 "Photo: Ryan Killian")
 "Photo: Ryan Killian")
This week marks the 13th annual Rez Week, an event striving to unite the many Christian organizations on campus through activities set up outside Gregory Gym.
"This is a week to see all the Christian groups come together and create a dialogue about Christianity on campus," said Justin Christopher, one of Campus Renewal Ministries' campus directors and a founder of the event.
Rez Week made its first appearance on campus in 1995 through sponsorship of the Campus Renewal Ministries and the ideals of Christopher and Campus Renewal President Jeremy Story, Christopher said.
"You hear a lot about how much the church is broken up, but this is a testament of the opposite. We're all coming together to celebrate the resurrection of Christ," said Abigail Tseng, a Plan II and accounting senior who attended Rez Week for her fourth year this year.
The event was originally held annually the week of Easter, but Holy Week conflicts with certain church denominations, and the late date of Easter in some years pushed the organization to change the week.
"We wanted four or five weeks left in the semester after Rez Week," Christopher said.
The extra weeks at the end of the semester are to be used to show an extended unification of the various Christian organizations on campus, once they have been united during Rez Week, Christopher said.
"This year the theme is 'grassroots Christianity,'" said Jill Baggerman, a religious studies freshman who helped organize the event.
The theme is expressed mostly through live music and student art, which decorates a prayer house where students can pray 24 hours a day this week. Much of the art depicts religion through nature, said Kimberly Chung, media director of Campus Renewal Ministries.
"People can worship God through whatever they are most creative in," Chung said.
The goal, Baggerman said, is to make Christianity more of an organism instead of an institution.
"Grassroots Christianity is the opposite of our view of Christianity today, which is the mega-institution," Tseng said.
There is live music from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. everyday this week and special performances in the evenings, which are posted on a board outside Gregory Gym.
One feature of the event, which never changes, despite theme variations, is a free speech board, where students are allowed to freely answer questions such as, "What would you change about church?" Answers ranging from "nothing" to "everything" to "hypocrisy and discrimination" already fill the board.
"We just wanted to get people talking and hear what they have to say and think," Baggerman said.
It's so easy, as students, to go through life superficially, and this encourages them to question, Tseng said.
"I'm here because it's time for all Christian believers to come together on campus," she said.
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