Partnerships

As Tracy and I saw earlier today on their website, "Don't Go It Alone" is the slogan for the Monash University Postgraduate Association. It's not a bad slogan either when exploring grad ministry in Australia as Americans living quite literally on the other side of the world.

We would love to see thriving graduate student (postgrad) communities built here where the gospel is powerfully transforming lives. We would love to help build those communities. While it seems that God is calling us to do so, it is definitely clear that we can't do so by ourselves. And so, we have been primarily praying that God would lead us to individuals and groups with whom we could partner.

He is definitely answering our prayer! On Wednesday, (our first day here) we met with Malcolm and Sandy, two staff members with Christian Union (CU) at Melbourne University. On Friday, we met with Graeme, a staff member with CU at Monash University. Yesterday, we met with Peter, Matt, and Chris, staff members with CU at LaTrobe University, and last evening we held a Skype conference call with Lewis, the National Director of Postgraduate Ministry for AFES, the parent organization for (you guessed it) CU. Can you see a pattern emerging? I don't believe that there is another Christian Union staff member in Victoria working with postgrads that we haven't met.

In every one of those meetings, we shared our desire to see the gospel come within arm's reach of every postgrad on their campus, to see Christian postgrads thriving in their relationship with God, to see a new generation of Christian scholars raised up and mobilized, and to develop partnerships with existing Australian campus ministry organizations to see those three dreams become a reality. They shared with us their vision for postgrads on their campus as well as the current status of their ministries. We shared some more about what we have been learning as a ministry at Penn State. And then we talked about the ways a partnership might mutually benefit both organzations.

We left each of those meetings so encouraged, excited, and hopeful. We share with the staff from Christian Union the same vision for building a gospel-centered movement among postgrads on their campus. We share with them a Kingdom perspective, that is the desire to see God's Kingdom built, not Campus Crusade or Christian Union. And we share with them a lot of like-mindedness in how that might happen. It is so beautiful to see the Body of Christ function as Christ intended it to do.

Please continue to pray. Tomorrow I (Ashley) am meeting with Simon, a faculty member at Monash University who coordinates the CU postgrad ministry there with Graeme. On Friday, we are all meeting with Malcolm, Sandy, and some of the postgrads involved with the CU ministry at Melbourne University. Hopefully, I will also be able to talk to Lewis, the National Director, via Skype before we leave.

In each of these meetings and in conversations that follow over the coming weeks, we hope to figure out more specifically what these partnerships will look like and what next steps to take.

A ministry update!

After a delightful time shopping and eating delicious new things at the Queen Victoria market early yesterday morning, Mike picked up Ash and Jared and I and drove us out to LaTrobe University to meet with the Christian Union team there. Ash will be writing a little bit about that meeting and another meeting with a national staff member with Christian Union working with graduate students. Suffice to say, the eyebrows wagged in our favor and we had a couple of really productive, positive meetings yesterday.

Today I hopped on the bus to Monash to meet Ash and Mike there for the undergraduate Student Life (Campus Crusade in Australia) weekly meeting, which was delightful. Then I wandered upstairs to the Monash Postgraduate Association, an office which serves the Post-grads (Graduate students) at Monash with seminars, socials, support, and advocacy. Here they have 4 full-time staff devoted to helping graduate students to cope with grad school problems and find community. Jenny, executive officer of MPA, sat down with me and happily answered all my questions about how the MPA works. Basically, the university funds the MPA to increase the completion rate (graduation rate) of post-grads by providing advice and support. In the case of conflict with supervisors (advisors) or problems with intellectual property rights, the MPA can act as an independent advocate for the graduate student, explaining their options and even going with them to help sort things out. I'm not sure if there's really anything like it in the 'states.

Ash joined us later and we continued a great discussion about the perils of graduate school and the role that a group like ours, devoted to meeting the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of graduate students could play. The MPA provides a lot of inspiration for our work in the future at Penn State and in Melbourne. The mission of the MPA to support graduate students is very much like ours in PSCG. Their website even uses the slogan "Don't go it alone" - which we've discussed using in the past. Perhaps they would like our Top 10 reasons to get involved with PSCG, including "Your advisor is not your God" and "The late-night library raves are getting old."

P.S. It has come to my attention that our Slideshow gadget up on the right-hand side seems to be broken, hopefully temporarily. In the meantime, click here to visit our gallery

Make-a-plan Monday

Today we made a plan for the rest of the week. We set up meetings with Malcom, other post-grads in his Bible study, and with other leaders in Christian Union. I also set up an academic meeting with a researcher at the Division of Primary Industries. I also got to go to Sandy's women's post-graduate bible study, where we examined Daniel 1, a great study for graduate students.

One of our concerns so far has been getting information about grad student life. Mike gave us a research tool called "Decoding Your Campus" - a guide to finding out all about the geography, demography, social and spiritual landscape of an undergraduate campus. We looked it over and decided that there would be a lot of value in finding out this sort of thing for the post-graduates. However, we recognized that every lab or program would probably differ, at least on the social and spiritual landscape areas.

So yesterday while Ash went back to work on some other stuff, Jared and I walked down to the botanical gardens and the Shrine of Remembrance, then walked back up into town to catch a bite to eat at a cafe with good seating for working. We fashioned a new survey, one that would hopefully tell us what we need to know about post-graduate life and spirituality. We also hope that this survey will get us into some good conversations with post-graduate students. The plan is to set up a table in a central area with a sign that says "Post-Graduate Student Survey." Candy will be provided.

Today we will visit the Queen Victoria Market - a large open-air shopping facility that's been around since 1878.

Day 3 - A Day at Monash

Our first couple of days in Australia have really shown us just how dependent we've become on mobile phones. I mean, we've had to arrange specific meeting times and places with people hours in advance, or -- gasp! -- even the day before, just because we had no way for other people to reach us. It was so quaint, and like we were stuck back in 2002. So we were all thrilled yesterday (Friday) when Mike was able to give each of us a mobile phone that we can use for the rest of our time here in Melbourne. The Campus Crusade summer project undergrads from Va Tech and UVA returned to the States yesterday morning, and so we're using some of their phones that Cru loaned them. Now we'll be able to communicate much more effectively with each other, with the contacts we're meeting, and with my friends here, especially since Ash, Tracy & I are staying at different homes and I'm occasionally off doing other things. Anyway, it's great to have a phone again. If nothing else, now that I have a mobile phone I no longer have to wonder what time it is, since I don't have a wristwatch!

Anyway, after spending the first couple of days in the city at both Melbourne Uni and RMIT, yesterday we stayed out in the eastern suburbs and took the bus from Blackburn Station down to Monash University in Clayton (I walked to Blackburn Station, but Ash & Tracy barely arrived on the train in time to catch the bus). At Monash the three of us met up with Mike and then also Graeme Chiswell, the campus director for the Christian Union group at Monash. [CU is affiliated with AFES, the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students, which is in turn affiliated with IFES, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. In the States, InterVarsity is affiliated with IFES.] In my semester at Monash I was quite involved in CU, but Graeme arrived the semester after I was here, so this was the first time that I met him. Our meeting today went really well, and he seemed keen on exploring some sort of partnership with us and Student Life to reach graduate students (or post-grads, as they're called here). The part of the meeting that didn't go well was the coffee we got, which was passable at best. Tracy's latte was basically just hot milk!

CU already has a bit of a ministry going with post-grads and staff, through some "prayer triangles" or "prayer squares," groups of three or four people in the same department or building who get together every fortnight or so to pray with and encourage one another. Once or twice a semester these groups then all get together for a potluck or other sort of campus fellowship event. In the recent past there have been Bible studies as well, but the primary students who've been organizing those have gotten busy with their studies and other things, so that's kind of gone dormant for the meantime. At any rate, there's at least something going on with post-grads here at Monash that can be built upon, and something that's actually not dissimilar to some of what we're hoping to do at PSCG.

I'm sure Ash or Tracy will have a bit more to add about the meeting with Graeme yesterday morning, because I had to duck out in the middle of it. I had to leave because I gave a seminar on my research at noon today at Monash, in the Monash Weather and Climate group in the School of Mathematics. Only about 15 people or so attended my seminar (apparently quite a few folks are out of town this week), and I thought it went fairly well. One of the professors and research scientists took me out to lunch afterward. Having a glass of shiraz and a latte at lunch is definitely something different for me -- I think I could maybe adjust to the Australian university setting. :-) I met briefly with a couple of other faculty members after lunch as well. One of the main questions I got from people is, "Why are you here in Australia?" So I decided to tell them that my primary reason for being here now was to investigate some ministry opportunities with post-grads here in Melbourne. "Ministry? Is that a church thing?" someone asked. "Yep, a church thing." It was of course way too early for them to have any idea what sort of post-doc opportunities there might be two years from now, but I think it certainly helped to get my name out there, so that if I do apply in another year or two for something, they'll hopefully remember me and think positively of me. That's the goal anyway, and is what I hope comes of my other upcoming seminars at the University of Melbourne and the Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre next week, where I'll also be "selling my wares," as the Monash folks called it. I'm glad seminar #1 of 3 down here is in the bag!

After I was done with my post-seminar meetings, because Ash & Tracy had already gone back to the city to meet someone at Melbourne Uni, I took some time to wander around the Monash campus, including taking a walk back to the dorm that I lived in back in 2004, Roberts Hall. It was a nice little trip down memory lane.