“…For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, Move from here to there, and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
Matthew 17:20
IMPACT 360 is more than just a nine month program.
On the eve of the 5th annual reunion of the Alumni of IMPACT 360, I thought it appropriate to share some thoughts with you on the effects of the program, i.e., the fruits. More than this, I think it appropriate to also reflect on the seeds, which have bore the fruit.
IMPACT 360 employed her inaugural class in September of 2006. The program was created by former missionaries who saw a need in the United States to prepare young Christians for the difficulties of college, as well as train them to be future leaders. More than this, these visionaries saw a need to create a new kind of culture, one that brought honor and praise to the God they had been serving for so long. It may be difficult to capture the exact ideas original to that faithful couple, but one thing is clear: from the start, IMPACT 360 was intended to be a culture changing agent. It was intended to prepare people to do great things in the world.
THE IDEA: take a few college age students and get them together, instruct them in how to discern truth and stand for it. Then send those students out into the world, watching them blossom as they make the world a better place.
This is a great model for doing nearly anything, especially doing a task as daunting as changing the culture one lives in. Yet, it is not a new model. In fact, Jesus incorporated this model a couple thousand years ago and His church has been doing it ever since. What a great model to follow. But interestingly, God always does things that we don’t expect, even when we employ His model of change, the model employed by IMPACT 360. There is always more at work than we are aware of.
What started as a way to directly prepare a few young people each year to change the world, has become a network of like minded people who attempt to live their lives in such a way that God would receive glory. Each incoming class at IMPACT 360 may have the full attention of the faculty and staff, but the story does not end with the students, nor does it even begin with them. Alumni, friends, family members, donors, parents and now children, guest professors, disaster victims, staff, interns, young students in Brazil, Moldova, Prague and Budapest. All of these lives are being changed and now changing the lives of others. All because of a couple of people, who had profound faith in the everlasting God, saw a mountain that needed moving.
If you donate funds, if you donate time, if you pray for the students, if you teach the students, if you worked with us in Prague, if your brother came home from Pine Mountain talking about his worldview, then you are part of the movement. Not a social movement, not a religious or political movement. If you are involved with IMPACT 360 in the slightest of ways, you are involved in the moving of mountains.
Thank you all