by Emily Snell | Oct 5, 2012 | News Slider
In this week’s installment of Lumination News, Caitlin Selle and Nick Glende are behind the news desk to update you on what’s been happening at Lipscomb and around Nashville this week. Clay Smith brings you the latest information in political news, Nicolette Carney delivers your weather forecast, Brynn Watkins tells you the scoop on all things entertainment and Ariel Jones offers a look at sports. Videos feature the High Rise evacuation, the first Presidential debate watch party, Lipscomb’s inline hockey team, the Festival of Nations, an interview about paying off student loans, changes to Sodexo dining options, missions fair, Live on the Green and Nashville Spotlight on the West End area. Live on the Green from lumination Network on...
by Crystal Davis | Sep 2, 2012 | Uncategorized
The Well, a coffee shop with a special mission, opened its doors this summer in Green Hills. This trendy new spot for students to lounge and study has a slight twist. It’s a non-profit organization geared toward ending poverty. The Well is tucked away on Richard Jones Road in Green Hills, just across from Trader Joe’s. The coffee house donates its proceeds to help create sustainable solutions for people without water and food across the world. Adjunct Bible Professor Rob Touchstone and five other men comprise the board of directors that essentially runs the booming new business. “It’s a way of addressing poverty in the world,” Touchstone said. “This is our effort to give back. “Our goal here is to be a non-profit missional coffee house where we’re giving away all of our profits to try and alleviate poverty by bringing sustainability to different parts of the world, mainly in Africa.” While it’s only been open for a little over a month, The Well has already completed one project to give back. Touchstone said the coffee shop’s proceeds bought a new washing machine for an infirmary–essentially a nursing home–in Jamaica. Touchstone said he was enrolled in Earl Lavender’s missions graduate course about five years ago when he was asked the question, “What would the church look like outside the walls of the church building?” He challenged his group of friends to tackle this question head on. Touchstone said his goals for The Well were to “take down the religious barriers that sometimes get put up by church buildings, stained glass and formal religion and to try and get in to the...
by Cory Woodroof | Oct 12, 2011 | News Slider
If you either got the scent of a delicious meal or heard some good music this past Monday night, thank the folks at Open Table Nashville. Open Table Nashville recently hosted its 2nd annual Southern Cookin’ and Music Festival in the Flatt Amphitheater. The event was created to help raise money for the non-profit, interfaith organization. Brett Flener, a senior Law Justice and Society major and one of the organization’s co-founders, is very appreciative of the social and service clubs that helped with the event, as well as the other supporters of the organization. In addition to the southern food, there were several musical acts including Sarah Carter and the Pretty Ponies, Hogslop Duo, Jo’shua Odine, Relapse and Chrome Pony. Flener likes to think of the event as “spreading joy just to spread more joy.” He sees it as a “win-win” situation for everyone involved. Open Table Nashville defines itself as “a non-profit, interfaith community that disrupts cycles of poverty, journeys with the marginalized and provides education about issues of homelessness.” Open Table also works to provide community and transitional housing. Flener says that he wants everyone to know that Open Table Nashville is a community. ”We’re not really here to ‘fix’ people,” he said. “We don’t see these people as problems. We see them as brothers and sisters to be journeyed with.” Flener said that he wants Open Table Nashville to provide a community for those who have lost their own. “What we are looking to do, especially through our community houses, is to plug in and say ‘We want to be that family now,” he said. “We...
by Emily Snell | Mar 25, 2011 | News Slider
Lipscomb students were turned away at Scotland’s border during spring break when they tried to enter the country for their mission trip. The team was denied access by Scottish customs officials when they arrived on Sunday, March 13, to start their work with Westmaines Church of Christ. The situation is currently under investigation. Katie Dillard, senior in studio art, was one of the team’s student leaders. She said it is still somewhat unclear why the group was detained, but she said she thinks they were targeted by the officials. “We’re all white Anglo-Saxons,” Dillard said. “But none of us look at all suspicious. I guess the moment we showed up on the UK border, I felt like we were profiled as Americans.” Dillard, who is from the Washington D.C. area, has travelled internationally before and said that she worked hard to prepare her team for the trip. But things started to go wrong, she said, when one of the customs officials began questioning a student. “She was asking very intruding questions,” Dillard said. “He was not expecting her to interrogate him like that.” “Everything started snowballing downhill from there.” One team member, Emily Millstead, a freshman social work major, was cleared to enter the country but was sent back when the officials decided to detain the whole group. Millstead, who is originally from Grand Blanc, Mich., said she has traveled internationally before but felt nervous in Scotland. “That’s the most intimidating customs I’ve ever been through,” Millstead said. “It was kind of intense.” Millstead said she was putting away her passport when she heard some commotion and realized there...
by Leah Raich | Jan 18, 2011 | News Slider
New York City holds a different place in the hearts of this year’s winter break mission trip participants, after having seen the city in a different light than most tourists.. Coby Davis, assistant professor of education, along with 15 students and 2 alumni traveled to The Big Apple with a unified purpose: service before self. In a city, or shall I say, City, with so many distractions and tourists traps, it is rather easy to overlook the needs of the people who live there. The majority of our time was spent at P.S. 179, a school in the Bronx, one of the five boroughs of New York City. This school serves pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. I had the opportunity to be a teacher’s aide in a third-grade class. My goal was to foster good relationships with my students, in hopes that they would feel comfortable talking and reading to me and asking for help as needed. Although I have been on several other mission trips to Mexico, Honduras and Africa, this was my first chance to work with this age group. Was it challenging and frustrating at times? Certainly. Would I go back tomorrow? Absolutely. Another aspect of our trip included service projects at both World Vision and Momentum. World Vision is an international evangelical relief and development organization whose primary objective is to “promote human transformation, seek justice and bear witness to the good news of the Kingdom of God.” This organization receives school supplies, clothing, food commodities and medicine from vendors across the world that seek to engage in the act of giving to the less fortunate....
