9/6/25

We had a full week this week, and we had so many great conversations at CSUF with the whiteboard, as well as outside of that format! We've had such great engagement with the whiteboard so far this semester and have been blessed in the people we meet and conversations that we are able to have! This semester we've asked questions that students write-in their answers on the board as opposed to our previous mark system on the spectrum. So far it seems to be working very well, and I think that students are more engaged by it as they can also learn and inquire about their peers' responses.

One person that I talked to this week at Cal State is a religious Jew (as opposed to the nationality). The question on the whiteboard that day was, "What is an unpopular belief that you think is true?", and she answered that high school theater is overrated. This wasn't exactly the "hottest-take" of the day, but it gave me something to work with for sure! We talked about why she found it to be overrated, as well as her desire to work in TV and film actress in the future. She shared that she grew up involved in theater since the age of three, and that the theater community was very important to her personally. That was why she found high school theater unattractive: the community was cliquey and politically driven - not performance driven. We talked some more about her desire for healthy community, but then I noticed her necklace with a Jewish star on it. Easy money!

I asked her about her necklace and if she was involved with a Jewish community or not. She shared that she is Jewish and attends a synagogue, but I didn't collect that she is too serious of a member based on her seemingly limited scope of understanding and lack of zeal. In her description, she described her Jewish community to be more of a social club than anything else, but she also strongly expressed her distaste for religious groups that hate those outside of themselves. I agreed with her on that being wrong, but I asked her how people should engage with "outsiders" in a loving way while still standing for opposing beliefs. Her response was not terribly wrong, but she definitely seemed to express an apathetic relationship to true religion and doctrine. I think that this is my least favorite attitude to engage with (I think) because their refusal to take a stance about anything concrete can make it really hard to address. It's not so much that they don't claim particular beliefs, but the beliefs have no root in their heart, and they will easily uproot them when advantageous. She mentioned that she was exploring other religions right now, so I asked if she has explored Jesus and Christianity yet. She said that she's really only heard a little bit about Jesus from her synagogue experience where they said that the early Christians falsely accused the Jews of murdering Jesus when it wasn't actually them. They apparently told her that it was just another antisemitic blame-game like the holocaust... In all fairness, I wouldn't want to be responsible for killing the long-awaited Messiah either, but I'm not sure this little lie is sufficient to cover that up. We talked a little bit more about Jesus and Judaism, but it seemed that she was ready to go. Perhaps I read it wrong, but either way I encouraged her to explore the records of Jesus of Nazareth for herself in the Gospel accounts as she considers religions other than Judaism. I think that I could have been blunter with her in the conversation (as I can with most conversations...), but I pray that we will see her again and continue the conversation another time!

We've had so many great conversations this week, and I definitely couldn't record them all here; however, I did have a conversation with some of my neighborhood Jehovah's Witnesses this Friday morning and was able to catch the audio from it. Below is a video with that audio and a transcript of the conversation. Some parts are challenging to hear, but the transcript is pretty close to accurate. This is my first try with this type of video, so please bear with me :)

Thank you so much for your prayer and support for this ministry work! 

We see the powerful effects of prayer, and we are blessed to have you partner with us in that!

With love and peace,

Ivan Penrose