Alisha and Joshua Garber ‘prefer to lead from behind or beside.’

Alisha and Joshua Garber infuse two Anabaptist values, hospitality and reconciliation, into the lives of their students at LCC International University in Lithuania.

They’re about to start their third year at LCC International, a Christian university started in 1991.

Alisha is the director of community life and dean of discipline, while Joshua will be the spiritual formation coordinator after two years of being the resident director.

“We prefer to lead from behind or beside,” says Joshua. “I try to be a sounding board, and be transparent. I like to remove myself from a position of power over a student and instead say, ‘Hey, let’s go on a bike ride’ or, ‘What’s bugging you or going on in your life?'”

Alisha is excited to implement a restorative justice model for the disciplinary process that encourages mentorship. In her role as the dean of discipline, she has noticed that the system, which involved punishment through fines, didn’t teach students to make better choices.

Instead it taught students to avoid consequences. Or, if they had enough money, they simply had a check ready before they threw a party, she says.

This year, there won’’t be fines, and when violations do occur, an adult will walk alongside the offenders and talk about what their goals are and how to redirect energy into positive goals.

“The students really bought into this, so next year we’re going full force with a restorative justice model,” says Alisha. “In a culture where everything is unequivocally right or wrong and where the students most likely grew up in a place that was corrupt, this will not be easy. So hold us in your prayers for that.”

She understands the struggle that students will go through as they shift from a punitive model to a model of grace. She didn’t grow up Anabaptist and worked as a military counselor for six years.

“With the soldiers I dealt with before, I was legalistic in the way that I bossed them around,” says Alisha. “In my time working in Lithuania, I’ve seen that things are never absolutely wrong or absolutely right. You want it to be, because that’s easier, but it never is. Applying grace in radical ways has been a gradual process for me, but a very important process.”

In Joshua’s new role as spiritual formation director, he says he is looking forward to being able to accomplish his goal to be in a position where he can talk more deliberately about his faith.

“I also have five students who are incredibly passionate about this same thing,” he says. “They told me they wanted to join the team because they wanted to transform the campus. And that’s very exciting to me.”

He told his spiritual life team that this next year will be about going to the people.

They’re going to try to implement an incarnational ministry, which is an approach of being like Jesus to the people you connect with regularly and using your gifts to minister.

When the Garbers first arrived on campus, the university was hosting a summer language institute, organized by Mennonite Mission Network worker Robin Gingerich, where students can learn English. They noticed there were only a few people on campus, and they were all isolated.

Since they had just moved from an intentional community, their first thought was that they needed to organize a potluck so that everyone would get together, says Joshua. The potluck brought together faculty, staff and students, who didn’t usually do things together outside of the classroom.

One student, Ejike Nnamdi Nwosu, liked the idea so much that he started to host his own “underground potlucks”once regular classes started.

“There were kids from all over the university who have nothing in common, who don’t even hang out together, yet they’re eating together and talking and sharing their lives,” says Joshua. This was a change from the typical dining culture at the school where students usually took their food into their rooms to eat.

The Garbers also noticed a change in Nwosu’s behavior. Before, he wouldn’t pray in public and asked Joshua to pray before the meals. But now, two years later, Nwosu asks the blessing for the food.

“As Anabaptists, I think God is calling us to be a positive voice in this conversation that is happening in Europe,” says Joshua. “We are a new voice, at least to the students, in the faith conversation happening on campus.”