ICF Fall Welcome Party '07

Tonight was the Fall '07 Welcome Party for the International Christian Fellowship group at UT-Dallas. We had a huge turnout. In fact, it was nearly too huge. We came very close to becoming victims of our own success.

The university is getting really serious about some of their rules concerning event sizes. One rule is that any meeting of 200 people or more requires the campus police to be present to ensure security. Further, at least seventy-five percent of attendees must be students. We were probably okay with regard to the student/volunteer ratio, but we came right to the limits with regard to attendance. There were actually campus staff present who were checking our numbers and threatening to shut us down if any more people came in.

Dealing with bureaucracy can be trying, and there have been times when it seemed as if they have especially had Christian groups in their cross hairs. Yet I can also see their perspective on this issue. There were a few times tonight when the crowd did seem as if it could easily become unmanageable. The case could also be made that putting a lot of people together who don't know each other and who are from very different parts of the world does carry a certain degree of risk.

I've wondered a lot lately if the Christian world overly conditions us to gauge success by numbers. I often hear churches described in terms of attendance. Evangelists are usually praised for the size of their crusades. Yet examples abound in which unchecked growth leads to catastrophe. Organizations which grow too fast frequently implode. Large animal species are acutely vulnerable to extinction threats. Stars that grow too big can collapse under their own gravity into black holes. Bigger is simply not always better.

As the international student ministry at UTD matures, I pray that the Lord will provide His guidance to ensure that the growth we experience is meaningful growth and that we will have the wisdom to be good stewards of those He sends us.