Countdown to Tübingen

This could be yours for the low, low price of $1, $5, $15, $30, or $100. Your choice.

Remember when I talked about Kickstarter being a possible avenue for raising support? Well, I’m proud to announce our very first Kickstarter project: a sequel to the “hit” game Hast Du Eier? Please check out the Kickstarter project and donate to make this “dream” a “reality”.

Of course this whole project comes as a part of a support raising push for Unterwegs. Our ministry works as a group, but all staff are individually financed. Shalynn and I have just dipped into the red in our funds, and we’re looking to get back into a good place financially, along with some other staff. Apparently, being in the red happens time to time for every ministry, but that doesn’t make it any less comfortable a squeeze to be in.

We’re looking for some other creative ways to get back on top as the summer semester starts here in Tübingen. Let’s see what doors open for us.

Not only did we break our previous attendance record at Thanksgiving - we doubled it.

On November 17th, Unterwegs hosted 140 at the annual Thanksgivingsfest Celebration. It’s a purely American tradition (the pilgrims, after all, celebrated leaving Europe), but there’s something about it that draws an international crowd.

The notion that we should be thankful for what we have is broadly shared. Even those on the edge of belief in God can agree that thankfulness – to someone – is a virtue. Several of our students stood up in front of the group to share what it was they were thankful for. They expressed thankfulness for a community like Unterwegs where you are taken in immediately, as if people had already known you forever. Some expressed thankfulness for their faith, and that being in a community like Unterwegs had confirmed their decision to become – or stay – a Christian.

As team leader Beth says, Thanksgivingsfest has always been the ultimate expression of the Unterwegs community. People who cannot normally come to a Thursday event will set aside time for this once-a-year event. Core students were moved by the mass of people that came to be a part of their community, and people on the fringe of the community who don’t come to Unterwegs events got to see (finally) what Unterwegs is really about.

The day after Thanksgiving, our exchange students overheard conversations in the bus from students who experienced Unterwegs for the first time the night before. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said one to the other. We find Unterwegs name tags from Thanksgivingsfest all over the city – plastered to signs and bus stops, free advertising, and confirmation that Unterwegs, three years in, is indeed growing and infecting the city of Tübingen.

Young Lincoln and the Americans: band name or advertising hook?

There is an ease and a grace at Unterwegs that wasn’t always there.

Things seem to be growing, happening on their own, more freely and organically. Our confusion and frustration now comes less from questions like “what do we have to do to be able to advertise in the cafeteria?” to “which students do we want to use to help us do outreach, and in which buildings of our choice?” It’s as if the seed that we had planted three years ago and have been constantly tending day and night ever since has finally taken root and sprouted.

It’s something we didn’t accept at first. Pam and Nathan Heald came in the middle of last semester, and it was otherworldly to watch them not go through the same awkwardness we did of starting conversations with complete strangers and struggling to come up with something enticing to invite them to be a part of. Now we have Unterwegs events, now we have homes and personal lives to invite them to.

Today a new student walked in to Unterwegs for the first time because we put a sign out on the street for Just Lunch in front of the house. He stayed for two hours and talked to what must have been a dozen solid Unterwegs students. In three years, we have never started a relationship that easily.

I’m still kind of incredulous. Not skeptical, per se – just surprised at how well Unterwegs is doing compared to how much superhuman effort has been required in the past to budge that boulder up the hill.

Next week we’re kicking off a semester of talking about the Kingdom of Heaven at Donnerstagabend. I’m using the Parable of the Hidden Treasure to launch the discussion for the rest of my teammates to carry through the semester. I believe it will come down to this…

At Unterwegs, we have seen the Kingdom of Heaven. We see it in small ways. Our students dress up like historical American figures to invite people to come be a part of their community. Students volunteer to clean up after events. We see it in larger ways. Students grow, and the way they see the world changes. There is an electricity in the air at the End of the Year Awards Show. 60 students crowd together to get a photo together so they can remember the moment.

Unterwegs has many parts to it: sports, food, music, free wireless internet – but the one thing that sets it apart from everything else in Tübingen, any team or apartment or major or business or whatever group students may be involved in, is that at the heart of Unterwegs is the human relationship. When the Kingdom of Heaven comes to Earth, it’s through the people around us that we experience it.

And what does it cost us to get the Kingdom to come to Earth? According to Jesus’ parable: everything. What bitter pills do we swallow, what indignities do we forgive, what sacrifices do we make for another person’s sake? Well, that’s worth coming back to hear more about.

At Taize, every meal is al fresco.

Our team spent the last week in southern France with several Unterwegs students at the Taize monastery – a monastery that holds a special place in the hearts of Christian college students throughout Europe. Young people come for a week, Sunday night through the following Sunday morning, to live a more monastic life and get closer to God. Simple living conditions (no electricity), simple food (small portions), worship three times a day (as tolled by the bell), and Bible study in between (with some of the brothers teaching, small groups meeting to discuss afterwards).

Taize is not the typical Unterwegs scene – along the continuum from non-Christian to Christian, Taize is closer to the latter, a place for people who are either Christian or interested in the Christian faith. Unterwegs is closer to the former, a place designed for people who are not Christian and are generally not interested in faith.

But there is a minority of Church-engaged Christian students that do participate in Unterwegs. A few others, as team leader Beth framed it, have grown up Christian but are “ready to walk out the doors of the Church“. These are the Unterwegs students that came with us to Taize.

And for these students, Taize was a wonderful experience. When we went around the circle to share what we had learned during the week, one Unterwegs student said “I’ve been struggling the past two years about if I wanted to stay a Christian and this week was really important for me because I felt like I needed to make some big decisions. This week has helped me decide to stay a Christian. And I want to share this with more people and make this a part of my daily life.”

What a wonderful invitation for Unterwegs – to help this student grow closer to Christ and to help him share that with others.

How many parables have their own ironic t-shirts?

As close followers of the blog may know, Donnerstagabend occupies the prime time Thursday night spot every other week, which means that, barring holidays, there is an opportunity on those off weeks to do something with the time students block off to do Unterwegs activities on a weekly basis. The summer semester has more holidays, in the words of House of Pain, “than there’s cops that are dunkin’ donuts shop” – there are a total of three free Thursday nights this summer. It’s a perfect opportunity to make a trial run of a little experimental event we are calling Vesper.

Forget whatever religious connotations you may associate with the word. “Vesper” is a southern German word for a light meal. So, we take the meal from Donnerstagabend and serve a Lite version for Vesper. In that vein, we take the other elements from Donnerstagabend and streamline for a time of discussion and a lesson revolving around a concept from scripture. There is no music from the band; there is a group icebreaker game instead. There is no “talk”, just a presentation of a story or activity and a group discussion. But perhaps the best part of Vesper is the last part: the homework. We hand out assignments written in envelopes for students to take home and complete before the next Vesper.

This last week we read the Rich Man and Lazarus. We had several student volunteers read aloud eulogies they wrote about themselves, we watched a clip from Inception surrounding the theme of the movie (“Do you want to take a leap of faith, or do you want to become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone?”); and we talked about living a life without regrets.

It works well. It’s more time our students get to spend with each other; it’s more time we get to have in deeper discussion; and it’s less work for us… than a normal Donnerstagabend would be.

The Tuckerfirst Youth kidnap a new member. This tradition does not survive translation.

Here at Unterwegs, we seek to be bold in everything we do. That doesn’t mean we’re not cautious.

In considering (A) how to go deeper with students, (B) how to get our core community to bond, and (C) how to get students more involved in Unterwegs daily life and programming, we’ve drawn up plans for a group that meets on the Thursdays we don’t have Donnerstagabend. Our tentative game plan would be to organize a game designed to illustrate a concept from scripture (like, say, something from the Sermon on the Mount), then lead a discussion about the activity where we would introduce the scripture in question, and, finally, give out a homework assignment a la Fight Club (sans all the violence and destruction) to encourage them to see the scripture at work in their daily lives.

We got a little spooked, though, when team leader Beth described the idea for the group to one of our students who responded with “Oh, you mean like a church youth group.”

We have tried in so many things to be different than the church youth groups that people are familiar with, and that many students here have fallen away from. That said, I think that to simply write the idea off because it bears similarities to youth group programming is to ignore many positive aspects of youth group.

Once upon a time, the dynamic Rev. Brian Erickson of Alabaster, AL was once the dynamic pastor of a youth group in Tucker, GA, and during his tenure there, the group saw levels of participation unmatched before or since. A typical meeting consisted of a group game, music, sharing of concerns, and then a walk through a book of the Bible as Brian translated to American teen English the language of the NIV. The music was fantastic (he played guitar and, when the occasion called for it, banjo), and he made explaining scripture hilarious – and engaging.

Brian did a lot of other things right as well, but his greatest and most lasting legacy was his most concrete illustration of faith: an opportunity to build houses for people in need in Appalachia. The specific locations and projects have changed several times since then, but the Tucker youth group still continues the tradition of service to others in need a decade later (now Tucker youth replace roofs in needy areas around Atlanta). Other youth from under his pastorship went on to spend several years working for the same service projects he introduced them to.

I guess youth groups are like any other Christian body – some are more attractive than others, some less; some more effective, some less. Surely we can learn from the good to make a better Unterwegs.

This little kitchen appliance has become so strangely symbolic.

Two years ago, Globalscope Spain team leaders told us how they had finally managed to cross the bridge from Mentality A: “I’m just a visitor in this country” to Mentality B: “I live here” by purchasing a toaster. Up until this point, Globalscopers had for the most part led Spartan existences in the interest of being good stewards of the financial support they had been given by donors and supporters in the States. This smallest, most specific of household devices symbolized, to the Spain team leaders who had bought it, the acceptance of the idea that it was okay to invest a little in yourself and make yourself at home in the interest of being a better, healthier campus minister.

And so we did in kind, coming back to Tübingen and buying some odds and ends in an effort to make ourselves feel more at home: a television, a nicer bike, a swivel chair, an IKEA pillow, a garlic press.

A visit to Boston last November further drove home the idea that, perhaps, buying the toaster isn’t an idea nuanced enough to make an international campus minister feel at home in the foreign culture he or she may be working. As I wrote in my summary of the Boston trip…

Another staff member at Sojourn had moved to Boston a year before the ministry ever started, got a job, and ended up meeting his future wife at a church there. He has made an effort to make the city and culture of Boston his home, and as such, it is not work for him every time he exits the apartment door – it’s life.

There is a lot to be said for spending a lot of time and energy developing that mentality – or rather, fending off the mentality that every time you are outside your home, every time you are speaking a foreign language, you are at work.

Just a few days ago, the symbolism of the toaster came full circle when several of our students, who wanted to express their thankfulness for all that Unterwegs had provided for them, brought us as a gift a hand-decorated, MioStar Chroma Deluxe Swiss toaster. Said one of the students: “We thought, what is the one thing that the Unterwegs house doesn’t have?” It’s surprisingly poetic. Call it serendipity.

As team leader Beth says, that which makes you at home in a place does not come from the things you may have at home or in your apartment, but from the community. Our loving, Christian community of non-Christians unknowingly preached us a sermon about what it is that truly anchors people.

And it’s delicious.

Our advisory panel.

Like the Miss Teen America pageant and geopolitics, ministry and capitalism don’t always mix well. Once in a while, though, we stumble across one of those rare sweet spots in the Venn diagram where the circles of Christian community and free market business do agree. In this case, specifically: “the customer is always right”.

We’ve made a practice of listening to our students for guidance in the direction to go with our programming.

During a particularly stressful Donnerstagabend, when we were stressing out to get everything together for the start of the program, one of the students involved told us to “relax, Donnerstagabend is more like a dinner among friends. You don’t have to rush.” It’s kind of a shock to have a student tell you how the thing you’ve created works, but since then, we’ve taken a more relaxed approach towards putting on a Thursday evening, and it’s worked out great. Staff are less stressed, and students enjoy the atmosphere more.

Students are more frequently coming up with ideas behind activities for us. Unterwegs should take a trip to Taize. Unterwegs should host a house concert. Unterwegs should talk about the other Globalscopes. One student asks to have a night at Unterwegs for dying Easter eggs. Another student asks the staff to go to an Ash Wednesday service, her first church service in years. Still another says to Beth directly, “Why don’t you invite me to a Bible study?”

When we listen to the students, we win. Every student idea that we enact gives the students more ownership of Unterwegs, a closer relationship to the community, and with that, a closer view of Christianity.

Your Globalscope Germany team.

Dear Blog,

I have always come to you for inspiration in times where inspiration was in short supply. You’re like a muse that doesn’t talk… more like a mute, I guess. At any rate, you’re a really good listener.

Well, I’m looking for inspiration for the Thursday Night program for next semester: specifically, the format. Donnerstagabend at Unterwegs is built upon a rich tradition of norms and expectations with some elements that overburden our small staff, some elements being awkwardly finagled in, and other elements that are just beyond our abilities and capacities.

• The meal has always been a part of coming to a Thursday Night program. Free food isn’t just a great attractor – eating together as a Christian community is Biblical. Trouble is, it takes a team member an entire day to prepare.
• The music is also rooted in Christian tradition – for worship, you need musicians to lead. Musicians, unfortunately, vary in quality and availability. England has a cycle of student musicians (as well as exhange students) waiting in line to rehearse and perform – here in Germany, the first time the band ever plays together is the performance itself. This is due in large part to the musical talent that the team members themselves bore. Kevin Miller worked hard to engender a culture of music at Canvas, performing at bars and eventually hosting open mic night; Tyler does what he can with a few chords on guitar. With a little more musical might on staff, we could get over this hump.
• The talk is where we really are in a bind. Even with more staff on the way, the talk is in German, and that requires experience in the language. We only have two staff members with the necessary exposure (and only one that doesn’t lead the music), so, ever since the beginning, we’ve sought other solutions to this problem. For a while, we arranged students to get up and share their experiences on a certain topic. This required lots of energy on our part to find and encourage students to participate – very few people want to speak before a group. While I was in the States, we switched to small group discussion of the theme of the talk so that everyone could participate.
• The video tradition hails from CCF, where, at the end of the night, an “announcement video” is shown to get everyone’s attention, to get everyone laughing, and to show everyone which events are upcoming. Last semester, we put our intern on this. It takes a day or two of effort for four minutes of video.

So, Blog, I guess what I’m asking you – err, me – is: what can we do with Donnerstagabend, utilizing the staff and involvement we have, to best create an evening where Christian faith is the highlight?

Big news comes at Christmas.

Well, it’s a regular Christmas miracle… kind of. Our prayers to get to Germany in January have been answered in a big way: we are greenlit to fly to Stuttgart as soon as January 2 to begin our work as a married couple at Unterwegs; but here’s the rub: we are going severely underfunded.

Chris and Stef Coleman, two of the three teammates currently in the field, are moving back to the States for good six months earlier than originally planned. With the two of them gone, Beth, our remaining teammate in the field, needs extra bodies to handle the workload that, at one point, required five full-time staffers. We are those bodies.

And currently, those bodies fall significantly short of our financial needs. Wedding gifts have put us simply over the top for our Outgoing Budget, but we are currently only at 30% of our Monthly Budget.

SOOO… this Christmas Season, why not share the gift of an incredible Christian experience with students in Germany and support us monthly? We are willing, we are able, we are excited, and we will soon be a quorum of the team in the field (at least for a couple months).

In fact, file this post as Reason #20.