2 Major Changes...

After the last Bridges International Dinner at the end of the 2022/2023 school year, we packed up, said our goodbyes, and headed our own ways to our cars or dorm rooms. Some of these goodbyes were temporary, some were forever. In many ways it felt like all of the dinners before, but in other ways, this was a brand-new feeling. I sat in my car, not quite able or ready to drive away yet, wondering "What did we do this year?" 

It wasn't hard to think back to all of the good things we accomplished, the meals we made, friends we met, conversations we had, people we helped. I made more airport and DMV trips that year than any other year! As far as numbers went, we had what looks like a burgeoning ministry. We were meeting every other week and would see 40+ international students join us for our free dinner event. Quantitatively, that looks awesome, but our ultimate goal is not to give away free meals.

Qualitatively, our effort was providing opportunities for spiritual conversations at the dinner event, but those are meant to provide a taste of something more that should lead to deeper conversations throughout the week. The goal is to have dinner, broach spiritual conversation, and see who might be interested in meeting at a different time during the week to study the Bible or to be discipled. This was the main problem that I kept coming back to as I sat in my car that night and what I would continue to think about throughout the summer. How do we become more than just a dinner club?

Change #1: Location, Location, Location

One of the other problems is that we were meeting at a location called "Grad Student Housing." This is where the UCSD grad students lived and it was at least a 22-40 minute walk depending on where you are on campus. This meant that undergrad students would not attend, which is another con of how our movement operated last year. Our Bridges movement has the strategic placement of being embedded on a larger Cru team in San Diego, but also especially at UCSD. To be able to tap into the community of Christ-centered Cru undergrad students is a massive boon to our small Bridges team that we weren't able to utilize at that far-off location.