July Update

Wow, July came faster than expected. I wish there was more time over the summer! Things seem more chaotic, I guess, because there is less structure in my schedule and it's a time of transition. The primary transition is selecting student leaders for next school year. Our goal is to finalize the leader team by the end of this week. Spending time talking to and meeting with many of these students over the past few weeks has been very encouraging as we look toward the approaching school year. Please be praying for the Spirit to guide Sarah and me in that process (as well as planning important dates, events, meetings, sermons, etc. for the year).

Our summer activities have been going really well. They include:

Thursday Night Fellowship

These are our combined large group meetings with all 6 campuses. The students get a sense of the larger FOCUS community and can develop cross-campus relationships with people who they know later know at future events during the school year. It's actually my favorite part of the summer because I also get to develop relationships with students on the other campuses - some of whom will transfer to UNT eventually so forming those connections early on can make their transition much smoother.

Summer School of Ministry: Genesis

This is our more academic Biblical class to challenge our students intellectually in their knowledge and understanding of scripture since they aren't naturally exposed to this at a secular university. We have been reading through the Genesis NIV Application Commentary which attempts to explain the intended cultural meaning and the contemporary significance. To grossly oversimplify, one main point of the author is that we have to remember that the characters chosen in the scripture are typically over emphasized in our culture. We can't make them into the main characters, because God is the main character of scripture. The stories recorded in the Bible are written to tell who God is so that the reader can know Him. We have had some very cool discussions in this class!

Experiencing God

This is a class centered around a popular workbook called Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby, Richard Blackaby, and Claude King. I'm typically not too keen on the devotional book type approach because they seem to be very transactional instead of relational. This book however has a strong emphasis on our relating to God in a very real way by learning to listen to His voice. Going through this study is somewhat the "yin" to the "yang" of our Genesis class.


Next month (in August) our Denton church plant will start meeting weekly which is incredibly exciting. Please be praying for us in this endeavor as we build and grow a spiritual community in Denton that can be a support to the college ministry as well as a light to the city, and eventually a church who plants other churches.


Thank you so much for your continual support of the work God is doing here. Many people benefit and will benefit from the gifts of a few. God is good!

Yours for the Campus,

Matt