The student, “Eddie,” had been given my name and information by a mutual friend, “Daniel,” in East Asia. I have learned from “Daniel” since I received “Eddie’s” email that the two men ”happened” to meet in the summer of 2010 while “Eddie” was on a school-related trip to “Daniel’s” city. How they met, I do not know, but the two men spent about an hour visiting with one another. “Eddie” and “Daniel” exchanged email addresses and have maintained communication with one another since they met.

This summer “Eddie” informed “Daniel” that he would soon move to America and begin his graduate studies at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. My friend shared with “Eddie” that he had a friend (that would be me) who lived in the city where Texas A&M is located and asked “Eddie” if he would like to be connected with me. The student said yes and my contact information was given to him.

Besides the amazing fact that “Eddie” and “Daniel” just “happened” to meet in a city of millions, and that “Eddie” and I have been introduced to one another, is the fact that “Daniel” and I have never met face-to-face. I “met” “Daniel” in 2001 when I heard about him and his wife and their work among a particular people group that I had long been burdened for. I was able to contact him by email and subsequently began receiving his monthly ministry updates. ”Daniel” and I have become friends over the years as we have exchanged emails and shared prayer requests for ministry, health, and life matters with one another.

Now, years later, the Lord is using a relationship that He established twelveyears ago and a God-orchestrated encounter between two men in an Asian city to give my family and me the opportunity to minister the love of Christ to an East Asian PhD student.

How sovereign of God is that?

Setting up a new household can be a formidable task as one is getting settled into a new environment and culture, all the while trying to get ready for the start of a new school semester.

One of the ways that many American churches help meet the basic housing and household goods needs of students is to collect and then give away, for free, furniture and other items to students. This is a very simple and basic way to minister to students, scholars and researchers who come from the “nations” of the world to pursue their academic careers in our communities.

As these needs are being met, relationships between students and church volunteers are established, relationships which can then be followed up on and nurtured. These relationships invariably give a believer the opportunity to share Christ with someone who may never have heard His Name.

Such a giveaway will be conducted this Saturday, August 2oth, in College Station, Texas, home of Texas A&M University. The giveaway will take place at Grace Bible Church, 700 Anderson Street, from 7am to 1pm.

If you are a new international student at A&M, and are in need of furniture and other household goods and items for your new residence, please join us Saturday at the giveaway. Be sure to arrive early at the facilities of Grace Bible Church. Demand for such items is great and the lines will be long.

Volunteers with trucks, trailers, and vans will be available to help you get your selected items back to your apartment or house.

If you need additional information about the giveaway, please give the church office a call at 1.979.693.2911.

Happy shopping!

~ ibf welcomes the “nations” to tamu ~

Apartment complexes that have been near empty all summer are being re-populated with students, the streets are getting more congested with traffic, and the languages being heard at local grocery and retail stores are becoming more diverse. It really is exciting.

With the start of the school year, opportunity for ministry to and the sharing of Christ with students (which never ceases) begins to multiply.

~ friendship and service ~

There are several ways in which my wife and I are going to be involved in ministry with students as the semester begins and continues into the fall.

This past Sunday we helped unload furniture and household items at a local Bible church for a “giveaway” on August 20. Couches, kitchen tables, dishes, utensils, pots and pans, beds and desks that have been collected for months will be given to in-coming international students. When these students arrive in our community, one of the first things they have to do is get established in their apartments and homes. This not only means finding housing, it means filling their residences with the necessary furniture and household items required for daily living. As the students come to the church facility to pick out goods, we have the opportunity to express that love of God in very real and tangible ways – the meeting of their household needs. Relationships with students that may last for years are established at the “giveaway.” We always pray that these relationships will allow us many opportunities to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with them and their families and to see many come to faith in Christ as their Savior.

This year, we will again have the opportunity to be involved in the English Language Proficiency Exam (ELPE) interviews that are conducted regularly on the campus of TAMU. International students who want to work as Teaching Assistants in their departments must go through the ELPE process in order to obtain employment. During the ELPE interview process, we meet many wonderful men and women from the “nations” of the world. We often are able to share our names and contact information with them, offering to serve them in any way that we can as they are getting established and settled in the community. 

New international student check-in is scheduled for  August 16-18 at TAMU. I have volunteered at check-in in the past and will do so again this year. These are great opportunities to serve the University as a volunteer. It is an even greater opportunity to meet and serve new students. Whether greeting students at the front desk or copying their passport and other papers, there is always an opportunity to speak a word of welcome to the students and engage them in conversation, however brief it may be.

We will volunteer at the household goods and furniture giveaway on the 2oth. On that day hundreds of new students will walk through the doors of the church facility to obtain free couches, tables, beds, dishes, cookware,  and other items for the setting up of their new homes for their time of study at Texas A&M. Volunteers will assist our new friends in getting their items back to their apartments and houses, conversations will be engaged in along the way, and relationships will begin to be established. As relationships are built, the Lord eventually gives us and others the opportunity to introduce Jesus Chris to our ew friends.

We will continue with our Saturday evening pot-luck meal and English Bible study times at our house. These evenings have always been a great time to fellowship around a meal, build relationships, and practice our English language reading, listening, and comprehension skills as we read and discuss portions of a simplified version of the Bible. Using the Bible as our reading text gives us the opportunity to introduce the Bible to students who may never have even seen a Bible and to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with them. And, we always try to incorporate fun activities such as game nights and Saturday field trips to local places of  interest into the life of this Saturday night group.

With respect to the Saturday night activity, this Sunday a Korean professor is going to introduce me to five new Korean families who have expressed their interest in being a part of our pot-luck meal and Bible study group.

In conclusion, I am thankful to the Lord that we live in Bryan-College Station, Texas, the home of the Texas A&M University. A&M is world-class university to which the future leaders of the “nations” come to study. While the men and women of the world are in our communities, we have the opportunity to meet and serve them in the Name of Jesus Christ. We are privileged to see many of them come to faith in Christ as their personal Savior and Lord, to grow in their faith, and to commit themselves to His service.

We praise the Lord for these opportunities. Please pray that He will use us to bring glory to Himself as we reach out to, serve, and share Christ with international students this year.

If you are an international student - enrolling for your first semester at A&M or continuing your studies or research here – and there is any way that we can serve you, please contact me by leaving a comment and your contact information in the comment section of this post. I will get in touch with you as soon as I can.

~ ibf welcomes the “nations” to tamu ~

Over the years IBF has met for Bible studies in homes, apartments, and on campus, conducted a church-type ministry (for 2 1/2 years), eaten tremendous food at pot-luck meals, conducted cross-cultural events such as field-trips to Houston markets and historical sites in Texas, game days, house-hold furniture and kitchen supply give-aways, and introduced students to American families for relationship purposes through the “Fellowship Family” ministry.

~ reach students … disciple the “nations” ~

We have been blessed to meet and know many wonderful people from around the world who have come to Texas A&M to pursue their academic careers. We remain in relationship and contact with many of these men and women and their families even though they have returned to their home countries or relocated to other parts of the United States.

The Lord has allowed us to know, relate to, and interact with two language congregations in our community. One is a Mandarin congregation, the other is Korean. We continue to know and relate to these churches.

IBF has been a part of the Lord’s activity in the bringing of men and women to salvation through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We have had the privilege of baptizing those who professed Christ as their Savior and Lord.

~4,699 international students … 126 countries ~

International Bible Fellowship was a Texas A&M University recognized student organization from 1999 to 2005. That status gave our ministry an official presence on campus. As a student organization we had a TAMU website, were eligible for the use of meeting rooms on campus for the conducting of activities, and had permission to post promotional fliers on campus.

Our status as a recognized student organization lapsed in 2005. IBF was doing more ministry in homes and in relationship with the Mandarin congregation so we did not continue our organization status with the University.

Recently, though, we have decided to re-activate our organization status with TAMU. We are doing this because we believe the Lord would have us spend more time on campus with students in an “official” student organization capacity. 

~ ibf  welcomes the “nations” to tamu ~

Therefore, we are in the process re-activating, or “re-loading,” International Bible Fellowship as a student organization. We have enlisted a professor who has agreed to serve as our faculty advisor. A PhD student in physics has stepped up to serve as the one who will be our contact with the Student Activities department and will actually imitate our re-activation process. He has also agreed to serve as the organization’s “president” and is helping to enlist two other students to serve as our vice-president and treasurer.

We are exited about our sense of the Lord’s call and direction to reactivate IBF as a student organization. We believe that the Lord will use that status and our presence on campus - interacting with and ministering to students – to bring Him glory as we minister and share the Name and love of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

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If you are interested in the ministry of International Bible Fellowship, or ministry to international students, in general, please leave a comment and  your contact information and we will be happy to get in touch with you.

My first meeting is in the morning. I will be drinking coffee with a young man who has recently joined the staff of an area campus ministry. This ministry ministers to students enrolled at Texas A&M University (TAMU) in College Station, Texas. TAMU is the 7th largest university in the nation with the 17th largest international student enrollment in the country. This young man will have the responsibility of leading his campus ministry’s evangelistic outreach to the “nations” of the world who are pursuing their academic studies at A&M. We will be discussing international student ministry in general and his ministry and its start-up, in particular.

On Wednesday morning I will meet with two staff members from a fairly new church in our community. One of the folks is the church’s lead pastor. The other is a staff minister whose responsibilitie’s include ministry to international students. While I am sure we will discuss ministry to international students, the main purpose for our getting together is to discuss a “training” resource material called T4T – Training for Trainers.

T4T is basically a discipleship material that can be used to disciple new followers of Christ. It is much like the six-session discipleship material you may have gone through at your local church when you first became a Christian. But, T4T is much more than a knowledge-based discipleship material. T4T is designed to instill within the heart and life of new believers a vision for and commitment to evangelism, the making of reproducing disciples of Christ, and the starting of new (simple) churches that start new churches. The bottom-line objective of T4T is, therefore, the expansion of the Kingdom of God through church planting movements.

I trust that the two church staff ministers and I will not only discuss the T4T material, but ways that we can work together to implement the material and its church planting principles as we seek to reach Texas A&M University and our community for Christ. I would ask you to pray these I have mentioned in this post and me as we meet and pray together this week. Please pray that we will know how we might best work together to reach Bryan-College Station, Texas for Christ.

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T4T – Training for Trainers was developed by a church planter in East Asia who was confronted with the challenge of how to reach an unengaged mega-city for Christ. This material is now being used around the world by many different churches and denominations as they seek to fulfill the Great Commission is our life-time.

It is my intention, though, to begin posting more on this blog. There are a couple of different reasons for this.

One is that we continue to relate to and minister to and with international students and language congregations in our community, Bryan-College Station, Texas (B-CS). Our community is home to Texas A&M Univeristy, one of the largest universities in the United States. A&M has the 17th largest international student enrollment in America. It is my desire to continue writing about our ministry to students.

A second reason for wanting to continue writing on this blog is that I have recently begun relating to a number of people in our area who share my prayer for the Lord to initiate a church planting movement among university students enrolled at Texas A&M. We are particularly interested in the use and implementation of a resource called T4T- Training or Trainers.

T4T is a training material that builds the reproducible DNA of evangelism, equipping, and church planting into the hearts and lives of Christ followers. T4T was written and developed by a church-planter and pastor in East Asia in the late 1990′s. The Lord is using T4T around the world for the spread of the Gospel and the leading of millions to Christ as their personal Savior and Lord.

Just as I want to write about our ministry to international students, I want to write about the discussions and follow-up that I have with others as we commit our lives to reaching our university and community through the start and multiplication of small groups through the implementation of the church planting principles contained in the T4T material.

Please pray for International Bible Fellowship and my T4T friends as we follow Christ into the fields of Bryan-College Station and Texas A&M University that are ripe for a spiritual harvest.

 ~ reach students … disciple the “nations” ~

I lost contact with the church when my family and I moved out-of-town for a year for medical reasons. Since our return to the Texas A&M area in May 2006 our international student ministry has focused more on students from the People’s Republic of China and we never re-connected with the Korean congregation.

The elder emailed me to inform that he and several others from the church mentioned above had started a new church. The new congregation meets in close proximity to the university and is currently attended by thirty-five (35) people. He told me that several students in the church wanted to study the Bible in English and asked if I was leading any small groups that involved Korean students. I told him that I was facilitating one Bible study with Chinese and would be blessed to be a part of a new Korean group.

The elder hesitated to accept my offer to lead a new group, saying that he knew that my schedule was very busy. I accepted his decision but was pretty disappointed.

Then, last week I received another email from the elder. He asked if I was still open to facilitating an English language Bible study with students from the new church. I responded positively. Shortly after my reply, I received an invitation to attend worship services at the church this coming Sunday and meet the students who have expressed a desire for a small group.

At this point there are two single men and two couples who have committed to be a part of this new group. Two other students have expressed interest but have yet to commit themselves.

The small group will meet either Tuesday or Thursday evenings of each week.

I’m excited and thankful to the Lord for this opportunity to become involved with the Korean community again. My experiences with the Korean church in the past were a tremendous blessing. The church and its members have a burden for the evangelism of the unsaved and cross-cultural missions that is infectious.

Please pray for the new church and for all of us who are going to be involved in this new mid-week Bible study… that the Lord will knit us together in friendship, open our hearts to His Word, draw people to faith in Christ, and thrust us out as laborers into the harvest of  “nations” who are enrolled at Texas A&M.

~ reach students … disciple the “nations” ~

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(Note: This article was originally posted on my other blog, tangiblethoughts, on September 22,2010.)

On the tangiblethoughts blog you’ll find posts about church planting and church planting movements, missional ministry, China, discipleship, international student ministry, Reformed theology, and more.

Please visit me there and let me know what you think about what you read.

Yesterday, my personal  email account was seriously hacked. Someone from “England” sent a bogus email to all of my contacts making an appeal for 1,500 pounds to help “me” get home from London.

The hacker also was able to delete all of my contacts, hence my effort to communicate with you by way of blog.

I will be making an appeal at some later time to re-build my contact list.

If you received one of the these emails, please ignore it. It was not me, I am at home and trying to do damage control.

I apologize if you received one of the these emails and it affected you or your computer in any way.

Several of the new folks asked to be added to our group’s email list for notices about future activities and meeting times.

We pray that many of these new friends will come to know Christ as their personal Savior and Lord.

Here are some pictures from that night.

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Making dumplings is a group event.

We’re excited and getting hungry.

Dumplings are served!

One of our new friends.

Old and new friends.

~ reach students … disciple the “nations” ~