Daniel Dialogue Ep: 4

The hosts of the Daniel Dialogue podcast discuss their college ministry's new vision statement and their efforts to promote evangelism among students. They aim to share and show the gospel in various pockets of their university, such as dorms, majors, clubs, and sororities. They have started a campaign called Storm the Dorms where they go door-to-door in dorms and apartments, asking if people are interested in starting a Bible study. They have seen success in some dorms but not others. They also mention their summer-long discipleship program called City Project, which involves sharing the gospel in New York City, Charlottesville, and overseas. They have received several applications but are praying that more students will commit to the program. Hello and welcome back to the Daniel Dialogue. This is episode 4, I think, episode 4, and I'm joined today with my eternal guest. Am I a guest or am I a co-owner? You're still a guest. I haven't promoted you to co-owner yet. Don't worry. Yeah, this is... Oh, I'm Jenna, by the way, if you didn't know me. She's a recurring guest on our show. From being the guest every single time and never having another guest. Yeah, and never having any other guest. But maybe one day we'll have a different guest. We keep saying that. We should stop saying that. Yeah, we should stop saying that. Until it actually happens. Yeah, don't get your hopes up. It'll probably just be Jenna again. Maybe next time we'll just give you a different name and pretend you're a different guest. This is Jose. Oh, we're other guys. Yeah, yeah. But people can't see you. I was going to try to do a Jose impression, but I don't think I can do it very good. Jose says that a lot. Well, Jenna, welcome to this episode, and welcome to all of our listeners. All four of you. We are grateful for your guys' support, and we're excited to share with you what we've been up to in the month of January. We're sending this out a little late. It's the middle of February. But that's okay, because we want to update you guys. We want you guys to be involved as much as you can be from wherever you are in the United States or across the world. Do we have any supporters across the world? Zach goes on business trips sometimes. Yeah, he does. He travels. So, yes, we'll say we're worldwide. Recently, as a college ministry, we have been just doing a big push for evangelism, and we have crafted a new vision statement. Jenna, do you remember our vision statement, and will you please tell us what it is? We want to be a ministry that is sharing and showing the gospel in 28 pockets of UVA by the year 2028. That is correct, and very good. We're trying to – everybody's just trying to memorize that. We're stating it a lot in all of our talks and all of our trainings, everything. We are trying to just instill that vision that we want the students to share the gospel in whatever pocket or area they are. Jenna, give an example. What are some pockets of UVA? Yeah, majors, dorms, sororities, apartment buildings, clubs of interest, acapella groups, really just places that people meet surrounding a common thing they like to do or goal or dream they have. It's like a measurable place that people are together in person. It's like we want people in their classes to be sharing with the people who are in their classes because they're in the same major, and they have things in common, and God has placed them there by giving them the dreams and desires and interests they have. It's like you love soccer. Use your love of soccer for the kingdom. Yeah, exactly. I also think it's helpful, too, because we want to obviously send students out, whether that's City Project or even overseas or even if it's just when they graduate, send them across the United States to work a job and do ministry wherever they're at. But before we can do that and before they're going to be equipped to do that, they need to be doing that now. They can just start whenever they graduate or over the summer, like that starts during the semester. So we want them to have their eyes up and looking for lost people, lost friends and all that, wherever pocket they find themselves in. And so we're really excited. Yeah, we're wanting to turn – we have like a map, and we want to turn 28 pockets of UVA green, which means that there is active gospel sharing, gospel appointments in those pockets, and we want 28 of those by 2028. So we're excited for that. It's been a great semester. And for reference, we have zero green right now. We're starting with zero. We have students in a lot of these pockets, but there is no active engagement from us. Maybe from another ministry, but from us, we're not – yeah. And there are certain students that are like really taking hold of this. One way that we've done this is in the dorms. We've done something called Storm the Dorms, which is a really cool – I don't think we came up with it. We definitely didn't. I don't know where it came from. If you know, put it in the comments. So can you comment on these? I don't even know. But, yes, with Storm the Dorms, that's been a blast. We've been to like several of those. Basically, we take a student out. We go to their dorm or their apartment, and we just knock on doors, and we ask the people in the dorms or apartments whether they want to start a Bible study with us. And we're just kind of gauging interest, trying to have conversations and stuff. And we've had some really cool stuff. I know you've been to several of them. Anything cool happen? Yeah. I feel like there's been cool things in both of the places that I went. So I went to the dorm building that all of the – they call them Jefferson Scholars, the people who get full rides to UVA for being particularly exceptional. And then all of the Honors College people live in that dorm that are first years. And then I also went to Wheaton, which is a residential dorm. And so that is like all older transfer students or students who don't really want to live with other people because they're single dorms. And so they're very different experiences both times. I think there was a lot of response from the Honors dorm. We have since started a Bible study with three, maybe even four of the girls from that dorm. Two of the college girls who live in that dorm who are in our ministry joined me and those three other girls. And we do Bible study with them, the Discovery Bible study. But then in the other dorm, we went, and everybody said no. Or they said maybe, and they gave us their number. And it was really just to get us to go away. And there was one person who we really thought we would get to meet up with, and we're still hoping we will. But yeah, very different experience. And I think part of it is just like first years are really open. That's why it's like one of the main groups that we target as a ministry because it's like first years. They're still acknowledging. They're figuring out who they are, whereas like older transfer students or people who have been here for four years kind of already have a sense of who they are. And so they know that they don't want to explore. And so we still offer. We still ask them if they want to meet up and hear about Jesus. But they are not as open at all as people who have just gotten to college. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I feel like first years are pretty open. And they're also just looking for community, a lot of first years. Like by the time you reach your third and fourth year, you've kind of found, or even your second year, you've kind of found people that you're hanging out with. But first years are still trying to find those communities. And so it's really definitely a great time to reach them. Yeah, we've had a bunch of cool experiences, like a bunch of people. I mean we've started I think maybe three. I'm about to start a Bible study. You've started a Bible study. And I think maybe is that it? Okay, cool, yeah. Oh, yeah. I think there are several. Like we did several Storm the Dorms, but a lot of them are combined. There might be another one starting in one of the like residential colleges. I haven't heard anything about that recently. All I have to say, we've started several Bible studies. We've had a lot of like gospel appointments where we met one-on-one with people, shared the gospel. I mean it's just been really, really cool. So that's been a big part of our evangelism push this semester. We've seen a lot of students take hold of that in their dorms, which has been awesome. Another thing that we are doing right now is finishing up City Projects, our applications closed. And I know we've talked about City Project before, but that's just our summer-long discipleship intensive. We spend a week in New York City sharing the gospel. We spend four weeks in Charlottesville and then two weeks, we can have two weeks overseas sharing the gospel there. And we just ask students to like take part in that. So we've been having a lot of conversations starting in October, I think. We started having conversations. Four months. Four months of conversations. And we like the application deadline was the other day. We had seven people or eight people I guess technically. Eight or nine. Eight or nine. We have a couple of them. People are still trickling in even though the application closed. Who are we to turn them away if they're a few days late? We don't mind too much. We're not too harsh on that. But we are. So we're really excited about that. We're just really in prayer right now because, I mean, a whole summer is a lot to commit. And so it's a lot to ask these students. And so, you know, there's just a lot of nervousness of like what if no one does it, you know? Yeah. We have one really bought-in girl, and then everyone else is on the fence. So that's a big prayer request. If you're listening to this, pray hard that all of those people would just see the glory of God as worth giving up their summers of internships and career advancement and making money because, I mean, Keaton and I both know this. I did City Project specifically, but we both have done overseas experiences where it's like you make the money back that you lose in two months. You'll be okay. Yeah. But it's just like we want these students to just see God and see what he's doing in the world and use that as their foundation for the rest of college and the rest of their lives. Absolutely. And City Project is a great way to do that. There's other ways to do it, but this is a really great way for a lot of students to do it. And they get to do it within the local church and with all the people that they're friends with during the school year too. Yeah. Just a really fun opportunity, but it is tough to convince college students who are very independent and want to do their own thing that City Project is a good thing. So be praying that many students would just see that as worth it, as they would desire to do that. Bless you. Bless you. That's going to be right on there. I'm going to emphasize that sound in my meeting. Make it really loud. Blow the sound up. Yeah. But, yeah, so we're doing City Project stuff. And I think our last thing was, yeah, oh, we forgot to mention WinCon. Oh, WinCon. We went to WinCon, Winter Conference. That was fun. Just a bunch of college students, I mean over 1,000 college students all meeting together. I think one thing that was really cool was just the fact that we had 44 students go. Yeah. For reference, last year, I don't know the number, but we had like maybe 15 student leaders, but then like five to seven more other people, and then that was it. So this was a big increase, a lot more student involvement from the general body of students. We even had some non-believers come. It was a lot better than it has been in the past. Yeah, and that was awesome, and I felt like our students got to connect really well. All the dudes went bowling, which was fun. The girls went to a coffee shop and talked slash did homework, but that's what they want to do. That's right. That's fun, you know. And then all the guys are having to catch up on all their homework, you know, after that. But it was a good time, really fun. It's always fun to spend, you know, three hours down and then three hours back, you know, in a car with your friends. It's just a really good bonding time and stay in a hotel overnight and do all sorts of conference stuff. So it was a blast. Unfortunately, we all got sick from it. So like three people had the flu, and it just spread like a wildfire. Yeah, that next week, it was literally like 90% of our ministry had the flu. So it was really fun. It reminded me back of COVID days, you know, I'm talking about just the good old days when we all had to quarantine. Yeah, we were all stuck inside texting each other. Yeah, yeah. So that was a blast. The last question, Jen, I'll ask you is how big is our baby currently? Oh, no. Oh, yeah. Yesterday was 26 weeks. So he is now the size of a VHS tape. And for those of you, for some reason, who wouldn't know what a VHS tape is, because I don't know, maybe a 10-year-old is supporting us, but it's like a CD, which you might not even know what that is either. It's grandfather. Yes, exactly. Yeah. I mean, yeah, VHS tape. Yeah. For some reason, though, I feel like, because that's like a 90s thing, why our app is like stuck on 90s theme stuff still, isn't it? Yeah, I don't know how to fix it. I want it to be fruit, because I know what fruits the size of, and I know what a VHS tape is, because I had those. But like sometimes it's like Tamagotchi pet, and I'm like, I've seen those before, but I haven't held them. Yeah. And like I can't conceptualize the size. It's like an N64 controller. Or like I knew this reference, but like one time the baby was the size of Cher's cell phone from Clueless. And Keaton doesn't know what Clueless is. Great film, but yeah, he has no idea. Anyways, so if anyone is a BabyList user and knows how to fix that, let us know. Yeah, drop it in the comments. If there are comments, we're not sure. I don't know. I think that's it. We've had some really good time in ministry this past month, just seeing a lot of people reach, a lot of gospel appointments, conversations happen. We're hoping that that momentum is just beginning and that it will continue to build in our students and our ministry, and that pretty soon every student will be engaging their pocket of UVA with the gospel. That's what we want to see, so we're excited about it. So it was great talking to you all. We don't get to hear from you really that much, unless you comment. Unless you comment on this mysterious comments that we've invented. Yeah, we don't know if they're even there. Okay, thank you guys for listening, and tune in next month for the next episode to find out what happens next.