Lifelines at UVA

Lifelines is a purposeful organization. We believe life is too precious to let it slip by being apathetic about our personal growth and development. Lifelines operates on the studied premise that all people have the same needs, physical, emotional and spiritual. Just as all people need food to survive so all people need relationships with others and a relationship with God in order to experience life at its fullest.

We know this is hard to swallow at first. The idea that we need others, and even more so a God, is quite distasteful. Naturally we would choose to get through this life on our own. But we have found our preferred or natural tendencies to lead to some serious dysfunction. This is seen in our dating relationships, the marriages of our parents, their divorces, the dog eat dog mentality of academics, and in the quantity of time we spend thinking about ourselves. We all need help and encouragement to actively pursue growth as well as to overcome our relational dysfunctions.

Lifelines believes that through process learning and group activities students can make great strides towards understanding themselves and the impact they have on those around them. Equally important in that philosophy is the belief that as spiritual beings our relational growth will be incomplete without a relationship with God. We believe God to be an integral part of the growth process. In a very real sense God rescues us from ourselves and invites us to know him. Our desire is to see students make a healthy transition to adulthood and acquire the life skills that will lead to healthy, life giving relationships.