Hey West Enders! My name is Ashley Harton and I am currently serving full-time with Campus Crusade for Christ at Vanderbilt University, along with a few others you may know (Joe & Betsy Thomas, Beth Randolph, and Adam & Haley Strouth). If you don't know much about Campus Crusade, we are basically committed to developing authentic spiritual movements on university campuses by focusing on evangelism, discipleship, and sending students out missionally.
Why so much focus on the university campus, specifically Vandy?? Lots of reasons! But to give you one that really motivates me...university campuses are home to streams of current thought/culture-shaping ideas and places of worldview formation. That is certainly true of Vanderbilt! The average college student comes into this environment as an 18 year old with some sort of understanding of the world, but is very open to change as they are exposed to different friends, top professors, and new experiences in and outside of the classroom. You can find students or professors on campus who believe (or don't believe) almost anything! Consequently, Vandy students encouraged, however indirectly, and in a very postmodern sort of way, to adopt the view, "what's true for me may not be true for you" and vice versa. "You believe what you want to believe but don't bother me with it". By the end of their college career, this often leaves them waving the banner of tolerance without really knowing any more deeply about what they really believe...at least in the realm of faith.
Recently in discipleship, I have been talking about this with some senior women, asking them: "If you were to guess how the average Vandy student would answer these questions, what would you say?" The questions are "Why are we here?" "What is wrong with the world?" "What puts the world right?" and "How can I be a part of putting the world right?" These conversations have been eye-opening! But even more, it has exposed how much our own views of the world are mixed with secular values. Values that are not all bad, but ultimately surface level compared to the depth of the answers we have in the gospel. Please pray for believing and non-believing students alike that God would reveal Himself in Spirit and in truth...and that they would really believe that there is Truth that IS real, pervasive and worthy of heralding!
The article that has been shaping these recent discussions can be found here, if you are interested: http://www.redeemer2.com/themovement/issues/2004/oct/deconstructing.html
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