them in Bible study in interesting ways and nontraditional places. He maintains a blogsite called the SENTintel where he posts articles and materials on missional campus ministry. He is also the founder of Commontary, a free online Bible commentary with user-contributed content.

Steve’s message runs about 45 minutes. We have broken up the video into five segments of about nine minutes each. Here is the first segment:

Additional segments continue below.

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InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) maintained a chapter at Penn State for fifty years (1941-1991), and for much of that time, it was the Christian student fellowship on campus. After nearly two decades of inactivity, IVCF is back. Two full-time staff members — Michelle McCotter and Sara Achenbach — moved to State College in 2009 to restart the chapter. After gathering a core group of interested students, IVCF is an officially recognized student organization once again.

On Sunday, June 13, Michelle McCotter spoke at University Bible Fellowship  and gave a brief update about IV at Penn State. After her report, Ruthie — our current Seed President — offered a prayer for Christian unity on campus.