UCLA’s InterVarsity’s Spring Break Mission Team to St. Louis

“But what we can and must do in the present, if we are obedient to the gospel, if we are following Jesus, and if we are indwelt, energized and directed by the Spirit, is to build for the kingdom. This brings us back to I Corinthians 15:58 once more: what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that’s about to roll over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting that’s shortly going to be thrown on the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that’s about to be dug up for a building site. You are — strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself — accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God’s new world. Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings and for that matter one’s fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world — all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make. That is the logic of the mission of God.”

N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, pg. 208, italics in original.

During Spring Break, 16 members of InterVarsity Bruin Christian Fellowship attended CityLights, a urban mission project in St. Louis, Missouri. There, they experienced hope, sorrow, racial reconciliation, service, faith, justice, and most importantly love.

There they were privileged to see glimpses of the Kingdom, here on Earth.  They didn’t see how far off Los Angeles and UCLA has become, but rather how much potential there is.

KOGAH will be host to various testimonies in the coming week from these students and followers of Christ. The things they wish to say may very well speak into the things this ministry hopes to bring forth.

So stay tuned and all the glory be to God.

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