Winter 09 - Term reflection

Wow. Haven't written for a while. Lets see if I can pull together some coherency.

I remember during Summer 08 term, I found myself filled with a sense of disappointment. I found myself focused on the fact that, once the current grads of this year leaves CCF, CCF will cease being the same as I know it. I guess, it has to do with the fact that most of people I talk to comes from this year. Things that I strongly associate with CCF, like Westcourt and Mcdougall, have traditionally been of this year. Contrasting all this upperyear focus with the fact that there seems to be an absence of the lower years. The fellowship feels smaller. There's less people around. Where are all the people stepping up? Although I had a chance to chat with a past alum (Dave Tse) about this, it didn't do too much to reassure me, at the end of the day. As I went through last Fall (3B) and this winter (WKTRM5) watching the people in CCF...as a DL, I saw this the most: our bible study leader count is terrible. There were days when no one showed to prestudy (1 John 4 study). Cell group attendance, while never consistent, has never dropped below 1 person showing up (Women cell last term). It's over. How would this fellowship last, if it's so distance from each other and so separated?

Perhaps the biggest thing that changed my view of all this was my work on Caring and Subcommittee.

Being on Caring brought me in contact with many people. In my attempt to figure out how they see the fellowship and if they're being provided for or not, I generally start off things with a handful of questions, asking them how they are and what fellowship is to them. When I took on Subcommittee as well, my question list extended fairly easily. And so although I can easily spend a few hours chatting with a given individual, it was worth it.

• Where do you stand right now? Where do you want to go? How do you want to grow?
• What is fellowship/CCF to you? What do you get out of it? What do you want out of it?
• Are there people you can go to for advice? Is CCF a safe place for you to share your struggles without fear of being shut down?
• Where do you want to see CCF in the future? What is your vision for it?

Sometimes people didn't have an answer ready. That's fine, I didn't really expect these things to be stuff that people think about all the time. But I threw these questions out there. Make them question themselves. Make them question where they are. Gotta work against that complacency. This entire process was actually quite fun, partly because I was somewhat familiar with the handful I was assigned. Didn't have to work to the topic with too much small talk or anything. Just alot of sharing, about what they want to see in the next little bit in their walk in this fellowship

And even though the majority of the people I talked to were second years, the response of some of these people were crazy. They're more advanced with their walk at this point than I was myself, in 3rd year...I was talking to someone heading in 2B...to find that they've already discovered things that I started learning in WKTRM3...this person is more ahead than I was when I was that age... These kids are more mature than I gave them credit for.

I remember that, during Sharing last Friday (which I wasn't totally awake for all of it...but there's at least two copies of minutes floating around, I'll get to it soon -_-), someone said something along the lines of..."Your ceilings becomes our floor." Idea being that as we pour our knowledge downwards, towards the incoming people, they start equipped with that. The knowledge that CCF is slowly growing, surpassing what we are capable of, simply because we existed and is building the future generations, was encouraging. Perhaps there is still alot of work to be done...but I'm a bit more reassured that as the current grads move on...as my year prepares to move on...CCF is in good hands. There really is alot of potential in these kids.

Realizing this, I started to look for evidence for the rising loweryears. I look at something like Outreach...and realize that it's composed entirely of froshes. Of all people who ran for Committee this term, half of them were second years. During Discussion night, the people that asked the most amount of questions were the second year people. The various components of Grad Dinner was saturated with first and second years. When I brought all this up during Committee meeting this week, as we did our own end-of-term sharing, it lead to a flurry of agreements. Perhaps CCF isn't in that bad of a shape after all. It's not as how I see it. But people are still growing. And so CCF lives on. Passing on the torch...