May 2015
Hello Penn Faith and Action friends and supporters!We are excited to be writing our first-ever monthly update from Penn! It has been an incredible year here in Philadelphia. We have known both challenges and victories, but we continue to thank God for his provision for us and our ministry as we reflect on the school year.
Penn Faith and Action (PennFA), a Christian leadership development organization resourced by Christian Union, launched at Penn in the fall of 2013, and since then we have seen God work in a variety of ways. This year we had the privilege of teaching eight Bible courses on Penn's campus, of eight to ten students each, composed of freshmen and sophomores. We studied through Hebrews and Acts, as well as two smaller courses addressing Sex and Spirituality and the Seeking God Lifestyle with the freshmen during the spring semester. From the beginning, our Bible courses have been, and continue to be, the heartbeat of PennFA. It is in these communities of students we get to ask important theological questions, while also dealing with the real joys and pains in their lives on a weekly basis. God continues to meet us through his Word, and we continue to be blessed by diligent study and intentional community.
This year marked a banner year for PennFA in another area: the new role of ministry teams. The primary means that PennFA seeks to develop Christian leaders here at Penn is to launch teams of students that engage in ministry on campus. At the end of this school year, we have students running five separate ministry teams. We have a Seeking God lifestyle team that leads our students in prayer and fasting; a team that leads our weekly leadership lecture series team (named Philia... which we thought was very clever of them); an outreach team to engage campus in evangelistic initiatives; a socials team; and a worship team. All of these teams are student led, and we could not be more proud of the initiative and diligent work that the students have put into their work on campus.
As we close out the year, there are some prayer needs that are indicative of this ministry season. First, we would ask you to thank God for what he has done on campus over the last two years. He has been consistently faithful to our ministry, and we want to continue to praise and thank Him as the one who is the author of all of our impact. Second, most of our students will be leaving for internships across the world this summer. We have students doing everything from finance and marketing in New York, to consulting in Jordan, to Ebola research in St. Louis. We want to ask God to continue to draw our students to Himself through our Lord Jesus over the summer, and we especially want to pray for their continued maturity and growth in Christ.
We are so grateful for your support and prayers,
John Cunningham
Christian Union Ministry Fellow
Penn University
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Please note: if you would like to receive regular updates on how to pray for Christian Union's work at University of Pennsylvania, please email prayer@christianunion.org.