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Navigating the Journey
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This is a KUNV Studios original program.
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The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz & More, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
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Black Ball Triple 7 Productions presents the Black Ball Triple 7 Productions podcast, Faith Knowledge in College Edition. This program has been brought to you by Blackball.777 Productions. And now, here is your host.
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And welcome back everybody. Welcome back to the Blackball.777 Productions podcast. I'm your host, the blackball himself, Jabri Foster, here with two UNLV alumni, aka Kevin Cotton and Jonathan Carrillo.
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Hey Jabri, glad to be here.
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Hey Jabri, thanks for having us. Of course. So, for this episode we're going to be talking about University focused ministries and as always my main man case here is going to be assisting me with some questions So let's get the black ball rolling. So what does that mean theme of universities focused ministries? Yeah, I mean our university focused ministries
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Exists to create spaces and reach what we call new corners of campus. And so sometimes there's barriers for people to even step into a faith-based space, whether it's a Christian space or another faith. There's barriers that we experience. And so our focus ministries, there's a number of them that
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Kevin will share in a second here, that are centered around different ethnicities that we hold, different experiences that we have on campus, and identities that we hold on campus. And so our focus ministries exist to create spaces in those shared identities that are a little bit
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of an easier door to step into conversations around faith or spaces that engage faith. And so, yeah, Kevin's gonna share a little bit of what some of those spaces look like in InterVarsity.
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Yeah, a lot of different spaces, we call them corners, have different cultural values, different experiences that make those groups of students unique. And we want to be the kind of place where every student would feel like this is a place for me. So one of the ways that we do that in our focus ministries is through multi-ethnic ministries, Latino fellowship called LAFE, Black Campus ministries, Native ministry. And then we've got some groups of students that are
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focused around specific ideas or areas of study. So, we have arts ministry, helping artists find ways to connect in faith and justice and life. Then Athletes University with coaches, teams, athletes, trainers, and that whole community and what does it mean to serve Jesus. And then Greek University. People don't think of Christian students in Greek life, but what does it mean to be in
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a fraternity or sorority and be a Christian. And then International Student Ministry, helping students who are maybe studying here at UNLV from around the world, and nurses, Christian fellowship, to equip students and nurses to love people like God would and to demonstrate that in culture. And so these are all different ways
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that InterVarsity has set up focus spaces for us to help specific groups of students connect with each other and connect with Jesus in a way that feels like I belong here and I'm part of a community that looks like me and feels like me and we are making a difference together.
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Wow, there's a lot of these ministries that I haven't heard, that I've never ever heard of.
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Yeah.
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The BCM, Lafayette AAM, and IC, International Student Organization. Those are the four ministries that I've heard of. And another one, I'm not sure if this is Focus Ministries, Access, is something that Dom told me about.
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Yeah, I should have mentioned that. Thanks Jabri. Access University, we've just started looking at how is it that we provide access for all kinds of students on campus, talking about our neurodivergent students, students that might need extra help or care in some specific area, and we've become kind of aware of the way that we have unintentionally, I think, made barriers for students who don't think and act like
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everybody else. And so Access University is helping to open those doors and help us make really inclusive spaces.
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All righty. And something I was planning to ask about the barriers, like how do, what are some ways that you can help students come to Christ if they've experienced those like barriers as far as like the ethnic studies, not that you have the ethnic ministries like BCM, AAM, and Lafe?
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Yeah, I mean, I can speak a little bit to that. In my own experience with church, before even being a part of a university, it was just very white dominant, culturally speaking, in a lot of the churches and spaces I stepped into. I am biracial, and so having the white experience sometimes resonated with part of my heritage, and then sometimes there's a lot of disconnect in that. And so thinking about that, the idea of barriers, I think one thing that's been really life-giving in focus ministries is inner varsity, is recognizing that I can bring my whole self of all the
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different identities and the different things that, like Kevin said, these people look like me, these people think like me, these people are in the same kind of stage of life, whether it's like arts or athletes or Greek ministry, that we're in the same community. There's a lot of ways that there's just an openness to it that feels safe. Yeah, I think in my, what was really life-giving for me was seeing a new experience that was still faith-based, still we talked a lot about Jesus in our focus ministry spaces, but there were different
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ways that I was seen more fully by the community that I was a part of, that I found in diversity.
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I think there's a way that students think about what faith or Christianity or religion means and what that's about. So we have this kind of picture in our mind and I think unfortunately, a lot of times that thought is like is negative, is emphasizes the ways in which people have been hurt by the church and where religious communities have really not been sensitive and have offended people and that is kind of a cultural background that's in our minds when a student of color, for example, interacts with
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a group like a university, I think those are some of the things that they're thinking about. And so to be able to have a space where we're acknowledging we haven't done everything right, but we're going to do everything we can in order to connect and make a space that feels like home is really, I think, engaging and endearing to people. The other thing that I think about is, even in my own ethnic journey, as a mixed person, I grew up in this black family, but my mom and everybody around us is white.
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And there is a sense in which I'm asking the question, what am I, and what community do I belong to, and how do I fit here? And trying to explore what those spaces are like. And so I feel like our focus ministries are places where students have, there's free reign to process those questions.
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And be like, how do I fit in this community? How has God created me? What's unique and beautiful about this community? How can that be celebrated? And what is happening in all of us as we do it together? I think that's a compelling space
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that young people wanna be in.
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Yeah, I can speak from experience. When I first came to InterRusty Christian Fellowship, I remember I first reached out to Kevin, although I didn't meet him until I think weeks or at least a month later after coming. I instantly felt like I was at home. Like seeing the diverse background of different students coming together,
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it's a little close to heaven on earth, I would say.
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We hope it is.
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Somewhat.
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But like, heaven on earth, Kevin actually said something about Urbana, which is another topic I'll be talking about at some point in the future. Not Urbana, World Assembly. Yeah, Urbana is another episode. Jonathan and Kevin, what focus of ministries are you a part of? And to replace the second part of the question, I would say, what are some ways, this is probably a future question as well,
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but what are some ways you've used them to connect people to Christ or what are some fun experiences you've had?
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Yeah, kind of to go back a little bit on your comment earlier around you not having heard heard about some of the focus ministries that Kevin mentioned earlier. Vegas doesn't have a focus ministry that exists for all of the different focus ministries that are kind of like on the website that we've seen before. And so sometimes these focus ministries kind of pop up and something starts to stir for a little while and we create that space and see kind of the structure around our staff team is
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we have a lot of shared experience, shared roles across our campuses, the three campuses that we are more present on here in Nevada State, UNLV, and CSN. And so yeah, people will come to me a little bit more for the LAFE, the Latino-Specific Focus Ministry. I've had more experience in that and engaged with some LAFE staff that are around our movement and just been in a lot of those spaces. So I'm usually the point person when we start talking about LAFE. But again, there's still the ethnic-specific focus ministries have really been more prominent in our Vegas
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experience over the last, you know, several years. And so that's where we've been. And so we all have relationship and exposure with students from all different types of ethnicities. And so, yeah, primarily though I would be the staff around La Faye ministry in Las Vegas. Jonathan, you've got a La Fe conference coming up in December. What is that about? Oh yeah, the La Fe conference. Yeah, yeah, so the La Fe conference is open for any college student with Latino heritage and so that
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conference is called Remember, Lifting Up Humble Voices. We're going to be going through the Book of Luke during that conference but this is a chance, it's gonna be in Phoenix, this end of December, December 27th to 30th. Students from all over our intervarsity movement across the US are invited to come to Phoenix during those dates.
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We're gonna be diving into this topic around the Book of Luke, talking about humility, and the conference will be tracked, and so students will have the option to opt into a justice-focused track and how we see that in the Book of Luke and a leadership track
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and how do we live into the fullness of our Latino heritage and experience as leaders on the college campus.
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Awesome, and registration is open at the moment. Yes. I will be there, I plan on being there myself since I am biracial as well, I'm half black and half Dominican. Unfortunately, I do not speak Spanish,
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although I do understand a little bit.
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Hey, same here, Jabri.
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Oh, man. Yes, so Jabri, one of the areas that I get to work with students is in our Black Campus Ministry with black students around the area, and it's really great to be able to coach students and ask the question, how can we be this kind of community on campus? And you went with us last year to our BCM conference.
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We've got another one of those coming up in February. The Black Campus Ministry West theme this year is At the Table. And one of the things I think that's really cool about that is the way that meal time and sitting at the table and this kind of family community, everybody gathered around the meal.
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There's a soul food space right there where there's something authentic to the black experience in that. And then we get to talk to students about what does it mean to have your soul satisfied by Jesus and what does that look like? And where are we on that journey? And so we're inviting students to the table and we're just expecting to have a great time. Like whenever you have, you know, 300 college students in a hotel together, we're going to have a good time and we're going to do it in community. And that's part of what we're about in all of these focused
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areas is helping students be part of that community where they recognize the beauty that God has given them. And you asked about what's a fun experience. I always think about my friend Joie. A couple of years ago, was a student here at UNLV and felt like, I want to see black community thrive. I want to see students who are walking in faith. What does that look like? And one of our staff at the time, Kelly is our good friend, and they went and walked around the campus and just tried to connect with people and find out what is the, what are people's needs? What are black students looking for at UNLV and around our city.
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And it was out of that that really started what we do now in working with black students. And I just think about the influence that each person has if we take it seriously and we really go out on campus and look for people and go, hey, how can we connect? How can we build a relationship?
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Something really great happens.
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Awesome, and yes, I do plan on being at the next BCM West depending on my work schedule and the job that I have, they usually take place on weekends. So I would encourage you, I would encourage any of the Black or Latino students to register for any of these conferences. Are there any other ethnic-based conferences coming up for any of those who are of different backgrounds that you know about? Sorry, I didn't...
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I would just point you to university.org, click on Focus Ministry, you can find the dates of the AAM student conference that's coming up and I'm not sure in my mind which other ones are coming up really quickly
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but you can find them all online at the site.
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I'm pretty sure Native University has a conference this November potentially, I think pretty soon. But yeah, online would be the best place to find the updated information.
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Isn't there also a mixed ethnic conference?
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Yeah, we have. Well, I don't know if we don't have a conference coming up, but we have a group that does what's called multi-ethnic initiatives. And my friend Chandra is all about helping students who are multiracial figure out what does that mean?
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How do I fit into these contexts? I know as a mixed person myself, I have felt like I don't fit in either of these spaces where people look at me and they go like, well, you're both. You're mixed. You're black. You're white. But the experience of being part of those groups has often been not like I'm both, but like I'm neither. And so our multi-ethnic initiatives team provides resources and helps us as people figure out where am I in this story and what part of this story is God working really for beauty in my life.
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And so multi-ethnic initiatives is doing those things. I'll check, Jabri, if there's a mixed ministry conference coming up. So what are some benefits that you've noticed students
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having at the Folks Ministry? Yeah, I think what I've noticed, and it kind of goes a little bit back to what Kevin was sharing about the Jawa story, there is a level of, I don't know, maybe like deeper freedom that I've noticed students get to experience when they're in
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some of these focus ministry space. Whether it's ethnic specific, which we've been talking a lot about, or some other kind of ministry, there's a level of freedom of comfortability, conversations that just happen.
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Two weeks ago I was driving three of our black students that are over at Nevada State, I was giving them rides back home, and that night we had talked about multi-ethnicity and the value of multi-ethnicity. And I mean, I'm not black,
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and I didn't have the shared experience, but all three of these students just started sharing about multi-ethnicity and talking about what that means for them and their own desire to deepen their journey and their ethnic identity and wanting to know more
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about where their heritage comes from and not just you're black, which is what they've gotten from their parents often. And so it just sparked this conversation that I wonder if it would be the same, if there would be that comfortability and that freedom felt to share some of these thoughts and these feelings
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in a space that wasn't so predominantly black as the truck ride, that I just happened to be that way as we were driving home. And so that's been something that I've seen in our BCM experiences that I've been in, in our LAFE Latino-specific experiences, that there's just conversations and shared values and literal experiences of life that foster great conversation.
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And there's almost something that clicks sometimes for students of like, wow, there's such a value here and there's such an importance here. How do we share this with our other friends that also are a part of this larger university community but maybe this isn't on their radar?
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So that's been something that I've really, really loved to see.
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So I know we touched on the conferences, but what are some other activities that take place during the semester? So it could be anything from past LaFay or BCM events that we've done.
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Yeah, I'll just jump in on our BCM students have just last summer started doing like some get together for a meal, for coffee, for conversation and just creating spaces where people can be together. I think that's a value among our black students is being together and sharing experience. And so there's some regular kind of times of being together. And
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And then what some other chapters in university do in BCM, I'm going next month to LA to talk with some black students. They do an event called Black Church Thursday where once a month at their larger communities like large group gathering, they take over that space and they do a black church for the night. And so I'm going to go and speak at that event and help students beyond just the group of black students to have this experience of what does black culture look like and how they can be a part of that, how can they support that space, and how black students can also be a part of the larger community.
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And so we get to share that together. We get to share some gospel music. We get to share a meal together and really talk about what is God doing. And I think those are the kinds of experiences that we see more and more that bring people together as opposed to dividing people and trying to separate everybody. And I think that people have often asked in terms of focus ministry, okay, InterVarsity, okay, Kevin, you're just trying to separate people. And that's not the heart at all. What we want to do is to connect with people where they are and in their
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their experience, their culture, their story. And the way to do that is to go what are you walking through right now? What is your community? And what has God doing in that space? And I think that's how how Focus Ministries really thrive is is being involved in everyday life and what does life look like for the
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that group of students on campus. Yeah I can I can definitely speak as far as, like I've seen students who may feel like they don't belong because of their ethnic identity, but at the end of the day, God created us in his image and regardless of our ethnic background, we're all equal in his eyes and he loves each and every one of us. Like nobody is loved more than one. No one is loved more than another. So God loves everyone equally. Let's move on to our next question because we're kind of running a little low. So what are some challenges that you often face during these ministries?
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Yeah, I mean, it kind of continuing on with Kevin's thought there around the perception that certain people from the outside looking in are like, why is there this separation? Especially in our experience of, again, what we've talked so much about is our focus ministries have been predominantly around ethnicity.
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And so that is already a hard thing for Christians, for non-Christians, for people to talk about in general, is how do we continue to talk about ethnic divides and racism and, right, there's a lot tied into justice conversations and like there's there's a lot packed into potentially for people when they start
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thinking about ethnicities and actually identifying and the phrase of kind of like isn't it better to be colorblind and so I think some of that gets really construed when someone is not able to sit down have a conversation and like what is the heart behind this thing that's happening? If there's not a posture and an openness to receiving and understanding something that's unfamiliar, that's where I've seen some challenges and just misunderstandings.
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Yeah, I think that would be part of it.
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Yeah, we've spent a minute talking about ethnic ministry, right? And so I was just thinking, maybe we should say a little bit about some of our focus ministries that aren't ethnic based Because I think that helps us think about how we see people. So I think about arts ministry that Is designed to help Art students of all kinds that could be music theater dance
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You know art painting sculpture, whatever that is could be designed in a lot of ways How is it that we connect our art and our faith to our life? design in a lot of ways. How is it that we connect our art and our faith to our life? And how do we see the work of justice and Jesus in those things?
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And that's a community of people that have beautiful gifts to give to the world around them. And in a varsity, we want to be a space where we nurture and cultivate those gifts and say those things are valuable. We want to benefit from that. And we want you to be able to share it with people.
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Like, athletes has its own culture and space in like how a team operates, how we travel, how we do this work together. And so to see like teams and coaches, athletes, trainers, support staff in that athletic environment, like be transformed by Jesus while they're like meeting all the demands of collegiate athletics is its whole thing.
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And there's a group of people there who can really be transformed and have so much to offer the kingdom. And I mentioned earlier, Greek university people don't think of like Christians in Greek life.
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But I feel like that's a really important space of like teaching college students. Here's how you can live out your faith even in these settings. And what example that kind of looks like. I think about international students,
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students who are here on our campus from other countries, they're experiencing a change in culture, they're experiencing change in community, they're studying a new thing, like everything has changed about that experience. And so to help an international student feel like
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this is a place that is like home for you is really a gift and a blessing. And those cultures and those experiences are gifts for us as well. We're not part of that. And then I think about like Nurses Christian Fellowship where helping students think about spiritual health alongside of physical health, I think is a benefit to us all.
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And so it's not just that there are like different ethnic groups and we want each ethnic group to have their space, we're asking the question, what are the gifts that God has given to each group of people? And how can us as a culture and as a whole college campus be blessed by the gifts of those people? Those could be black blessings, they could be Latino blessings, they could also be artistic blessings, they could be international blessings, and however we see God working in those things. And I think that's really the gift of focus ministry.
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Are there any students who are drawn to the chapter, to the general chapter eventually, or at some point during their time in the specific ministry?
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Yeah, definitely. I think the most recent one, and this again isn't a focus ministry on the website, but the math department. So our other staff, Eric, he just graduated a couple years ago, PhD in math.
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And so he was around the math department all the time, being a GA, working in the math department as a tutor. Like he was around that space. That was his home base on campus. And since he has graduated and came on staff, he still has that community,
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and he's still very, very much involved in the math department, and has a lot of relationships. And all I can say is there's been a huge influx over the years of math department students coming and joining them. So even just the last couple of weeks,
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he, I think he probably had like five or six guys that joined him after he made the invite to say, not just, hey, go and be a part of this thing, but hey, come with me and join me. You know me, you can trust me. Let me show you this great community
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that I'm also a part of. And so that's been a really awesome recent example of students from a focus ministry being more plugged into the, what we call the multi-ethnic chapter.
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Oh, yeah.
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Yeah. I was kind of referring to like, have you noticed students from like, LFA or BCM being more drawn to the general chapter after being a part of it for a while?
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I have seen that. I think though that we should think about this a little bit differently. If we're inviting somebody into a space that is really helpful, connected to their experience and their culture. I would love to see a larger experience of that and see students engaged in a much larger chapter. But I don't think the goal for us as InterVarsity staff is to move people from their focus ministry into a larger chapter. I think the goal is to see them grow in faith and grow in their relationship with Jesus.
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And I think that can happen in the focus space. I think that can happen in the larger chapter context. But I think that wherever we see the Spirit of God at work in people, that's a gift and a blessing, and we want to celebrate it, even if it is in the right space, because that's where the students are finding connection and belonging.
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Thank you. Yeah, our primary goal is to get people to come to Christ as Lord and Savior. We are not here to force it, we're here to encourage people. So, I really appreciate you guys coming on.
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So, remember folks, you can follow me at blackball.777productions. You can follow InnerVarsity at UNLV and inner varsity at Nevada State on Instagram. Thank you once again. It's been a great show. It's been a great show.
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The black balls got to bounce.
Transcribed with Cockatoo