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Columbia University Previous News Stories:
Columbia students walking through Low Plaza heard about the transforming power of Jesus Christ this fall, as their Christian peers boldly gave testimonies during the Sharing on the Steps evangelism event. For the third year in a row, students from various Columbia ministries stood on the steps broadcasting their testimonies via microphone in an open-air environment. According to Denise Chen (Yale ’95), a volunteer with InterVarsity at Columbia (www.columbia.edu/cu/ivcf), approximately ten students gave their testimonies during the event, which lasted more than two hours. Columbia’s Christian a cappella group, Jubilation, also performed and shared stories of faith. Click Here for Full Story
Dr. William Craig spoke at Columbia's fifth annual Veritas Forum NEW YORK, NEW YORK - In February, a diverse gathering of people, ranging from professors to musicians, participated in Columbia University’s Veritas Forum (www.veritas.org), an opportunity for the campus community to explore life's hardest questions through the person and story of Jesus Christ and to engage in meaningful and fruitful dialogue. In its fifth year, the forum featured three nights of events, including thought-provoking discussions, a screening of the documentary Call+Response, and a sold-out concert. The forum opened with a discussion by Dr. Shelly Kagan, Princeton *82, and Dr. William Lane Craig in an event titled “Is God Necessary for Morality?”
Columbia University students joined in the 40-day prayer chain NEW YORK, NEW YORK - Individuals and campus fellowships throughout New York City, including at Columbia, prayed around the clock from August 3rd to September 11th, with students signing up for hourly slots during the forty days. It was the first time that the students of New York came together to pray corporately as one body. Jeremy Story, president of Campus Renewal Ministries, shared about the ways in which he saw God moving throughout the 40 Days of Prayer. “I’ve seen a lot of things coming together,” he said. “We believe that the Lord can and will bring revival if we will seek Him.”
Columbia students spend their spring break helping the rebuilding effort in New Orleans NEW YORK, NEW YORK - During Columbia University’s spring break, twenty students from three campus ministries traveled to New Orleans to participate in post-Katrina relief and recovery efforts. Two groups of students worked in the Lower Ninth Ward, the most devastated area of New Orleans. Another worked on gutting, roofing, and rebuilding homes in a project organized by Campus Crusade for Christ. “The work left still seems insurmountable,” voiced first-year student Ki Hoon Kim. “The people down there really need the love and grace of Christ.” Kim and others were very grateful for the experience. “I'm glad God used me,” said Kim, “and in the future, I would not hesitate to return.”
Low Memorial Library at Columbia University NEW YORK, NEW YORK - InterVarsity (IV) Christian fellowship realizes that the welfare of most Christians starting college in New York City is crucial to some of the decisions they are going to make for the rest of their lives; hence the need for support and motivation right from their first day of arrival on campus. The presence, encouragement, and advice of believers who had sailed the course through college and kept their faith as Christians could provide a valuable source of support for most freshmen Christians and non-Christians who wanted to take bold decisions about their faith to become Christians for the first time in college. Seniors, juniors, and even some sophomores as well as serving council members of the InterVarsity Christian fellowship dedicated their last days of summer holidays to planning and traveling to school early to plan activities and spend time with freshmen most of whom they had contacted earlier. After planning events, creating gift packs, and making CDs with some favorite Christian songs, InterVarsity also created a Web site, www.columbia.edu/cu/ivcf, with updated information on activities that were focused on making freshmen feel at home and involved. Throughout the first week of school, the fellowship got access to the contact information of over 100 freshmen. In helping freshmen make the very important transition to college and New York City, the activities that InterVarsity held for freshmen cut across all social activities and interests that they knew freshmen would like. On a night when they decided to catch some good jazz music in New York City, they stumbled on Steve Turay, the country’s top sax player. They took walks through Central Park and got cream puffs. They took part in a game night where they played Scrabble® and piano and guitar. “We had a strategy this year of going into the dorms and hanging out with the freshmen where they are as well as taking them out into the city and inviting them into our territory,” said InterVarsity president Jonathan Talamini ’07. “A bunch of them had the nightly dinners with us or even helped us cook." “The first night was our most-attended event,” Talamini continued, “when we took the freshmen to Tom’s, the diner in the Seinfeld series. We ended up with a ton of freshmen, about forty or fifty. We didn’t fit and we had to go to Pertutti’s. I remember that night; Jon Walton read a poem and explained how IV has given him the freedom to be who he is without compromising his faith but rather encouraged him to use his gifts for the kingdom of God.” InterVarsity created a face book group for the Class of 2010 called “10’s for Jesus.” InterVarsity members visited some members of the 10’s for Jesus in their dorm rooms. They received invitations to events and links to the Web site of the InterVarsity Christian fellowship. On two days, members of the fellowship tabled out in front of the campus chapel where the fellowship meets and handed out free lemonade to passersby, giving them information about local churches and inviting them to attend InterVarsity events or to just hang out. Freshmen received gift packs including cookies and a special mix CD. The gift pack contained some candy and a “Welcome to Columbia” note. Talamini felt freshman week was exciting and effective for InterVarsity because of the contribution of other members of the fellowship who were willing to try new ways of meeting and connecting with people. “Throughout the week, a bunch of informal events allowed us to get to know freshmen better and introduce them to what a Christian community can be like,” he said. “Jonathan Walton had a beat-boxing contest with a freshman called Whitney. Kyle and Mike Robinson, class of 2009, took a freshman called Sy to a rock concert. Christine and I went with a freshman to a Yankees game. We tried to be spontaneous and let the spirit lead us to do fun stuff…as the opportunity came up.” Sara del Fierro, a member of the 10’s for Jesus, said the first week of school was one of the highlights of her semester. “The first week was kind of overwhelming with Columbia activities and getting settled in, but it was so great to get to meet other Christian freshmen and upperclassmen and to just know that there was this community there welcoming me in,” she said. “I already knew about IV, but I know for a fact that a lot of my freshmen friends became interested in IV because of all the fun events..offered that first week. A lot of the friends I have now are ones that I met during the first week of school.
About 30 Columbia students joined hundreds in New York City for the Global Night Commute, a national effort to raise awareness for the children of Nothern Uganda. NEW YORK, NEW YORK - With bags strapped, pillows hanging, comforters neatly folded and enough warm jackets to shield the body from the cold of the night (and enough excitement to confuse riders on the subway), groups of students from several Christian fellowships at Columbia made their way to the headquarters of the United Nations the weekend of April 29th to camp out on the sidewalk. The theme for this evening’s activity night was, “We are taking this lying down,” and was part of an internationally organized movement called the Global Night Commute. Since the beginning of the semester, many Christian fellowships at Columbia have dedicated a large portion of their semester’s programming to humanitarian causes. The growing involvement of Columbia’s Christians in community activism has become a trend confirming the concern of the religious community on campus to add their voice to the cause of humanity here on earth. One such cause is the plight of unrest in Northern Uganda where the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a paramilitary group terrorizing the country in an effort to overthrow the Ugandan government, nightly kidnaps children, forcing these innocents to join their ruthlessly violent ranks. The international organization Invisible Children, Inc. was formed in response to a direct encounter with Uganda’s tragic reality, and has found some passionate supporters in Columbia’s InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. During the semester, students hung Invisible Children’s posters all over campus: in elevators, hallways, on doors, and announcement boards in an effort to join the awareness- and support-raising campaign for Uganda. They showed screening after screening of Invisible Children’s documentary film about the state of crisis there. [Along with several other international struggles, Invisible Children’s mission took center stage at Columbia’s February Veritas Forum, the theme of which was “Responding to Suffering.”] Publicizing the organization, and the cause for which it fights, seems to be on Columbia students’ minds these days. It can be traced back to three Christian young men with a camera. Three years ago a handful of recent university graduates, Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey and Laren Poole, traveled to Sudan to experience Africa. They took their film equipment on a hunt to capture first-hand information on the war in Sudan. For unforeseen reasons, perhaps migration, starvation or confusion, the Sudanese people they were seeking had fled their homes and abandoned their property. Russell, Bailey and Poole found no interesting stories or images for their cameras to cover except for a brief encounter involving a snake and a termite hill. After those initial days of boredom and depressing camera shots, they crossed the border to Northern Uganda, where they unwittingly encountered a story that would change the course of their lives. In Northern Uganda, they found tens of thousands of children, mostly former child soldiers, commuting several miles every night into city centers and open areas to sleep. Known as “night commuters,” these children between the ages of 3 and 17, under threat of abduction and violence should they remain at home, left their refugee camps, in search of safety from the LRA. Like sardines packed into a can, they made their beds on the floor (and almost on each other), and in the morning, they would trek back several miles to their villages. Without this hope of escape, many of these children would suffer the fate of thousands before them: forcible enlistment into the LRA followed by years of savage and merciless attack on their own country, in some cases even their own families. The LRA’s system of “recruitment” is the violent (and sometimes sexual) enslavement of children. It was astonishing to these young filmmakers that the leisurely lives of celebrities clogged newsmakers’ reels all over America, but the plight of the children in Northern Uganda had been overlooked for decades. There were children in Northern Uganda who have never lived in a time of peace. These invisible children formed the name and the impetus behind their movement. On April 29th, in over 130 cities across the country, nearly 60,000 thousand people slept in parks and on sidewalks in solidarity with the children in Northern Uganda. An estimated 30 Columbia students were included in those numbers, the majority of whom are involved in InterVarsity (IV, www.columbia.edu/cu/ivcf). “People have to remember that not everyone is as blessed as they are,” said Jonathan Walton ’08 regarding IV’s spearheading effort to gather Christians in support of this cause. IV generated buzz about the event and took members of its own fellowship, along with Christians from across campus, to participate in the Global Night Commute. Together with their fellow brothers and sisters from different communities and backgrounds, Columbia students closed their eyes through the night in sidewalks and parks across the country to open the eyes of the nation to a disaster that they believe simply cannot go on anymore.
Veritas comes to Columbia NEW YORK, NEW YORK and BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS - The core mission of Christian Union (CU) is to bring the message of Jesus Christ to the Ivy League campuses. One of the methods of fulfilling this mission is to help fund some of the outreaches on these campuses. During the month of February, CU was able to fund a portion of the Veritas Forum at Columbia (February 7-10) and Harvard (February 10-13). The Veritas Forum was held over four days on each of the campuses with the intent of engaging the entire university in discussions concerning some of life’s hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life. An event of this magnitude requires more than the resources of one campus ministry. Thus, one of the highlights of the forums was to see the diversity in each of the campus ministries and to see them using their strengths for a common purpose. At Harvard, all of the groups participated in this year’s forum, and at the forum on Columbia's campus over 100 students helped with planning and executing the event. Both campuses were pleased with the immediate feedback after the forums and many discussions were generated on both campuses in the weeks that followed as a result of these outreaches.
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SHARING ON THE STEPS
