Description of my ministry...

Ok, I'm going to try it.  I'm going to attempt that no man named Steve Hintz has ever attempted until this date.  I'm going to try to shed some light and clarity into what exactly I'm doing here.  If you are familiar with Cru or any of its affiliates, this should be review.  If not, I hope this will be both educational and concise.

The Theory:
As an arm of the campus ministry branch of Cru, we are trying to build a student-led spiritual movement on the campus of Tilburg University.  Although student-led is pretty self explanatory spiritual movments are not.  A spiritual movement is a group of people who are actively seeking to obey the Great Comission by 'going' and 'making disciples' through evangelism.  And then 'teaching them to obey all that Jesus has commanded them.'  Which includes both biblical principles and very practical ways of implementing that into one's life and walk with the Lord.  For example, a teaching one to obey Jesus' commands would include explaining to someone that we must share our faith, as well as actually going out with them and modeling precisely how one may share their faith.  

I personally really like this model for many reasons. First off.  It's biblical.  Secondly, students are going to be the most effective at reaching their peers.  On top of that, they get hands-on experience in discipling others and sharing their faith.  Lastly, students have their whole life ahead of them in which they can use what they learn now for the rest of their lives to touch the lives of many others they come into contact with.

My Role:
If you are anything like me, you are probably asking, "Ok, so how exactly are you going to get all the nice things you said above to become reality?"  The simple answer to this is: pray and step out in faith as God leads, trusting in Him to bring people to Himself.  Essentially that is what I'm going to be doing, and holy cow is it important.  But I know from experience, that probably doesn't even come close to being a satisfying answer to your aforementioned question.  

So, on top of those things, I first need to meet students in order to begin to get a feel for their interest in the Gospel.  We do that by surveying students we find sitting on campus.  As we "collect information" we are also trying to build a relationship with them, so that we can invite them to events where we can continue to build relationships.  Eventually we want to enter into a discipleship relationship with those students, so that we can teach them Jesus commands.  This may happen with either a Christian or non-Christian student.  So, just as Jesus spent a lot of time with his disciples which included teaching, traveling, healing, hearing, etc. with His disciples.  We want to do the same with ours, and walk with them on their spiritual journeys.  This may be, modeling how to share the Gospel with a Christian student, or searching the Bible for contradictions with a non-Christian skeptic.  

Getting even more specific now.  I will hopefully be discipling 2-3 students this year, leading fellow Christian students in going sharing on campus for 3-4 days a week, as well as maintaining the Agape StudentLife Tilburg Facebook page to keep students connected with information about events and other notes.

How you can help:

• Pray, pray, and pray
• Ask God to incline students hearts to want to learn more about Him.
• Pray for clarity, boldness, and salty speech when sharing our faith on campus.
• Ask God to provide student leaders, who begin to join us in this work to reach other students, and therefore causing our movement to grow.