March Update

We are about to enter into March madness.  I'm not talking about basketball here.  There are just a couple of big things happening this month for our ministry.

The biggest deal is preparing for our internship next school year.  This has recently been a source of much excitement for me!  Our staff will be interviewing the 11 applicants this weekend and we will be making final decisions within the week.  This is such a big deal because it shapes what we will be able to do next year.  Plus one of our most important goals for the internship is to make it a beneficial experience to them.  Please be in prayer over this whole process as we decide who to accept.  As soon as the decisions are made on March 8 we will kick into high gear on preparing the new interns for starting on August 1st.  The majority of this will be training them for raising financial support confidently and successfully.  That is commonly the most stressful part of the internship so please be in prayer for them as they reach out to friends and family for support.

The other "big thing" in March is Student Spring Impact (SSI).  A group of about 20 students from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA will come to visit our ministries for various types of on campus evangelism.  If you remember me talking about SICM in my previous post, these students are sent from the ministry that hosts that conference.  Their ministry's name is Campus Christian Fellowship (CCF).  Anyway each of our campuses has a different outreach planned for the SSI students to join us in.  At UNT we have planned a campaign called "I'm Sorry."  Christians have done a lot of damage to Christ's name over the years and sometimes all we can do is apologize.  So we will have a marker board set up for students passing by to write their complaints about Christians.  This gives us an opportunity to apologize personally and hopefully start meaningful conversations with people.  We will only need to have a handful of students around the marker board, so the others will walk around campus doing conversational evangelism.  That simply means starting conversations with people by asking them questions about their beliefs and only sharing our own if asked.  That gives people the option of getting out of the conversation whenever they want.


So now I'd like to look back on a few things that have happened recently.  First is Parent Night/Open House.  Every year we invite any parents, family, friends, spiritual mentors, etc. of the students to visit our large group meeting.  The goal is to give parents a snapshot of what our ministry is all about.  We also love to use that time to honor the parents for raising their children so well!  What makes Parent Night so special is getting to hear the parents speak about the change they have seen in their child since being a part of our ministry.  However, in no way do we take any credit for that because it's truly a God deal that He works through us.  Here are a few pictures from that evening:

The other thing I wanted to share with you is a baptism of one of our student leaders.  This is one of the sweetest guys in our ministry and a special moment in his life.  We had been trying to plan this baptism for a while now and finally made it happen.  Check it out!

I have a few prayer requests as well:

1) Please continue to pray for Austin Gage's mother and that family.  I had mentioned her situation in my January Update.  She is terminally ill and the doctors are giving her until summer.  She is a believer in Christ and she is at peace with everything.  Austin is doing okay emotionally but his sister and father are having a hard time dealing with it.

2) Please pray for our internship as we decide who will be accepted and as they prepare for 12 months devoted to campus ministry.  Also pray for our staff as we guide them throughout that process.  Pray that we can provide the necessary mentor support to ensure they have a successful year learning and growing in discipleship.

3) And be in prayer for our SSI group coming the last full week in March.  Pray for God to teach those students through a meaningful experience while here in Texas and to touch our campuses through the outreach events we have planned.

Again thank you so much for your support and prayers.  It's a blessing to be able to share my ministry with you.  May God continue to bless you.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

February Update

Winter Camp was excellent this year.  As I mentioned last month, Geoff Mumley came down from the Northwest to speak on the New Kingdom (you can listen to the audio recordings from camp by following this link).  He asked the question, "What is the central message of Jesus?"  In Mark 1 it seems that Jesus came to announce the Kingdom of God and call people to be a part of it.  He talked about a kingdom that was here and yet coming still.  John, who came before Jesus, preached about the coming kingdom and Messiah.  John's main message was to prepare for the coming kingdom because the people weren't ready yet.  Fast forward to today and what does all of this mean for us?  Well, God's Kingdom is still advancing and we (yeah, you too!) need to get involved.  Wherever we go let's be people who advance the Kingdom.  That doesn't mean you have to give gospel presentations to everyone you see, but be a beacon of light and help people see the goodness of our God.  Glorify God to people.  Make disciples.

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

- Jesus

Here are some photos of the UNT group at camp:

And here is a picture of all four campuses!

Since camp we have had one large group meeting at UNT (called Friday Night Fellowship).  I continued our theme for the year (Everything New) and added on "Growing up in Christ."  God has made us new, but we start out as spiritual infants.  We can't remain there.  What I want to do is challenge each student's thinking and help them see that they have a need to mature in their understanding of Christ and their faith in God.  In Heb. 5:12-6:1 the author writes to Hebrew Christians at the time, "Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again.  You need milk, not solid food!  Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness.  But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.  Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings of Christ and go on to maturity."  Let's remember the fundamental teachings of Christ, but use them as a foundation to build on rather than a safe harbor.  It's time for us to grow up.

Around this time each semester we start thinking about new leadership for the following year.  Currently, we are having discussions about who has stepped up and exhibited leadership characteristics.  We are looking for FAITHful people.  Here is a simple way of explaining it:

Faithful - Can be counted on and is consistent.

Available - Can prioritize their time.

Initiative - Takes responsibility w/out being asked; already leading others.

Teachable - Open to learning, criticism, and advice.

Heart - for God and other people.  This ultimately trumps the others.

Each year we try to pinpoint our prospective leaders for the next year in time to invite them to SICM (Student Institute of Campus Ministry; Geoff Mumley is from the ministry that hosts this conference), which is a week-long leadership conference for campus ministry.  We ask our upcoming leaders to go through this training in order to better prepare them for effective ministry as a small group leader and 1-1 disciple maker/mentor.  The sad thing is we are increasing the number of students that we would like to send every year but there are only so many people that volunteer to host students in their homes.  This has forced us to be much more selective in our process of inviting students to SICM.  Last year in May we sent about 50 students between our four campuses and we made up over 2/3 of the students at the conference.  So the point I'm trying to get at is please pray for our discernment in this process!  

Please also pray for Amy and our ministry as she transitions out due to her pregnancy.  It has been such a blessing getting to work with her this year!  I will surely miss having regular time with her and I know the students will be sad to see her leave.  Another thing to be praying for is the next group of FOCUS interns.  We are having a meeting this Sunday afternoon for students interested in applying and will making final decisions on that in March.  Please pray for guidance for the senior staff in this process and the students who are considering the internship.  There are a few other prayer requests on the staff updates page.

Thank you again for everything you do to advance the Kingdom through our ministry.  

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

January Update

Well the new year has come.  I hope you enjoyed the holidays and were able to spend time restfully with your family.  So sorry my update was a week late, but I just made it back home to my house in Denton last night for the first time in a few weeks.  My various plans over the holidays had me traveling all over the metroplex, but I got to see so many different friends and family!

This past weekend was our winter staff retreat.  It's one of my favorite times of the year when the entire FOCUS staff (now 13 of us) comes together to discuss several higher level ministry topics and enjoy fellowship with each other.  We rarely have time together like that during the year and it's something that we consider important for a team to function well.

One of our biggest events is coming up on January 18-21st: Winter Camp!  This year we will be going out to Sky Ranch in Van, TX.  All four of our campuses will be there, likely totaling over 300 students.  It's a very exciting time to experience our whole ministry at large and I would like to invite you out there for a day, evening, etc.  Let me know if you would like to drop by and I can give you details on the schedule.  Winter Camp is also an opportunity for us to do some longer, in-depth teachings to the entire ministry.  Our speaker for the weekend, Geoff Mumley, is from a ministry in Bellingham, WA, that we have had a relationship with for many years now.  Their ministry has actually taught us a lot of what we know about campus ministry and we have been sending our potential leaders up there just about every year for a campus ministry leadership conference called SICM (Student Institute of Campus Ministry).  Geoff will be speaking on "The New Kingdom" which will include what God's kingdom is, what it has looked like in history, what it looks like now, what it produces, and what all of this means for us as disciples.

I would also like to point out a need in regard to Winter Camp.  We, as a staff, always want every student to make it out to camp regardless of money issues so we offer scholarships to those who need them.  Due to the size of our ministry we aren't able to offer as many scholarships as necessary so if you are interested in providing a scholarship for a student, please either let me know or visit our donations page.  Even feel free to do this after camp is over as many students sign up at the last minute and we collect most of the payments afterward anyway.  The cost for camp is $135.

Please pray for our four campuses as the semester starts.  Pray that our students will engage with their classmates purposefully creating relationships with them.  Pray that our staff is spirit-led and focused on God's mission.  Pray that God gives me the strength necessary to lead the UNT ministry.  And lease pray that we will see a lot of transformed hearts this semester.

I have a special prayer request for one student’s mother.  She has several marble-sized tumors in her brain and a few smaller tumors in her lungs.  She has dealt with cancer for around 6 years now and has fought it off twice already.  She originally decided not to do any chemotherapy or radiation, but recently she changed her mind.  The doctors are pretty confident that they will be able to put the cancerous tumors into remission, but that family needs a lot of prayer.  Austin, her son, is one of our small group leaders at UNT.  He had actually written a student testimony last year so I wanted to share that with you in case you would like to connect this request with a face:

(Click on image to enlarge)

Thank you so much for all you do.  You make this ministry possible.  You are advancing the gospel.  May God bless you.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

December Update

I woke up last Monday morning to a phone call about one of our students who passed away in a car accident the evening before.  I barely had two conversations with Ryan Schutze, a freshman at UNT and consistent member in our community.  That day a group was organized to pray for Ryan's family and friends as well as share stories about his life.  I learned a lot about him as several close friends and acquaintances shared stories and prayers.  It became clear very quickly that Ryan tried hard to live his life for Christ.  He was a part of another campus ministry and a fraternity.  In the fraternity he was the chaplain of his pledge class and his reason for joining was to reach out to the people Christians often judge and neglect.  He was known in that group for talking about his faith and retreating to quiet places for prayer and reading of scripture during social events.  It was inspiring to know the purpose he had and see about 300 students show up to his memorial service on campus (the majority being his fraternity brothers).

As the week continued I learned more news of other tragic things happening in various students' lives.  My heart became quite heavy.  I'm reminded of John 11:35 as Jesus weeps for the pain that his friends were feeling over Lazarus' death.  I feel as though the phrase, "Matt wept." could have been appropriately interjected into the transcript of my life this week.  Now I don't tell you all of this to bring your spirits down, because I am trying to make a point.  Please don't think that I'm depressed or not doing well.  I'm doing great!  Just keep reading.

So we had a Christmas service this past Friday night where 3 students, Melissa, and I shared thoughts on the meaning of Christmas.  What I shared (after making an announcement about Ryan passing away) was that though this is a dark time we don't mourn like world does (1 Thes. 4:13-18).  I would go ahead and lump in all of the other things that have been weighing on my heart and say that even though this has been a dark week I don't look at it the way the world might and see only tragedy.  I know God's got it and because of that I have hope.  Now tying this to the meaning of Christmas: Christ came into the world during a dark time as well.  Just imagine what it was like back then.  The Jews were under Roman authority and the king in power, Herod the Great, wasn't afraid to take the lives of many children to try and kill baby Jesus.  And just because he felt threatened!  Jesus' family fled to Egypt until Herod was dead.  That sounds a lot scarier than the world we live in today.  Despite that adversity God had everything under control and Jesus, though a delicate baby, brought life and hope to a dying world.  That's what we are celebrating at Christmas time.

On a lighter note we had a Christmas party Saturday night.  It was a great time to get everyone together to act goofy before finals and everyone leaves for the holidays.  Honestly I wish you could have been there to see.  Everyone was divided into groups of about 8-12 people.  They were assigned different "family traditions" that they had to act out such as singing Christmas carols to other families, making popcorn necklaces, and white elephant gift exchanges (or some families gave their gifts away to other families!) to name a few.  We ended with the cores competing in a musical/skit contest.  This was definitely my favorite part since we have some very creative and talented students in our group.  The best performance, according to the judges, was a group that performed "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" and they actually dressed up collectively to form a human Christmas tree:



Next Friday is our last official meeting before the semester is over.  It's wild to think the year is about halfway over.  I'm really happy with how this semester has gone.  I've learned a lot and expect to learn a lot more next semester.  We've got a lot of planning to do in preparation.

Please be in prayer for:
- Ryan Schutze's family and close friends as they are hurting right now.
- The fraternity brothers Ryan impacted to come to Christ through the influence of his life.
- Various other students struggling with tough situations.
- God's guidance as the staff prepares for next semester.
- A productive break for the staff and students.  That we get adequate relaxation but remember to use the time to benefit others rather than make it all about ourselves.

As always, thank you so so much for your continued support.  I'm glad to have so many Godly people consistently in prayer for my ministry to the UNT campus.  It's truly a blessing.  God is GOOD!

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

November Update

It seems like many months have passed since my last update.  October was not a bad month or anything.  Actually it was great!  I've just had a lot on my mind lately.  As I write this I am feeling quite introspective so bear with me.  God has been teaching me quite a few things lately.  One of our student leaders asked me today what I would say "spiritual maturity" is.  I see it as being very similar to general life maturity.  As we grow older we tend to become more aware of what's truly important in life.  We learn that discipline is important if we ever want to accomplish anything and relationships are more important than work, school, accomplishments, etc.  If you don't learn this, people would probably consider you immature.  It's understandable when someone is young and immature, but it's a tragedy to see someone age without maturation.  It's the same thing with spiritual maturity.  We learn what's important in life, but to the Christian, life is eternal so we come to understand what has eternal importance.  We learn that relating to God is of utmost importance and directing others toward their relationships with God is more important than our relationships with those people (and our relationships with people will usually flourish anyway when God is the focal point).  Also we can't expect a newly pronounced Christian to have great spiritual maturity and again it's sad to see a long-time Christian without spiritual maturity.  Each year we have new student leaders that are learning to be more purposeful with their time than they have ever been before (and more purposeful than most of their peers as well).  It's normal for them to not feel genuine as they meet with guys or girls regularly to build mentor relationships.  Instead of seeing them as obligatory and fake it is important for them to build those relationships out of their conviction of the truth.  Out of love for others we often do things that aren't what we feel like doing.  Through that process they learn what the big deal is: truly being someone's friend/biggest fan and teaching them the truth about God.  It's important for us to be challenging ourselves to grow more and more mature spiritually.  We should be asking ourselves hard questions like "Who am I investing in currently?" or "When was the last time I was purposeful in my friendships (with the Kingdom of God in mind)?"  What's quite interesting about spirituality is how different it is than we often think it to be.  Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like our Christian culture general perceives spirituality to be more so on the emotional side or "beyond the physical".  I say that more in regard to how we might say, "I feel like God is this or that" or by how easily moved we are by singing praise songs or a sense of feeling good from doing a service project.  I think it says something about how we interpret God.  Speaking for myself I am naturally a mood worker so I definitely have to be careful about doing/interpreting things based on the way I feel.  Conversely the spirituality that Christ and his first generation of followers spoke of was more logical and physical.  In Matthew 25:40 Jesus says, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."  In Romans 12:1 Paul urges them: "Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice...this is your spiritual act of worship."  The concept is simple, but the depth is tremendous.  I look forward to spending a lifetime consistently trying to understand it more.

Last year during my internship I worked hard to have long-term visions for individual people I mentored.  I wanted to really think about how many lives down the road they could personally impact and help them to really get a sense of that vision.  I believe this to be a very important factor in mentorship because it really helps them to start seeing how they can not only take hold of the vision you have but develop their own.  They are also equipped to reciprocate the process for others!  This year I am trying to add another type of vision development on to that.  My challenge at hand is to really see where our ministry at UNT needs to be moved in the short-term (in comparison to a lifetime).  Over the summer I was merely thinking about this semester, now I'm thinking about next semester and the following school year.  I should probably be thinking further out than that as well.  There are things that need to be thought of to bring about certain changes for the future.  It seems overwhelming, but I have plentiful support from the other staff and ultimately God's got it.  I just have to do my part and work faithfully.  Please pray that I will be able to thoughtfully and prayerfully cast a vision for the ministry and then do my part to bring it into fruition.

Over the past few weeks there have been a few things that have challenged me.  Being a new campus pastor that's not surprising though.  I'm starting to learn more about how complicated ministry can be when everyone looks to me for answers and my decisions affect a lot of people.  Also I'm having to support both male and female leaders now.  Brandon, our director and my primary mentor, has been helping me to prepare for the time that our women's minister, Amy, will be out on maternity leave in about 5 months.  I want to make sure that all of our leaders are supported sufficiently.  Please pray that I will be able to do this.  I would like to add that despite the challenges (which are really great challenges to have in comparison to what I could be facing!) God has been continuing to teach me patience and more so how to find peace in Him.  When I was younger I really struggled with patience so it's no surprise that God has worked on this A LOT with me.  The patience He has taught me has paid off time and time again.  When God allows situations to test my patience I am starting to feel a strong sense of peace and joy.   Maybe you know exactly what I mean by this.  I think in the times that I start to feel unsettled I just turn to Him.  Perhaps through this peace I've found in my Father's love I can avoid the burnout that many ministers these days experience.  That has been a fear of mine as I've come into this role.

I hope that what I have said so far is meaningful to you.  I try not to write too much in my updates to keep from overwhelming you with a lot to read, but I've just had some thoughts I wanted to share.  I would like to share a little more about the UNT ministry in particular before I end though.  Last night one of our new members was baptized!  You can watch the videos here and here.  It's been really exciting this semester to see how much our leaders have been making an effort to start up one-on-one Bible studies.  I have given out nearly 45 of our Focus on Jesus studies to the student leaders who have asked others to study with them.  That is really cool!  I would like to make sure and highlight the student testimony this month as well.  Vianet is one of our new leaders at UNT and has started 4 one-on-one studies with girls she has developed relationships with this year.  All of our leaders have really stepped up this year.  I'm really proud of them!  Please pray that they will not feel overburdened by the combination of ministry, school, and work.

It is truly a blessing to get to serve in the Kingdom through campus ministry.  I know God wants me here so He can teach me some pretty specific things and use me for far better things than I ever dreamed of.  Thank you so much for helping support me.  I really appreciate the various prayerful, relational, financial, etc. gifts that I receive from everyone.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

October Update

So I just made it through my first retreat as a campus pastor!  We just got back from our Fall Retreat Sunday afternoon.  I really wish you could have seen it!  We had over 100 students at Camp Copass (a small retreat center in Denton, TX).  It was a blessing to have the retreat near to campus so several people who weren't able to make it to the entire retreat could come to part of it.  Our main purpose for Fall Retreat is to help our new members become more integrated into the ministry by forming several new relationships.  We don't plan any long teaching times or sermons.  Instead the majority of the time is designed for the students to learn more about each other.  We played some goofy games, listened to a couple of students and a few graduates share about their lives, took communion with each other, and had lots of free time.  Probably the most favored activity of the weekend was the walk and talk.  Essentially everyone is paired up with someone of the same gender by their small group leader to go on a walk and share about themselves.  We did one at the beginning of the retreat and one at the end.  The prompt we gave for the first walk and talk was to share about their spiritual background and at the end of the retreat we asked them to debrief the weekend and share what they learned or what had impacted them the most.  I think it's usually a pretty neat experience for the newer people because it's not normal for them to have such meaningful conversations early on in a friendship.  One of the small group leaders that I live with actually said one of his guys finally clicked with one of the other leaders who he was paired with for a walk and talk.  Now these two guys are also planning to start a one-on-one Bible study.  My roommate told me that this alone made the retreat a success in his mind.  I can't help but agree.

Here are a few pictures of our group:

Due to rain many of our walk and talks became walk and sits :)

This is everyone who was still there Sunday morning.

The basic theme we kept coming back to all weekend (because this is also our theme for the year) is how God has made us new.  You may have noticed the new artwork on our website with the "Everything New" logo.  We took this from Revelation 21:5 when Jesus said "I am making everything new!"  At the retreat we kept asking the question over and over: "How has/is God making you new?"  Our communion time on Saturday night was just amazing.  Halfway through worship I simply prompted them to share how Jesus' death and resurrection has made them new and people shared non-stop for a solid 40 minutes by the time I cut them off.  A few people came up to me later saying they wish they could have been able to share also.  It always brings tears to my eyes when someone (especially someone young) stands up and shares about some intimate way that God has impacted their lives.  This is something I really wish you could have witnessed.  It was especially amazing to see some of the newer people open up because they were encouraged by other people's stories.

Going back to our theme for the year, our sermon series has been really neat.  Amy started it off with how God makes us new and that His purpose is to make us useful again.  Our purpose, or mission, is to reconcile the world with God because that is what He is doing and what he designed us to do.  The next week I talked about what it means to think like new creations.  Everything we do derives from how we think and often we think a lot less than we need to.  God isn't concerned with what we do as much as He is with our underlying motives for doing what we do.  Man judges by mere appearances, but God judges a man by his heart.  Then Brandon followed that by talking about what it means to speak like new creations.  Again, everything you say derives from what you think about.  Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.  This week we will be exploring what it looks like to live as new creations.  I would encourage you to think through this as well.  How has God made you new?  How is He making you new now?  How have you been resisting His restoration process?

Again I would just like to thank you so much for your support.  We really put a lot of work into building a Christ-centered community at UNT that is conducive to reaching people and building real relationships.  Things like the retreat this weekend couldn't happen without your help.  I hope that my report on what we do on this campus will bring joy to your heart and be an advance reward for your investment.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

September Update

This past week I nearly lived the life of a college student at UNT (The University of North Texas, where I am now doing ministry).  It was Welcome Week so there were lots of events every day.  I forgot how draining that can be!  We (Amy, Melissa, and I) have been encouraging the student leaders to think of this as the biggest opportunity to meet new people and develop lasting relationships in order to fulfill the mission of making disciples.  The students took on the challenge we gave them and worked hard to invite new students into their lives.  It was a long week, but I truly think it will yield a bountiful return.

Last night was our Friday Night Fellowship kickoff event.  (By the way, if anyone in the area ever wants to visit on a Friday night, feel free to do so!  We meet on the UNT campus in Matthews Hall room 311 at 7:30pm.  Call if you need any other info. - 817.992.3987)  We nearly packed out a room that seats 144 people.  Keep in mind that this ministry started only 2.5 years ago.  Here are a couple pictures of last night:

Front left is Melissa (our intern) and front right is Amy.

The main agenda last night was for Brad, the former campus pastor, to formally give his blessings to Amy and I leading this ministry.  Then we both shared our stories of how God developed a heart for ministry within us.  I wish you could have heard them!  I almost cried sharing my story and Amy's nearly brought me to tears as well.  The point of that was to help the students begin to know who we are and why we are here.  Many of the students told me later that they really enjoyed that.

So now that the year has finally begun I am really starting to feel much more comfortable with the role God has given me.  It is truly a testament to His power how much He has changed me (even in just the last year) to take this on.  Much of this could not have been possible without you.  I am so thankful to you for that, but even more so I hope you realize the impact you have made on the Kingdom.

I would like to ask that you pray for a few things as well:

- That I will speak pastorally to the students at UNT despite the fact that I am young and look like many of them.  That I will keep in mind the advice Paul gave to Timothy as a young leader (1 Tim. 4:11-12).

- That I will always be growing in my ability to plan meetings and events.  This is so important as the amount of planning directly affects the outcome.  I've always loved that old axiom, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail."

- That Amy, Melissa, and I will be able to challenge, encourage, and communicate effectively with each other.  That we can lead this ministry through our actions and how we relate with each other.

- That our student leaders will be consistent in new relationships they have developed.  It is vital that we show people what real friendship looks like and what it means to have Christ's love compel us.

Again I am so thankful for you.  Please know that I have been praying for you and the specific requests you have asked me to pray for.  May God continue to bless you!

Yours for the Campus,

Matt