Continued Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Greetings. Thanks for your prayers and support. This is an eletter update on our ministries with Graduate and Faculty Ministries with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. First priority I need to mention is that our support situation is highly challenging. We have a deficit of 12 grand and December and June are by far our biggest support months and December is NOT off with a bang thus far. Can you help us by clicking here.?
Graduate students are needy. One grad student at Purdue with no connection to Graduate IVCF committed suicide last week. It is a reminder that we are in a life and death struggles for whole people. A grad student I've recently had one to one appointments with at Indiana University (I.U.) just broke off his marriage engagement with his fiance' in about the most high-stress unfaithful contexts one can imagine. That same week three chapters of his dissertation were fully rejected because they were too interdisciplinary (he has multiple degrees), and he faced new funding and ideological and faith challenges in his department. We pray and resource-network and look at Scripture together and repeat and chat via phone. He is going to make it through and I've grown to really value this enormously gifted young man. He is but one of many future and some current faculty with whom I minister.
New GFM staff at Purdue, Emily Umulis and her husband Dave (new associate faculty) just had their new baby, Henry. She is taking a maternity break and there is obviously joy in their family time. Tom and Nita at IUPUI have new wind and ministry bridges in their team building. Bob and Beth Barge (GFM staff with law students at IUPUI) need ongoing prayer for significant family physical health and stress issues and my sense is that God is growing bigger in their lives and witness through suffering, but it isn't pleasant.
The Purdue MBA Christian fellowship meeting I attend are soundly biblical with a couple great leaders but some of the 1st years in the high stress two year program were all under intense academic scheduling pressure. The group leader (Dave) has been a regular and good influence in our statement of faith bible study.
Ongoing Thanksgiving: I thank God our immediate family got together for Thanksgiving. I thank God that Kim and I both have meaningful employment and that I was recently able to meet three of six personal debt-reduction goals. We are thankful for our grandson Jaxxon's other grandparents being supportive and emotionally healthy. We wish the same for Jim's two boys who live with us. I'm thankful for the 'Vessels of Mercy' band and to be able to use the gift of music for God's glory. The top four videos click-here are from our very first, a bit rough concert about a year ago. We are grateful for you and for all our other prayer partners and support team members.
Our 'Following Christ' conference (click here for educational and fun promotional videos) is coming right up. Two internationals from I.U. need scholarships and while I've been able to get assistance from them from a national and regional fund, my own scholarship account is dry from helping students attend an overseas evangelical professorate conference. Two other I.U. grad students didn't qualify for a creative grant/scholarship project they submitted and now cannot afford to attend and sadly as of today I cannot help them. If you can help our IN GFM scholarship account give like normal but designate on a handwritten note to 'Indiana GFM Scholarship Account'.
A brilliant PRC (China) grad student finished her masters program in about 1.5 years and we are praying she (Emily) gets accepted into a PhD program in Engineering Education. She is faithful to Christ and leads students to the Lord regularly and raises our evangelism temperature. Another grad student Believer is going home to India this week for Christmas break. Fortunately his family has not been affected by HIndu radicalisms and persecutions in the Ossiris or by the Pakistan Islamic terror hotel attacks. Pray for John. He really blesses our intensity of worship of Jesus by his example and music. A soon to be Ph.D. in law graduate has resumes out and some great potentials and at least one offer. I'm praying (his wife is also gifted in ministry and a potential Area Director with IVCF GFM) he gets an opening with great academic potential at I.U. Pray for this couple.
Our on campus HTM Cafeteria/Stone Hall, doctrinal statement bible study is based on a written calligraphy and reading which I do on a grad faculty ning, on my facebook, and most clickable for all, is also on my youtube, click here. This is getting some heavy traffic and comments as I continue to seek to 'raise the bar' for better theological acuity and biblical discernment in a context of too many bright students and faculty who sometimes have only a Junior high Sunday school level understanding of their faith. Others are seminary graduates though some are liberal ones and some evangelical. So we have a wide range of ministry needs with these future faculty and culture shapers. Your prayers mean more to us than you can know.
I believe I need to close with another appeal for support. It is especially strategic at this time of year and I know full well from my own kitchen table top that your table top is likely littered with appeals and that this one is coming to you via a more vulnerable e-prayerletter appeal. If you can help us with an extra calendar year end or holiday support or student scholarship support gift, believe me it is being put to kingdom use. Click the link in the first paragraph or, make checks payable to 'IVCF' and mail to IVCF. P.O. Box 7895. Madison, WI 53707 including a little note stating 'for ministries of Joe Whitchurch' or if you want to help individual students more specifically 'for Indiana GFM scholarship account'. Of course we have to receive it by the last day of December to count for 08 tax deduction purposes. Thanks for the delight of your friendship and prayers and support.
Yours in the One who became a man
to live out kingdom priorities perfectly, to be our crucified Savior,
our Risen Lord, and our soon-coming King, even Jesus,
Joe and Kim Whitchurch
http://ingradiv.com
IVCF GFM * P.O. Box 7895 * Madison, WI, 53707 For the ministry of Joe Whitchurch | jbw7@comcast.net
Email this page
Print this page