During the month of March 240 students from six Boston-area schools traveled to the Gulf Coast area to help with InterVarsity’s Katrina Relief Urban Plunge. But these students from Harvard, Tufts, Wellesley, MIT, Boston College and Boston University did more than home clean-up and reconstruction. They studied God’s word to reflect on how the destruction, misery and hope that they observed fits into God’s revealed purposes in the world.
“Our hope was to both be a place where Christians could serve and reflect Christ’s compassion and love for the people down there, but also to be a place where we could invite our non-Christian friends to see our faith in action and, hopefully, come to see Christ in a deeper way,” said Dakota Pippins, InterVarsity’s assistant regional director for New England.
Dakota accompanied the team from Harvard which traveled to Gulfport, Mississippi, in late March. About 15 of the 50 students in the group were not believers, they had had little or no interaction with Christian fellowship on campus. Another 15 or so were Christians but not plugged into campus fellowship. The rest were from InterVarsity’s Harvard fellowships.
The students worked hard during the day and debriefed at night, studying and discussing what the Bible said about injustice, racism, poverty and privilege. The debriefing was optional so that the discussion could be free flowing. “We were able to really talk boldly about Christ and why we were here as Christians and how we see him being relevant to these issues,” Dakota said.
The Christian students who were part of the InterVarsity fellowship gained a deeper passion for giving their lives over to ministry and for justice and the purposes of God. Dakota said that response, and those of the other two groups, were exactly what they were hoping for. The non-affiliated believers grew interested in becoming a part of InterVarsity’s fellowship. And the non-Christians expressed an interest in continuing the conversations about spiritual issues and Jesus Christ. One student made a commitment to follow Christ. “It just felt like wherever people were starting from there was an opportunity to make a significant move forward in knowing Christ and following him,” Dakota said.
There’s only so much that you can do on campus in talking to non-Christian students, said Boston area director Jimmy Quach. “There’s so much more you can do when you bring them alongside you in this experiential learning.”
And in New England it’s not always easy to find a positive image of the Christian faith at work. “If you go down to the south right now, there are church vans everywhere,” Jimmy said. “There’s a sense that this is a very authentic Christian response and that buys us a lot of credibility on campus with these students.”
Bill DePury, InterVarsity’s Deep South Area co-director, has helped coordinate the Katrina Relief Urban Plunge, along with Chris Klingenfus and Myron Crockett. By the end of March almost 350 staff and students had participated.
Bill remembers sitting on the curb eating lunch with one group of students when a local resident drove by, honked, and shouted “thanks for coming.” Another grateful home owner treated a student team to a cajun crawfish boil in appreciation.
Dakota Pippens said that InterVarsity was not only engaging students with the spiritual dimension of relief work. The multiethnic makeup of the student groups also made a statement. “One of the things we’ve been passionate about in InterVarsity is witnessing to the unity of the body of Christ,” he said. “To be able to bring down a group of students from different backgrounds, serving alongside of each other, I think was a powerful witness to people we were working with. I was grateful to be a part of that.”
Jimmy Quach said that he was almost overwhelmed as he drove through mile after mile of abandoned neighborhoods on the day he arrived in New Orleans, some seemingly unchanged since the day the hurricane left them that way. He sees more work for InterVarsity in the weeks and months ahead.
“I think we have some good relationships here,” he said. “We’re thinking about how to make next year work too.”
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An interview with Dakota Pippins & Jimmy Quach is this week’s InterVarsity podcast. You can listen to it at: PippinsQuach.mp3.
Or add the podcast to your downloads at:
http://www.intervarsity.org/audio/podcast.php.
More stories on InterVarsity’s response to Katrina:
Hearts for Service, April 2006
Spring Break 2006, March 2006
From UConn to the Gulf Coast, February 2006
Back on Track in the Gulf Region, January 2006
An Abundance of Opportunities, October 2005
Katrina Response Continues, October 2005
Hurricane Disrupts, Intensifies Ministry, September, 2005
Gulf Coast Fund Established, September 2005
Recovering from Katrina, September 2005
