We did Soularium twice the second week of the semester, Monday 1/31 and Thursday 2/3, around lunchtime for two hours each time. On Monday I was joined by a student for the first hour, then by myself the second hour. I tried to recruit students to come with me, but every student I asked had class- something to keep in mind for future runs! Thursday I was joined by a student for both hours. All of us talked to several students each time, and both days had students who got really into it, giving very deep answers. On Thursday, one of my favorite moments was at one point when this one girl was taking the survey while her friend watched. "I'm just watching," the friend said at first when I asked if she wanted to do it at the same time. After the girl was done, her friend, intrigued after having observed, said "Can I do it!?" "Of course!" I replied.
Back to Monday. I was hesitant whether I wanted to continue for the second hour by myself. First of all, I felt that it was a little weird for me to just be standing there by myself and asking people- usually when clubs have tables like this there are always at least two people prsent. Second of all, I am no longer a student. Which would increase the weird factor of my first reason- although no one can tell that I'm not student unless I introduce myself that way, which I didn't normally do during Soularium. Third of all, I think I just didn't want to do it alone! It is easier for me to put myself out there and take risks when I am leading students and pushing them to do so as well, therefore not having a student with me takes away some of my motivation. However, in spite of all this, I decided to give it a try and see how it went the first 10 or 15 minutes or so.
Thank goodness I did! I had some of the best conversations out of the entire two days of Soularium in that hour. I was particularly struck/amused by this pair of friends, two sophomore guys, who did it together. I had stepped out and went through my usual plea, "Hi I'm with Dickinson Christian Fellowship, and we're doing this survey to find out more about the spiritual lives of students on campus, do you have a few minutes to do it? It's sort of connected to the pictures." They looked at each other. One said, "Do we want to do it?" The other replied, "Sure, let's do it!" They went on to absolutely love it. They said multiple times, "This is the best survey I've ever done!" They gave extremely long in-depth answers to each question. They loved the whole idea of it- answering using the photographs, as well as the spiritual nature of the questions.
These ended up being the two students who showed up to our discussion group this past Tuesday. A couple students from the Soularium team and I had outlined what the discussion would look like, each of us taking turns in leading it. We went with the theme of peace & serenity, since it was a big common theme from our Soularium surveying- students feel that they are lacking it in their crazy college schedules but really want it in their lives. Our outline looked something like this:
Intro
1) What does peace mean to you?
2) Where do you find that peace? Can you find it on campus?
Philippians 4:4-7
1) Do you pray? Do you see any purpose or value in prayer?
2) For you, is there a connection between peace & prayer?
John 14:27, 16:33
The world is not a peaceful place. However, Jesus claims to bring peace/be a source of peace.
1) What do you think about Jesus?
We all participated in the discussion. The two friends really liked sharing their personal ideas and experiences, but also hearing ours. We didn't even get to the verses about Jesus, but it was fine because the our discussion from the verses on prayer led us there! We had a lot of interesting discussion on peace, prayer, the Bible and Jesus. One of the guys is an atheist, and the other Quaker. So they had varying ideas and experiences but both really liked to talk about them with us. At one point, when I was explaining some of my own experiences, I said a few times, "I'm a Christian, so..." and they kept saying, "It's okay!" I realized that I was being overly concerned. They already knew where I was coming from and were fine with it, they were interested in what I had to say and share.
Something particularly intriguing was the atheist student. He had attended one or two of the SSU's (Secular Students Union) meetings. He (and his friend agreed with him) said that they are very anti-Christian in their atheism. They don't even talk about other deist religions (theoretically they would disagree with them as well) but tended to just be against Christianity. It caused this student to lose respect for them- even though he is an atheist. He doesn't even like to be associated with them. He specifically said that even though he technically identified with them belief wise, he preferred talking with us- the Dickinson Christian Fellowship- about spiritual things. Both friends said they really enjoyed our discussion and would like to come to more of them.
Even though only two students from our Soularium surveys came to our discussion group, it was two more than last time, and as you can see God was clearly at work! I am excited for future discussion groups and where this could lead. I have a feeling that these two students may even help us spread the word.
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