10 Ways to Build Community with International Students

Because of intense academic pressure, it is really challenging to find ways to build community within international students’ busy schedules.  Here’s some things we’ve tried to incorporate to build community.

1) Food! Everyone loves food and having international-friendly food really builds community.  For snacks, serve pita and hummus rather than chips and dip. Chicken is a favorite with most cultures and fresh fruit is a winner every single time. And always, always have vegetarian options. We avoid pork altogether at events (no pepperoni pizza) to continue to say “welcome” to our Muslim friends.

2) Cook together. Even better…take them to an international grocery to get the ingredients, and then cook together!   It’s amazing what enjoying their cooking creations does to build warmth in community.

Written by Karen Keyser

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3) Games.  Keep an atmosphere of laughter and warmth when it comes to playing games.  Try to have games that are not too language or culturally dependent.  Our group enjoys Gestures, Catch Phrase, and Murder, as well as simple card games like Uno and Spoons.

4) Culture Nights. Choose a culture and have a night where they cook, share their cultures’ music and dance and art, and share a testimony from someone in that culture. 

5) Sports—and ping pong!  Internationals often love sports, especially football (soccer)!  In our group, Haydee from the Philippines invites students to play ping ping on Saturday afternoons. She always has a great group of busy graduate students who show up for her “Ping Pong gang.”  

6) Holiday parties.  Internationals enjoy learning about American culture, so including them in Superbowl parties, Christmas celebrations, and Easter egg dying can be a lot of fun and help students to feel connected to our culture. 

7) Dance!  We’ve had a ton of fun teaching internationals square dancing and line dancing with a professional caller.  Spontaneous cultural dances often break out at other events, and there’s nothing like fun dancing to build community.

8) Grocery shopping.  One of my volunteers said that the best thing she ever did to connect with her busy student was regular grocery shopping.  The student and volunteer could visit while they did something that the student always wanted to make time to do.

9) Sightseeing together.  Taking advantage of academic breaks & weekends to do touristy things together creates special community memories. We’ve enjoyed DC tours, corn maizes, aquariums, and art galleries with our international friends. 

10) Road Trip!  My all-time favorite way to build community with internationals is at a retreat.  Having extended time to cook together, hike, do puzzles, chat into the night, answer questions, share testimonies, and sing under the stars does wonders for building a loving community.

Dealing with Difficult People

Tom* had been coming to our small group for weeks but he just didn’t fit in.  He often said things that were inappropriate, missed social cues and had a hard time adding to the discussion.  I’d like to say that keeping him included showed that we were deeply in touch with the Spirit, but it was probably because our ministry was so small.  We didn’t care who you were, just as long as you kept showing up.  We needed Tom, but we soon found out it was more than just to fill an empty seat. 

Tom was a difficult person to be with and it wasn’t like getting to know him better made things easier.  He was always negative and had a list of problems.  He would constantly ask for your advice, but then ignore almost everything you’d tell him, but we still needed Tom.

Written by Mike Godzwa

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My friend Dick Foth likes to say, “Everyone is my mentor, because everyone has something to teach me.”  

What did Tom have to teach us?  He helped our group understand what unconditional love was all about.  The years he was with us was a pivotal time in our group.  We were setting the tone and culture of our ministry. The truth is, without Tom, it would have been easy for us to fall into the trap just loving the people who were like us and reaching out to those that could stroke our own ego.  But Tom helped us see past ourselves.  He made us understand that true love is impossible without keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus as our source and relying on the power of the Holy Spirit.  

I’m happy to say that Tom did grow. His personality began to soften as he settled into the acceptance of our community, but the rest of us benefited far more. We got to see how potent Jesus’ love is…especially when we give it away.  

Dealing with difficult people is never easy, but my experience with Tom helped me stop asking, “Why me?” and changed my question to, “What do I have to learn?” 

* We have changed this person's name to protect the difficult. 

15 Essential C.S. Lewis Quotes

The following post was inspired by Relevant's 15 Chesterton Quotes That Will Shape Your Faith. It was compiled by Steve Prawiromaruto, a student involved in Chi Alpha at American University. 

One

“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” – The Great Divorce (1945)

 

Two 

“Jesus Christ did not say, "Go into all the world and tell the world that it is quite right" – God in the Dock (1970)

 

Three

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.”
- Mere Christianity (1952)

Four

"If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed."
- Mere Christianity (1952)
  

Five

"God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain." 
- Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis (2006)

 

Six

"It is not your business to succeed, but to do right; when you have done so, the rest lies with God." - Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C.S. Lewis (2008)

Seven

"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither." – Mere Christianity (1952)

Eight

"If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity." – God in the Dock (1970)

Nine

"Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man." – Mere Christianity (1952)

Ten

"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you." – Essays on Forgiveness (1960)

Eleven

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen — not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." 
 - Is Theology a Poetry (1945)
                                         

 Twelve

"The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God." 
- Mere Christianity (1952)

Thirteen

"Christianity, if false, is of no importance and, if true, is of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important."
- God in the Dock (1970)

 

Fourteen

"God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way."
- The Problem of Pain (1940)

Fifteen

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." 
- Mere Christianity (1952)

I View Evangelism Differently Now

My view of evangelism was way too narrow and rigid. 

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear evangelism is a stranger on the street coming up to me and asking me if I know Jesus.  That sounds terrifying if you are someone who is very shy, non-confrontational and typically keeps spiritual life personal (a lot like me).

But over the past year, I've come to define evangelism differently. 

Evangelism is inviting others to share in the life you are already living with Jesus. 

It really is that simple - let me share a seemingly awkward experience from my personal life. The floor I lived on in my dorm housed sophomores and exchange students, but many of us didn’t spend a lot of time there. I wanted others to come to Chi Alpha events so they could have a chance to be a part of a community that for me has been incredibly meaningful in my college career.  My question for myself became, how can I be invitational to students I’m not friends with and who don’t spend a lot of time just hanging out in the dorm? Well, opportunity to engage with others presented itself in the most unexpected and somewhat uncomfortable place.  

I found the only time I ever spent a significant amount of time with the girls on my floor was in the bathroom.

Written by Allyson Kulmayer 

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Okay, that sounds crazy, maybe even gross, but it’s true.  Standing at the sink washing your face or brushing your teeth is several minutes I got to introduce myself, ask how their day was and even what their interests are.  It seemed strange at first, but it was an opportunity to be friendly to someone and I have some great conversations! 

Nancy is a student from China who in her one semester at American University, joined XAi (Chi Alpha International), came to small group, worship and church, read the gospel for the first time, and made life-long friendships.  Her third night in the dorm, it all began at the bathroom sink with the following. 

• “Hi! My name is…
• Where are you from? …
• Would you like to come with me to a dinner hosted by Chi Alpha for international students?”

I get it, it might be awkward to talk to someone you don’t know about what you study in small group, but the worst thing they can say is they don’t want to come.  

And if you continue to ask her kindly even after she said she’s too busy every week for six months straight, there will come a day when she’s free and remembers you talked about your Monday night small group and asks you if she can come with you.  

How do I know this? It's happened to me before! 

Urban Living - Exciting & Maddening

One day I was talking with a pastor who serves in a community a few hours from D.C.  He casually mentioned that there are about 3000 people who live in his community.  In a split second, it struck me — there were about 3000 people who lived on my street.

At the time I lived in a high rise condo building—one  building that stood tall like a soldier next to several others just like it.  I knew how many residents lived in my building and did the quick math to discover how many people lived in the few short blocks that shared my same street name.  There are about as many people who live on my street as in his entire town.  Now multiply that by the numbers of streets in my neighborhood...and then the number of neighborhoods in my city.  That's a lot of people on Jesus' mind. 

I don’t know if the difference in our communities seemed as dramatic to me before that day.  I don’t think that the people on my street are more important as the people in his town—but there are just so many of them.

Written by Stefa Chappell 

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I have lived in the suburbs, the city and literally off a dirt road in the country, and I have to say that urban living is a bit of a different beast.  One reason for that is the mass of humanity present that sometimes feels squished together in a small space.  There are just an awful lot of us.  And it’s not just that there are a lot of people—there is a high number of remarkably diverse people.  I daily bump into neighbors from different cultures, ethnicities and religions—different in dress, customs, world views, language.  It was like the nations had come to live on my street.  No, the nations actually had come to live on my street. 

The beauty of this crowded reality is that the cross section of this diversity invites us to incarnate the Gospel in so many arenas.  And ministry on any urban university campus shares a similar opportunity.  Take the nations, fill up a small space with them, give them opportunity to learn and exchange ideas, then watch them graduate to dramatically influence their world.  

Truth be told, urban living can be both exciting and maddening.  It's not always easy to live so crowded, and it's ridiculously expensive to live here.  Sometimes we long for open space or silence (or, at least the sound of something other than a siren!).  Sometimes we'd love to be able to afford more square footage for our dollar.  But Jesus called us to be with people in order to incarnate His message.  In the city, there are a lot of people here who can see the message lived through our lives.  

I have to admit it--I'm a city girl.  I enjoy the energy of the city and I don't really mind the sirens (all that much).  Yes, we're crowded but bumping into people simply gives me the opportunity to show some Jesus to them when we do bump.