I just went to a wedding on Sat which was a big college fellowship reunion for me. A guy and a girl from my fellowship class year had gotten married. At Cal I was pretty involved with AACF for most of my 4 years. But it was hard for me to fit into the fellowship at first.
Early on as a freshman, I was checking out the fellowship group. I was going sorta regularly to the large group meetings every Thursday. The size of the group was about the same size as Lumps on a Thursday, if not bigger. For several months I was attending and learning some, but didn’t really felt like I belonged. There were some really good people there, but it just didn’t feel natural for me to get to know them. I was a pretty shy guy at the time...which didn’t really help much. It was easy to go, get lost in the group, and leave...maybe saying hi to just one or two people. A lot of times I would wonder, “would notice if I didn’t go?”
It’s really hard to feel like a part of a community if you don’t do anything more than attend...what I was doing. Not making the effort to hang out on non-Thursdays or after Thursday meetings. Not going to social things. Not responding to invitations to join a small group fellowship community. (That first semester...I went only once to my small group fellowship which met on another nite.) I soon realized that I had to make an effort and to meet people half-way. Once I did that it made a world of a difference.
What were really huge events for me my freshmen year was our appreciation events within our classes. (The fellowship dynamic was to do stuff within your class levels.) The freshmen guys were brought together to do an appreciation event for the girls in our class. Half of us didn’t even know each other and we barely knew the girls. A few people had only been to the fellowship once or twice. (One was the guy who just got married to a girl in the class on Saturday.) In the planning for the event and threw the course of the appreciation nite, a lot of bonds started to form. Through this event a lot of us really experienced the start of community comfort in the fellowship.
Hopefully the same thing can happen for a lot of you with this fellowship group. Come out...particularly for our first ever big appreciation event. You’re not too new to come and it’s definitely ok if you havn’t been here for a while. Find your own community comfort. Know and grow with us as brothers and sisters.
lumps is changing. the people that is. so exciting. what will the landscape of people's lives (and our fellowship) look like by the end of next summer?
