Getting Creative at Cornell

At Cornell, in the middle of our tabling, I got an email notification. After quickly scanning its content, I messaged my student team,

“Hi everyone, time to pray and get creative! We got our rooms denied for LG tonight.”

We scrambled to think of our options and finally chose to hunker down in an empty lecture hall on the engineering quad- the opposite side of campus where we usually hosted students and far from the freshmen dorms.

But despite the last minute change and the location, God called students to himself! Over 50 students still came to large group and there, Andy* shared his story:

“I always thought the bible was a “good rules book” growing up in church. I didn’t want to go to hell so I did what the bible told me to do. But then, I read that the bible wanted me to love God. But I didn’t love God. I just wanted to obey the rules. But the “rules” said to love God. So I was stuck.”

Andy’s story painted a picture of a churched child beginning to understand the grander picture of who the bible was about and how he discovered a relationship with the God behind it. That resonated with new students and that night we invited them to respond to leave the old narrative that the bible was just a “good moral book” and to encounter the Jesus in it.

AND FOURTEEN NEW STUDENTS RAISED THEIR HAND!