Having to move to online ministry felt painful, but also the right next step for Ben Vail and his students at Cal State Fullerton. They didn't let the lack of physical community get in their way of hosting Large Group. Instead, they got creative in their ministry and God showed up! Listen to Ben share how faithfulness in continuing ministry during the disruption led to a student giving his first Large Group talk ever and the responses that followed.
LINKS:
Ben has gathered together what he's learned about Online Large Groups into a webinar and is making it available at intervarsity.org/online.
We've created a website (updated daily) full of resources to help you with Ministering Digitally Through COVID-19: intervarsity.org/online.
Having to move to online ministry felt painful, but also the right next step for Ben Vail and his students at Cal State Fullerton. They didn't let the lack of physical community get in their way of hosting Large Group. Instead, they got creative in their ministry and God showed up! Listen to Ben share how faithfulness in continuing ministry during the disruption led to a student giving his first Large Group talk ever and the responses that followed.
LINKS:
Ben has gathered together what he's learned about Online Large Groups into a webinar and is making it available at intervarsity.org/online.
We've created a website (updated daily) full of resources to help you with Ministering Digitally Through COVID-19: intervarsity.org/online.
Steve Tamayo: 0:02
On a normal week InterVarsity chapters all around the country host something called Large Group. Large Group may not actually be large, but it's where small groups come together to engage with God, to enjoy each other's company and maybe even experience a little bit of transformation. As we engage with ministry during the disruption, there's this question: What happens with things like large group? Can they be done online? Our guest today has figured out how.
Steve Tamayo: 0:43
Hey everybody, this is Steve Tamayo again. Welcome back to Ministry During the Disruption podcast. We have a special guest today. He is a team leader at Cal State Fullerton and Fullerton College, works with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He's actually going to start a new role as an Area Director this summer in the midst of all of this disruption. He's been on staff with InterVarsity for nine years, joined right out of college, and he has figured out something about Large Groups. Welcome to the podcast, Ben Vail.
Ben Vail: 1:14
Thanks for having me, Steve.
Steve Tamayo: 1:16
So, Ben, tell us a little bit. What is a normal Large Group look like in your chapters?
Ben Vail: 1:21
Well, let me paint the picture. So, first of all, we try to get our favorite room on campus. There's this one room in Kinesiology that has like an entryway where are welcome team can hang out. And it has the perfect setting where we're not wall to wall with other classes.
Steve Tamayo: 1:41
So you could be loud. You could be crazy. You can play music and no one's gonna come over and say, like sshsh.
Ben Vail: 1:47
Let's just say our drummer and are guitar players love it, and we invite churches to come and host our students with food. So a lot of times they'll bring pizza and different things.
Steve Tamayo: 1:57
That's a great way to create a community feel and a great way to actually help students connect with local congregations.
Ben Vail: 2:04
Absolutely. And so on a typical night, there's that community. There's that pre-party um, and everyone gets to hang out together and eat food and meet the churches. Um, and then we'll have a game, will have worship, will have a speaker, and recently we've had students speaking at our large groups.
Steve Tamayo: 2:23
Tell me a little bit more about that. So ah, lot of InterVarsity chapters throughout InterVarsity's history have either had the staff worker do the speaking or have asked a local church leader or professor someone to come and speak. Talk to me a little bit about the decision to have students do the speaking.
Ben Vail: 2:42
Well, I think the first time I had a chance to hear about it was there's a staff Kelly Aalseth when she was at U. C L. A. She led a speaker's cohort with students, and I was intrigued by that, that students could speak. I actually have the opportunity to speak in my chapter at Cal State Northridge. Mostly, I think, because we didn't have a staff my senior year and we had to figure out how to do it. But I think the main thing for me is that I think that students can do it.
Steve Tamayo: 3:09
Absolutely! Students can do it. Hey, if you're listening to this and you're a student, maybe you're at a chapter that doesn't have a staff or maybe your staff is sick or they're not able to engaged or not able to lead a Large Group. You could be the one who speaks, right!
Ben Vail: 3:26
I think it's a lot of fun having students speak and our fellowship gets really engaged and is cheering on their friend and calling them pastor, and I think it's just really fun to see students taking that risk. Ah, and also seeing students respond to the calls to faith and taking new steps and risks in their faith because their friends are preaching.
Steve Tamayo: 3:45
Okay, so you have a story about that. But before we hear that story, I want to ask you a little bit about the decision to do Large Group online. So you have your favorite room on campus. You have food coming your way every week from local congregations. Your students love being together, playing games, singing songs together and all of a sudden campus is shut down. How does that feel?
Ben Vail: 4:11
It really is a bummer. Our last Large Group in person was probably one of my top 10 favorite in the last nine years. So the student, Timmy Ho, gave this message that was powerful. We had students responding to the gospel. The room was packed and so going from that to suddenly we can't even see each other. I can't see my students and for that to be happening in a transition period for myself, where I'm soon going to be leaving this chapter to go be an Area Director, that feels really challenging.
Steve Tamayo: 4:43
Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, Ben. I didn't I didn't register that when you told me you were transitioning to being an Area Director.
Ben Vail: 4:49
Having to move to online, while it was incredibly painful, it felt like it was the right next step for us. Because in the midst of all of this chaos and transition, our students are now yearning for community all the more by not being able to see each other, some of them not living back in their apartments or with their friends, and creating this online community space and sticking to the things that we love most with worship and hearing a message from the word, it felt so important to still do in this season.
Steve Tamayo: 5:22
And I think it's helpful for people to hear that the move to online isn't just this like, let's take the hill kind of move. But it's a move that's motivated by love, actually, that you all love each other, that you care about each other, that you're gonna miss each other. It's not even about kind of keeping the momentum of the ministry. As you made the move to online Large Group, what are some ways that that desire to stay connected was part of your decision?
Ben Vail: 5:51
I didn't choose to take this job to run structures on campus. I think the main reason why is my love for the college campus, my love for college students and my deep desire for them to come to know and follow Jesu.s. And thinking about us transitioning off of campus, after taking some time to process my own emotion and figure out like what in the world is happening right now, I began to ask the question, "Well, how can we serve students?" And so that's when I started texting students and phone calling them and taking a look at our structures, like Large Group, and saying, you know, how can we still create a sense of family, still create a sense of community and, ah, help point students to Jesus in the midst of all of this chaos?
Steve Tamayo: 6:33
How did they respond to you even mentioning an online Large Group?
Ben Vail: 6:39
People are excited by new things sometimes, ah, and so if nothing else, people click the link just to see what it's like. I think that we all shared the pain though of, we would much rather be together. We do a pre party online before our large group starts, and a lot of people are just talking about, they see someone join the chat and they're just saying I really missed this person or like "Oh, man, I wish I could see you right now. I wish I could be with you." And so there's definitely a lot of loss. But we're, we're soaking it in as best we can.
Steve Tamayo: 7:08
Yeah, well, tell us the story about your first online Large Group, particularly. What did God do during that time?
Ben Vail: 7:16
The main thing that I would say is we had no idea what we were doing. I hear testimonies sometimes where it just sounds like everything went perfect and they knew what they were doing. And, I think for us, we were just giving it a shot and clicking play. Um, we tried to coordinate with our teams to figure out how we can still do worship and still have a speaker. But this poor student, Peter, was about to give his very first message ever and do it to a laptop.
Steve Tamayo: 7:41
First message ever?
Ben Vail: 7:43
Yes, to a laptop. And so there was lost for him to not be able to give that in person. And he would say that. But he was also down for the challenge and, honestly did a pretty good job dealing with giving his first message to a blank screen.
Steve Tamayo: 7:59
So what was it like at Large Group? You've played your games, maybe have engaged with some music. And then he gets up and speaks. What sort of things are you expecting to happen after his message?
Ben Vail: 8:14
So Peter chose to give a slightly more indirect call and actually invited people to respond by sending him a direct chat on Zoom. And so this removes some of the pressure. There was already a lot of social pressure of everyone's watching me on my cameras right now, and there's actually a high school freshman that had joined our call that was watching this message and felt just a move of the spirit in him. And he responded and said, I want to grow in my faith. I want to be able to follow Jesus more fully.
Steve Tamayo: 8:46
God can use an online space. Hey, if you're listening to this, Ben has willingly been dragged into leading a webinar on this very subject, online Large Groups. He's broken down into what do you need to do an online Large Group, what are some best practices. He's shared some of the things that he's learned in the process. You can find out more information about this webinar at intervarsity.org/online. It's going to be happening on Wednesday, April 1st. But if you listen to this after Wednesday, April 1st, it's not an April Fool's joke, you can go to intervarsity.org/online, and we will put a recording of the webinar right there on our site. Ben, thank you so much for being willing to do this.
Ben Vail: 9:31
Absolutely. It's my pleasure.