Be Wilder.

 

 

 

Inspired out of friendship with Jesus and the story of Robert Wilder, 

Student Church leaders Erik & Jen Fish 

and Campus America team members Ryan Riggs & Lindsay Ellyson 

set out on an adventure in early 2009.  

 

Their dream was to see students on campuses across the nation 

encounter the life-changing presence of Jesus.  

 

The following stories and insights are a collection of their experiences traveling 

to campuses together.  They have been compiled in hopes of inspiring more young 

people to travel to campuses bearing the Good News of Jesus.

 

 

 

 

Write the vision, make it plain, that he who reads it may run… – Habakkuk 2:2 

 

 

 

The Vision by Pete Greig

The vision is JESUS – obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is an army of young people.

You see bones? I see an army.

And they are FREE from materialism. They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.  

They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday. They wouldn't even notice. 

They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won. 

They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations. 

They need no passport… People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence. 

They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.

What is the vision ?

The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes. It makes children laugh and adults angry. 

It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars.     It scorns the good and strains for the best. 

It is dangerously pure. Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation. 

It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games. This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause. A million times a day its soldiers choose to lose that they might one day win the great 'Well done' of faithful sons and daughters.  Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night.   They don't need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!" 

And this is the sound of the underground

The whisper of history in the making, Foundations shaking, Revolutionaries dreaming once again

  Mystery is scheming in whispers,  Conspiracy is breathing… This is the sound of the underground

And the army is discipl(in)ed. 

Young people who beat their bodies into submission. Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms. 

The tattoo on their backs boast “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes. Winners. Martyrs. Who can stop them? 

Can hormones hold them back? Can failure succeed? Can fear scare them or death kill them?

And the generation prays like a dying man with groans beyond talking, 

           with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and with great barrow loads of laughter!

Waiting. Watching: 24 – 7 – 365.

Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cozy little hide. 

Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. 

The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless 

to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive (on the inside). 

On the outside? They hardly care. They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide. 

Would they surrender their image or their popularity?

They would lay down their very lives - swap seats with the man on death row - guilty as hell. 

A throne for an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days, 

they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them. 

Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.)

Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.

Their words make demons scream in shopping centers.

Don't you hear them coming?

Herald the weirdos! Summon the losers and the freaks. 

Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes. 

They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension. 

Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.

And this vision will be. It will come to pass; it will come easily; it will come soon.

How do I know? 

Because this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God. 

My tomorrow is his today. My distant hope is his 3D. 

And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great 'Amen!' from countless angels, from heroes of the faith, from Christ himself. 

And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.

Guaranteed.

 

Run

 

{Ryan:}   The Vision, written nearly a decade ago by Pete Greig on the wall of a shabby prayer room in Chichester, England has aroused the faith of millions all over the world.  I read the words of this poem some 2,000 nights ago and burned with longing to find myself in the story of these Children of Another Dimension and their Ultimate Winner. Something told me that those words weren’t ones to be inscribed in a fancy font, embossed in gold, placed in a pretty frame, and hung on a wall as mere eye-candy. They were provoking my faith to fly, daring me to dream, wooing me to wonder.

 

Two thousand years ago the God-Man Jesus interrupted a bunch of gangly men and women, all on their way to fulfilling their own dreams, and called them into the greater dream of God’s eternal purposes in which each held a great role.  

 

We don’t know exactly what Jesus looked like, but we know that those first followers saw something in Him “for which they were willing to lay down everything, and they appear to have done it impulsively and joyfully…. They caught a vision – a dangerous, obsessive, and wonderful epiphany that has captivated hearts ever since…. Even now, this Galilean calls us by name to leave our nets, abandon small dreams of token empires, and follow Him into the great unknown. His vision for our lives is a treasure worth everything we own – worth living for and dying for. It’s the vision for which we were born: created by God as a gift of love to His broken, beautiful world.” (The Vision and The Vow, Pete Greig).

 

The same call that echoed on the banks of the Galilee is still echoing on the banks of human hearts today, a simple invitation to ordinary folk like you and me, Jesus beckoning, “Come, follow me.”

 

A vision has been projected through the ages – a vision that existed before anything else.  This ancient vision flows through the veins of everything created:  

 

Creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. – Romans 8:20

 

The Author is calling for those destined to be Heroes to take their place, enter the Story, even as He Himself has. He’s inscribed the DNA and destiny of His children on every stone and star, who hold their breath in relentless expectation for them to wake up and get into the game.  And just as some 2,000 nights ago, I again burn with longing to find myself in the story He is writing throughout history.  I am longing to run. 

 

An Army of Young People

 

“I wake up buzzing with God speaking to me, ‘Campus America, call campus America to pray!’  I go down to the foyer of the hotel and begin journaling – it’s as if God is speaking directly to me – a strategy for mobilizing movements of prayer on every campus in America.”  Pete Greig, “accidental” founder of 24-7 Prayer (www.24-7Prayer.com), was jolted awake by God’s relentless compassion toward college students all across America.  Pete is just one among many who is being roused awake with a God-sized dream to see His Kingdom grown like a million mustard seeds of faith in full bloom on every college and university campus in America.

 

Since that wild night of dreaming and scheming with the Original Dreamer, Pete and some friends in   24-7 Prayer have committed themselves to help mobilize a year of prayer in 2010 on all 2,614 four-year colleges in the nation (www.CampusAmerica.org). One means of mobilizing prayer on campuses has been to encourage small traveling teams to go to campuses across America.  These teams call students to participate in God’s story for their lives and their campus through praying and engaging students with the story of Jesus.

 

It’s one thing to simply dream God’s dream, yet it’s quite another thing to voluntarily become a vessel through which that dream can come true.  We’re finding that those who contract the Jesus-virus are growing more and more discontent with life as usual and are becoming more mobile with the message of reconciliation.  

 

But why travel?

 

Mobile Like the Wind

 

“Go” is the first thing Jesus tells us to do after commissioning us to pray earnestly. As one wild adventurer recently remarked, “If you pray to the Lord of the harvest and ask Him to send out laborers into His harvest fields, He will most always make you the answer to that prayer.”

 

It is evident that God is longing to visit the campuses of America in this hour. And all across the nation, little bands of friends are piling into cars and traveling to campuses to prepare the way for His Presence to come. They’re going for a weekend, for spring break, for whole semesters even, with prayer burning in their hearts and the gospel on their lips. They’re offering encouragement to strangers, praying for the sick, telling stories of how Jesus has encountered them, inviting people into redemptive conversation with God, and sharing the Campus America dream that every college would engage in 24-7 prayer in 2010.

 

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, 

into every town and place where He Himself was about to go. And He said to them, ‘Pray earnestly to 

the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest. Go your way... Heal the sick... Say to them, 

‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ – Luke 10:1-3 & 9

 

It’s really not a new idea; it's the way Jesus did it when he sent out 72 “others” in pairs to preach the good news of the Kingdom. He sent out the 12 disciples, too, but the 72 He sent were just “other” guys. What in the world is Jesus thinking, entrusting His ministry and reputation to a nameless bunch of random, uneducated young people who don’t even seem to be His official disciples? Yet He confidently sends this motley crew out with the power to heal, all authority over evil, and with what appears to be only two paragraphs worth of instructions. They go out, two by two, to every place that Jesus Himself is about to go.

 

Come On! (A Brief History of Travel Teams)

 

From the beginning of creation, God’s purposes for the world have been spread through traveling teams. When God said, “Fill the earth and multiply,” He signified His purpose for His planet would entail His people being willing to be sent from Eden to fill every corner of the earth. 

 

After God’s plans for the earth were setback through human disobedience, God found another man willing to travel. “Abram, leave your father’s house and go to a land I will show you.” God’s call to travel was going forth again. God was going to bless all nations as a result of Abram’s single act of obedience in responding to God’s call to travel. 

 

Then there’s Jesus.  Traveling was His primary method of expanding His Kingdom. He sent out 12, then later 72 others. These were the average followers, the ones who weren’t the most committed. They weren’t the carte blanche disciples. They were a lot like you and me. 

 

About 20 years later, a group of believers assembled together in a prayer room and heard the call to travel again. “Separate Paul and Barnabas for the work to which I have called them.” Their obedience to travel throughout the Mediterranean world sparked the first great church planting movement. The rest of the New Testament is a historical chronicle to how God moves when people obey His call to travel.

 

All through history, God moves when people obey the call to leave the comfort of home and church, hit the road, and place themselves at the precipice of depending on God on the journey.  The Waldensians, St. Patrick, The Moravians, St. Ignatius of Loyola, Lottie Moon, John Wesley, Mary Slessor, Hudson Taylor, Jackie Pullinger, Billy Graham, Loren Cunningham – the list of traveling heroes fills the walls of heaven’s archives.

 

Wilder

 

Robert Wilder was one such traveling hero and a primary source of inspiration for us.  Robert was a Princeton University student who, in 1886, visited 162 campuses on horseback with a heart burning to see his generation take the gospel to the nations. His prayerful and passionate travel helped catalyze the Student Volunteer Movement, America's first great missions thrust. Wilder’s campus-to-campus efforts resulted in over 20,000 students signing a pledge stating that they were “willing and desirous” to go to the foreign mission field. Tens of thousands stayed home, working hard and supporting their friends financially.

 

During Wilder’s year of travel to America’s campuses, his father became fatally ill, but when Robert returned home, his father just quoted Jesus: “Let the dead bury their own dead,” and sent him back on the road.  Later, Robert himself got dangerously sick and was ordered by his doctor to stop traveling, but he refused. The rest is history.

 

The Whisper of History in the Making

 

Now here we are, a century and a half later, hearing the call once again to journey with Jesus along the ancient path of pilgrimage. To see little bands of friends being sent by Jesus to the places He wants to come with His presence – followers of Jesus believing for healing over sick students and declaring to a campus that the Kingdom of God has come near – two friends here and two friends there, hitting the road with a sincere cry to their generation, an invitation to know Jesus.

 

This is the same call heard by God-followers throughout history; the same call Isaiah the prophet heard when the Lord needed a person to go for Him. 

 

Whom shall I send? Who will go for us? – Isaiah 6:8a

 

You and a few friends can literally make history. You can change the world by capturing the imagination of students with a bigger story. It all begins in prayer.

 

Then Isaiah said, “Here am I.  Send me!” – Isaiah 6:8b

 

The Vision is Jesus

 

{Lindsay:}   Here’s our big confession: there’s not much of a method to our madness.  As much as we’d like to hand you a little booklet with a few specific steps, we just haven’t found them.  After all when we look at Jesus we see He’s always mixing up the ways that He ministered to people.  Once He heals a blind man by simply telling him that his faith had made him well, but the next guy He heals by rubbing mud in his eyes and sending him off to wash in a local pool.  Later, Jesus restores the sight of two guys at once by a simple touch, and still another time He audaciously spits in a blind man’s eyes. (See Luke 18, John 9, Mark 8, Matthew 9)

   

It appears that Jesus’ unpredictable style of delivering mercy comes straight from heaven.  In the midst of a little tussle with the religious leaders of the day, who were up in arms over yet another unorthodox healing by Jesus, He explains that He cannot do anything on His own, that He only does what He sees His Dad doing.  “My Dad loves Me, and shows Me everything that He’s up to.  He’ll show Me even more splendid things too, just so you can all freak out!”  (John 5:19-20, paraphrased)  All of the ideas and power behind Jesus’ brilliant miracles came straight from the Father.  

 

The guys who were personally trained by Jesus Himself lived out of this same reality.  They found themselves in skirmishes with the religious leaders, too.  And these uneducated, common men and women left the religious know-it-alls just as shell-shocked as Jesus had.  The boldness of Peter and John literally undid the big shots of the day.  It was undeniably the same kind Jesus had...the kind of radical tenacity that came only from walking next to Jesus Himself, which is exactly where these rough-and-tumble dudes had just been. 

 

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished.  And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. – Acts 4:13

 

After engaging with hundreds of students on campuses all over the nation, we witness one consistent phenomenon: it’s the students who are persistently engaged in conversation with Jesus (prayer) that are most ready to take on the mission field that is the campus.  I was recently taken aback at the overwhelming response we received after presenting a simple challenge of evangelism at Arizona State University (ASU).  Since that challenge students have been out on campus sharing the gospel, leading their peers to Christ and baptizing them. As they’ve been intentional to hear from Jesus through consistent rhythms of 24-7 prayer at ASU, these guys have been infused with vision and equipped to demonstrate the power of the Spirit.

 

Have you ever seen drunk students get immediately sober upon walking past an outdoor prayer meeting?  Or have you ever prayed for a broken car and it promptly starts running again?  Or have you ever seen a car-full of wasted girls instantaneously gain full awareness and drop to their knees, repenting in the middle of the street?  These are just a few of the stories I hear from my friends who are dedicated to knowing Jesus at The Ohio State University.  As young people encounter Jesus at the prayer house on campus, they get just as bold as Peter and John did after they had been with Jesus.  As these students exchange passion with Jesus, they see the power of God break loose all over their campus.

 

We’re not experts on the things of the Kingdom of God.  But I think we’re finally convinced that no magic formula exists for this adventure.  Jesus had it right: the Father loves us, shows us what He’s up to, and let’s us participate.  The only key is to get close to Jesus – not as the means to some greater end – but in recognition that He is in fact our destination!

 

Making the Kingdom Accessible  

 

Did you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? – 1 Corinthians 6:19

 

{Ryan:}   In the film Amazing Grace, depicting the life of William Wilberforce and his struggle in fighting slavery in England, Wilberforce found himself torn between his newly found bedazzlement with Creator God and his ‘secular’ occupation as a politician.  “I’d rather stare at spider’s webs and get a wet ass than do any of my political duties.”  But when confronted by a group of front-line freedom fighters that suggested he could do both (be a politician and serve and love God), he emerged as a fiery, influential abolitionist, driven by nothing less than the stricken heart of Abba who abhors injustice. 

 

At the brink of his decision, Wilberforce went to his old mentor, a well-respected, God-fearing janitor-priest named John Newton (writer of the classic hymn Amazing Grace).  When asked by William about his dilemma, whether to choose a more secular or spiritual route, John, who lived a life of solitude himself but used to work on a slave ship in his early days, answered, “Make sure you’re in the world and not of it.  But be in the world!”  

 

East Carolina University (ECU), NC.  Carolina was on our minds.  We’d just spent two weeks traveling the Northeastern States where it wasn’t nearly spring enough, and we couldn’t wait to get our feet on some sunny southern soil.  East Carolina University, home to the Pirates, has also been home to some piratical praying revolutionaries, spiritually attacking strongholds in the town of Greenville, NC.

 

We gathered with 11 students, many of whom didn’t previously know each other, at “Destination 360” for some lunch and laughs before hitting the campus for some Spirit-led adventures.  We decided to go “treasure hunting” – simply waiting on the Holy Spirit for the “map” (clues such as a name, a need, a description, a location, etc.) and venturing out in obedience.  This seemed quite appropriate with the school mascot being a pirate!

 

I walked with Matthew, a freshman at ECU.  After waiting on the Lord for a few minutes, I had my page filled with clues, while Matthew merely had a few – pink shirt, white shorts, Art Museum.   Needless to say, I felt very confident that I had just received quite the download from above and our ship was about to set sail, leading us to a ton of treasure.  

 

Aarrrgh!  I was getting a bit frustrated as, after 45 minutes, I’d had to fudge my clues to talk to even 2 people, getting utterly rejected by both.  “How about that pink shirt gal?” I asked Matthew somewhat cynically.  We’d seen at least a million people with pink shirts on, but none with white shorts.  We decided to turn the rudder West, “To the Aarrrght Museum!” (Remember… pirate theme!)

 

We had ten minutes left on our voyage before we had to meet with the rest of the crew.  About eight of those minutes had passed when, just as we were about to head for the harbor, Pink Shirt White Shorts girl walked into the dorm just next to the Museum.  “That’s my dorm where I’m a Resident Assistant!”  exclaimed Matthew as he darted after the girl.  

 

Minutes later Matthew comes out beaming, arms flailing to the sky.  “Wow dudes… that was definitely God!”  The young lady’s best friend had just passed away due to a severe, rapidly spreading form of cancer.  Matthew had the opportunity to pray for her, share in her suffering, and encourage her that she doesn’t have to walk through this time alone.  God used him and our team of 11 that day to be His hands and feet, His walking Tabernacles of Prayer, taking His presence into the world. 

 

This reminds me of something Pete Greig wrote about making the Kingdom accessible: 

 

“Notice that the watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem described in verses 6-7 (Isaiah 62), don’t stay there forever! In verse 10 they come down from the walls and pass out through the gates of the Holy City in order to build a highway and to raise a banner for the nations. Why? So that Jerusalem – about which they are so passionate - will become visible and accessible to outsiders. They don’t just pray for her to be populated – they also get their hands dirty and work to make it happen. The Watchmen on the Walls of the Holy City also become Workers on the Way out in the wilderness.  Our job is not just to pray night-and-day in some holy bubble; it is also to prepare the way very practically for outsiders to be attracted to God’s Kingdom.”

 

This is us, the “Watchmen on the Walls” working hard to make the Kingdom visible and accessible on campus.

 

{Lindsay:}   University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).  It was a crisp January day when we gathered with some fellow traveling companions and several students to play music on Bruin Walk, the busiest crosswalk on campus.  Though we’d previously shared with a bunch of students about being intentional with sharing their faith, I felt God tell me simply, “Wait and be still.” After several minutes I opened my eyes to find a young woman sitting right beside me.  Her name was Kim.  A freshman at UCLA, she had just undergone a tragic breakup with her boyfriend, who had cheated on her.  Kim and I talked for a good while about a number of things, our conversation unfolding quite naturally.  

 

Our talk predictably shifted to discussion about God as I felt the Lord’s tender heart toward my new friend.  Kim held a typical relativistic view of God and spirituality.  She mentioned her love for travel and doing volunteer work but was hungry for something more.  I simply shared my own story about my journey with Jesus, how He took my restlessness and longing for adventure, and introduced me to fullness of life in Him.  It was apparent that the Holy Spirit was intently pursuing Kim, the look in her eyes and tone in her voice communicating a deep and sincere desire for true identity and wholeness.   I was able to meet up with her for breakfast in the cafeteria before we left Los Angeles.  We talked for over an hour about the person Jesus… how He was always making the religious leaders angry, how He healed sick people, and taught about love and justice. She asked a lot of good questions about how God speaks to me and how He has convinced me that He’s real. I prayed with her that God would show up visibly in her life.  After parting ways, she texted me, saying, “I feel like reading my Bible right now! Where should I start?” 

 

There’s no way to reproduce my encounter with Kim.  I was just intentionally out on campus, with my heart available to God and my spirit attentive to whatever He wanted to point out.  The Kingdom of God was made available for a passerby to experience because I carry it about within me.

travel, wilder, campus, adventure, kingdom, vision, run

Last updated 144 days ago by Lindsay Ellyson