The Tale of Two G-towns

The Tale of Two G-towns -or- Why I Really Miss UNC

Greetings once again, fellow Earthling. It is I, the reckless bludgeoner of words. Once again, I shall hold forth in a deluge of verbiage, hoping not in vain for a coherent message. All right, enough of the vocabulary lesson (or vocabulary lesion?). On to the story!

Before I was a Mines student, I was a student at a relatively small community college in Greeley called Aims Community College. Since Aims was a commuter campus (no campus housing), there was little opportunity to build up momentum for any sort of campus group. One day at the beginning of my second year at Aims, I saw a flyer on a bulletin board: "Study the Bible, meet new friends, and have fun. Come to Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship on Friday night." On a whim that was truly God's prompting, I went. Thus began 2 awesome years running after God. Sometimes tripping over rubbish, sometimes sprinting along a way made plain, my life was irrevocably changed. This is not the story of those years, though. Rather, this story starts after I left.

When I moved to Mines, I knew I would have to make a pretty clean break with UNC IVCF, as the drive was a little too long. (insert sarcasm here) I planned to take up with Mines IVCF, and continue the trend that I was on. It was at last year's (2005) Fall Conference, though, when I realized that while I was doing well at Mines, I really missed UNC. I started considering differences between the two schools.

One of the things for which Mines is notorious is the guy-girl ratio. The official numbers are roughly 24% female, although 4-to-1 is another commonly heard number. My friends at UNC tell me that their school is also about 4-to-1 - the other way. The reason is apparently something about the majors offered at their school and the majors offered at my school. The cause doesn't matter to me, and the phenomenon doesn't really matter to me either, but sometimes it explains things.

That's not what I miss about UNC, though. The gender imbalance rarely entered my mind at UNC. During my first year at Mines, I equally accepted the opposite imbalance. It's just not a big deal because girls are not my life's focus.

My next thought was that it was my friends at UNC that I missed. To be honest, I met a lot of people who loved God with all of their life, and I was so amazingly blessed by just hanging out with them. I miss hanging out with Ryan G. (who abandoned his major to be a schoolteacher in inner-city Atlanta), Brian-with-a-B (who stood on God's Word unflinchingly), Steve (who follows God in every detail), Christine (who always brightened my day with a smile and a word of encouragement), Anna (who always balanced serious faith with the joy of the Lord), Micah (who is now following God's call into staff work last I knew), and the 50-something others that I wish I had time to mention. This isn't their story either.

This weekend, I figured out what I truly miss from UNC. John Compton organized what was referred to "Operation Front Row." There were about 60 Mines students who attended the retreat, and thanks to the effort of the folks acting as runners, we had a contiguous block of seats in the front of the middle seating sections for every session.

I was a runner the first night, and quickly secured my row of seats with the help of my row partner. Apparently we had overestimated our requirements, so our row ended half-empty. Empty saved seats are wasted seats, so I scooted over to unsave the seats that we didn't need after the session started. A few minutes later, I noticed a row of people sliding into the row, next to me. It was during worship, so the room was darkened and I must say that I wasn't paying much attention.

I found out in a matter of minutes that I was now (happily) neighbor to about a half-dozen young ladies from UNC Campus Crusade. I didn't know them at the time, but that was soon remedied. The precedent was set, and over the course of the weekend, I kept running into a handful of people from "the city that smells like cows." Then I realized exactly why I miss hanging out with Christians at UNC. It's the joy and the love shown so obviously in their lives.

At Mines, we're mostly engineers. Think of all the engineer jokes and stereotypes you've ever heard, and a lot of them are true. There are some wild and crazy people here, but for the most part, I don't the love that I see in all of the Christians that I meet from UNC. Us Miners love God, but it's just not as loud. Sharing is a good thing, especially "things" like God, where sharing makes more to go around. The only way to lose is not to share.

Sometimes I quote Gandhi: "Be the change you wish to see in the world." If I miss seeing people who are passionately in love with God, a logical conclusion would be to show them what I want to see. Indeed, this is a good point. God has started to reveal to me where my path should lie now. However, this entry has reached my 1000-word target, so I will finish later.

Until next time, God Bless! (How do you like that for a cliff-hanger?)