Sponsor a LAUP Intern!

For those of you who would enjoy personally sponsoring one of our 60 student interns, this is the spot for you!

Each intern participates in the LAUP by raising $1600 toward the cost of housing, food, and program events. For some students, finding friends and supporters to bring in the full amount is very challenging.

If you know of a certain student by name, you can click here and type in "LAUP" to find them and give to them, electronically. If you want to give to a student in need who is having a difficult time raising their funds, please contact me by clicking here, and I will give you a few names and details from which you can choose.

Thank you for your investment in LAUP...you're joining in a movement of God on behalf of the future generation and the future of our cities!

Getting Involved with LAUP

If you are a donor or prayer partner of InterVarsity and/or LAUP, we'd love to have your presence this summer! The LAUP program goes from June 19th to July 30th.

There are two major ways you can come alongside us and experience LAUP this summer: through visiting sites where students work with urban residents, or through joining us for one of our evening teaching and worship times.


Site visits:

The first is to join one of our student teams at their ministry site. These teams are made up of five to eight students with a designated student or InterVarsity alumni leader, and they spend six to eight hours per day, Monday through Friday, working with various community agencies in South LA, Long Beach, East LA, Korea Town, and Northwest Pasadena. If you'd like to get your hands dirty and see what students are doing, please contact me and we'll set up a time. As all sites are working with at-risk youth and vulnerable adults, communicating with sites ahead of time is necessary, so please contact us at least two-weeks before you intend to visit: Scott_Hall@ivstaff.org


Evening teaching time visits:

For the duration of LAUP, all students will gather every Thursday night at 7 pm for a time of testimony, teaching, and training. These times involve student sharing, worship, and teaching on a weekly LAUP theme. Additionally, the first week of LAUP--July 19th through 23rd--is our orientation week, and there is teaching all day and in the evening. Any of these times you'd like to visit would be great, or you can visit us based on the teaching focus of the week as seen in the schedule below:

June 19 to June 23--Orientation week: each day covers a different LAUP focus
June 30--Structures of Power and Spiritual Warfare
July 7--God's Heart for the Poor and Our Repentance
July 14--Crossing Cultures and Incarnational Ministry
July 21--Compassion and Servanthood
July 28--Wrap Up of the Summer/Alumni Mentoring Night

All teaching times happen at the Workman Street Church, located at 2620 Workman Street, Los Angeles, CA 90031.

Feel free to just show up, but if you know you're coming, let me know so that I can look for you and email me at: Scott_Hall@ivstaff.org

The Pull Toward the Pressure-Cooker

There’s been a narrative unfolding for the past 18 months that I’ve been waiting to share with you. Well, the wait is over: God has clarified a new layer of focus and calling in my work with InterVarsity!

Back in the fall of 2009, InterVarsity began looking for a new director of the Los Angeles Urban Project. “LAUP” (pronounced “lay-up”) is InterVarsity’s six-week intensive immersion experience in which college students partner with community-based organizations to serve the needs of the urban poor in Los Angeles. On a whim one afternoon, I filled out the application…the more I wrote, the more excited I became.

After being told I was an ideal candidate for the role, I started to really consider it. The more I thought and prayed, the more drawn I felt to this intersection between college students and the urban poor. “Before I get carried away,” I thought, “I should really experience this.” Within my first week as assistant director in the summer of 2010, I was hooked. I saw fruitful teaching flowing from my lips, I was re-energized by the transformation I witnessed in students…I felt that I’d found the role for which God made me.
As of March 1st, I have stepped into the role of full-time director of LAUP. My task is to lead college students into immersion experiences of urban ministry, spiritual formation, and leadership training that change them forever. I will lead our six-week summer internship, will develop additional weekend-long and spring break experiences, and will speak at campuses all over the Greater Los Angeles. My role of supervising the campus works in Los Angeles has been divided up between several supervisors to release me to invest more deeply in student leaders, and to expand the scope and impact of LAUP over the next two years.

I’m not sure I’ve ever felt this excited about campus ministry. LAUP is like a pressure-cooker of high-octane, accelerated, intensive transformation in the lives of students: exactly where I feel like I was made to be. And if that were not enough, the result of this transformation is that students consistently dedicate the rest of their lives to creatively caring for the poor and combating the social problems of urban America. I feel honored and humbled by the way God has led me to this dream job.

Please pray for me and for LAUP! There is a lot of work to be done preparing for the summer. Over the next three months I will be designing our summer curriculum, recruiting leaders, networking with urban ministries, and attempting to raise $50K to fund the project. As excited as I am, I am a rookie in this role, and need wisdom, partnership, and encouragement. As you have ideas, contacts, or resources, as well as questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

I am so grateful for your support and partnership in the work of investing in the next generation. Thank you.

Hearing the Soul's Cry for God

One of the UCLA InterVarsity seniors, Layla, had been friends with a woman named Stella all year. Stella is not a Christian, but knew that Layla was. So when Layla invited Stella to come to an InterVarsity meeting geared toward people curious about God, she figured she owed her a favor and reluctantly agreed. But something happened in that meeting. As she sat and listened to the InterVarsity students perform a cover of Coldplay’s “Fix You”, Stella suddenly began to weep. The speaker shared the story of the prodigal son—how we were made to have more relationship with our Father than we’ve known—and ended with an invitation to consider studying the life of Jesus in the Bible, with a Christian. At the end of the meeting, Stella approached Layla, “What was that thing the speaker was talking about? Where you meet with someone to learn more about Jesus and what he really has to offer? Because we need to do that!”

God is at work on campus. Whether students know it or not, he is in pursuit of each and every one of them. The mission of Inter Varsity is to nurture witnessing communities of students who love their neighbors, who invite them to experience God, and who are equipped to lead them to Jesus. Because we’re living this out with hundreds of students at UCLA, today Stella has heard her soul’s cry for God, and is responding to it by intentionally exploring what Jesus has to offer her. Layla is learning, first-hand, how to let God work through her in the life of her friend.

These things don’t happen without you.

InterVarsity ministry is funded entirely by individuals and churches that have a heart to see the next generation encounter Jesus, be transformed by him, and be equipped to live lives that impact our world. Our mission is one that requires partnership, and you are one of those partners. Thank you for participating in this significant and vital work.

As we come to the close of the calendar year, would you consider giving an extra gift to help us continue to sustain and expand the work on campus? At the halfway point of the academic year, we find ourselves $15K shy of our goal. Any part you feel led and able to play in helping us reach that would be a blessing and encouragement.

As we celebrate the entrance of God into our world this Christmas season, I invite you to also to join me in celebrating the ways that God is entering into the lives of students on campus.

Merry Christmas!

When Secrets Reveal the Truth

To walk the USC campus today is to be impressed. The image of the powerful, confident, determined Tommy Trojan captures the students of the campus: they're young, attractive, and they've got things together. At least that's what you would think until you read their secrets.


Last week the InterVarsity students of USC set up a booth on campus that asked, “We all have a secret...What's Yours?” Students across campus were invited to write something they’d never told anyone on a 3 x 5 card, place it anonymously into a box. Those cards were posted on the walls of the booth every hour, and they tell a whole story all by themselves. In truth there’s a hidden reality on campus today: underneath the veneer of confidence and health, students live their lives in pain, confusion, and emptiness. They are dealing with real issues, and they need real healing, and real hope.


As students viewed others’ secrets on the booth, and put their own into the box, they were invited to hear a Christian perspective on being freed from the shame of secrets. Last Thursday evening, over 100 students showed up. InterVarsity staff Larissa Marks shared some of her own failures and secrets, and how she experienced God offering her forgiveness, healing, and freedom. Two students ended the evening making new commitments of faith, six committed to attending an exploratory Bible study to learn more about what Jesus could offer them, and half the room stood to commit to living more openly and honestly.


As I stood on campus last week, watching InterVarsity students engaging their peers, I was moved. And I was reminded: this is why I do what I do. To get to lead students deep in their faith, and then empower them to offer the healing, the love, and the direction of God to their peers...this is the mission of InterVarsity, and it's one our world is dying for. Yet upon first glance, you'd never know it.


The work is far from over...but the healing and hope of God are as relevant today as they've ever been.