The school year is coming to a close. We will have our last Friday Night Fellowship this week at UNT FOCUS. Our plan is to meet in a gazebo on campus, have "unplugged" worship, and listen to a few of the upcoming interns (those graduating from UNT) share some thoughts on purposefully planning for the summer now that the year is over. Next week is finals and then it's summer time. Most of the student organizations shut down over the summer. We don't, but it's for a few specific reasons:
1) Several students usually stay in town over the summer. Some students have jobs in Denton or their home is too far away to travel to. If their primary body of believers stops meeting during that time, they are basically deprived of their community for about three months! Our ministry does take a break from meeting for a few weeks at the beginning and end and we change things up a bit for summer. We just don't want to give up gathering together for such a long period of time! One interesting thing about Summer FOCUS is that all four of our campuses meet together from late May to early August. Now since Denton is so far away, most students don't like to travel to the big group meeting in Richardson (near the other three campuses). So we have our own UNT Summer FOCUS in Denton. It's neat because it allows us to have a low-key smaller meeting since most of our students are out of town. Last year we had about 30-35 people each week instead of the 120-130ish people we had during the school year.
2) Since all of the universities we work at are secular, we provide theological classes each summer called School of Ministry. We like to give the students an opportunity to study the scripture at a deeper level and be challenged to think about it. Most of the books or lectures we use are graduate level. The courses change year to year, but this year we are offering three different classes: a couple of audio lectures (from Regent College) about the topics of 1st & 2nd Samuel and the Sermon on the Mount as well a book study on "Simply Christian" by N.T. Wright.
3) When most student organizations go dormant for the summer, people are much more likely to show up at the meetings of groups who are still active. This makes summertime a great opportunity for us to meet new people, especially those who may not have normally come to our meetings.
Please be praying over our summer activities, that they will be successful in providing community to those staying in town over the summer, furthering our students education of scripture, and bringing new people into our body that might not have come during the school year.
Another thing quickly approaching is SICM (Student Institute of Campus Ministry). As many of you probably remember this is the conference we take our upcoming student leaders to in Bellingham, WA for an intense discipleship training seminar. It's an experience that can't fully be explained, but essentially the students are in a week-long class learning about how to lead small groups, study one-on-one with other students, what it means to be a disciple, how to engage in spiritual conversations with other people, etc. It's also a great time for the staff to get to know the new student leaders better and for all of them to grow closer as a team. Please pray that the students will learn a lot and go into the next year fully equipped to advance the Kingdom.
Then going in line with our theme for the year of "Everything New" we will be ending the year with plans to plant a new ministry at TWU (Texas Woman's University) for next school year. TWU is right next to UNT in Denton and will be a part of the UNT FOCUS ministry for a few years as they develop on the TWU campus. Currently, we are working on registering as a student organization so we can be at orientations over the summer and kick off the school year strong in August. Please pray that we will be successful in establishing a ministry at TWU and building a strong Christian community at a school where campus life is fairly sparse.
As always, I want to thank you so much for your contribution to this ministry whether prayers, money or even just reading my blog and being aware of what I'm up to. It means so much to me.
Yours for the Campus,
Matt
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Monday, April 1, 2013
April Update
What a busy month March was! All of our interns have been selected (9 in total; 4 at UNT). We had an incredibly successful week of evangelism on our four campuses with the students from Western Washington University. Now the end of the school year is closing in quickly with just over a month remaining.
The main thing I want to tell you about is what we did with our visitors from Washington. They came to Texas for their spring break trip to evangelize on our campuses at UTD, UNT, Collin College, and Richland College. Each campus had a separate campaign geared toward initiating conversation with students. On top of that we paired Washington students with Texas students/staff and walked around our campuses talking to people about spiritual things. At UNT we planned a campaign called, "I'm Sorry." The goal was to apologize on behalf of Christians for the damage we've done in the past in hopes that we could develop real relationships with non-Christians. And let me tell you, it was an awesome experience! I'd like to summarize what we did each day and highlight a few things throughout because I want you to really understand the magnitude of it.
The main result from this week-long attempt at evangelism was our group made several new relationships with non-Christians. These relationships weren't formed under false pretenses nor were the people lured in by sneaky tactics. They were genuinely interested in friendship with someone they know is a follower of Jesus. My prayer is that we can diligently maintain those friendships and reflect Christ to those people without turning them into a project or watering down the gospel. The only people we seemed to offend were Christians because they either didn't like that we made Christians look like terrible people or they thought we were wrong to apologize because Jesus never apologized. Like I said earlier, almost all of them changed their mind when they understood our intentions fully.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of this as well if you have any. I also encourage you to think of ways to engage the people in your workplace with similar questions. Or at least attempt to get to know them on a deeper level. One thing I kept reminding students who were intimidated by talking about spiritual things with non-Christians was that spirituality includes a lot more than "religion". I think Rob Bell hits on that concept pretty well with his movie called "Everything is Spiritual." There aren't really spiritual things and non-spiritual things. You can find out someone's beliefs about life simply by asking about their family background and what it was like growing up. That breaks the ice so you can drill down into other areas by asking more questions. It's an important skill to be able to lead conversations with people. That's one of the main reasons we do campaigns like this on the college campuses. It obviously has a good impact on the people we encounter through it, but the experience for our students receive is even more valuable because it equips them to better reach out to the people around them for the rest of their lives. We really try to give them a vision for not just their college years, but also their post college years. What will it look like for them to remain a disciple of Christ after graduating and finding a career? After moving away from their Christian community? Getting married? Having children?
Please be in prayer for us as we finish up the semester and move into the summer. The summer time usually has a lot going on with SICM (that's our student leader training conference in Washington), School of Ministry (we like do teach some form of graduate level theological class since our students all go to secular schools), and just our summer FOCUS big group meetings. Also we will need to start figuring out student leadership for next year and think through how to utilize the interns in a way that is best for them to be successful in ministry.
Be in prayer also for one of our students. His name is EJ and he has a cancerous tumor in his neck. This tumor has already disabled his vision some and caused him to have severe headaches nearly all of the time. Currently he is waiting to be scheduled for surgery (which needs to happen soon!). After that he will have to undergo three treatments of chemotherapy.
Thank you so much for all of your prayers and support! It does make a difference. You have made an impact on the UNT campus.
Yours for the Campus,
Matt
The main thing I want to tell you about is what we did with our visitors from Washington. They came to Texas for their spring break trip to evangelize on our campuses at UTD, UNT, Collin College, and Richland College. Each campus had a separate campaign geared toward initiating conversation with students. On top of that we paired Washington students with Texas students/staff and walked around our campuses talking to people about spiritual things. At UNT we planned a campaign called, "I'm Sorry." The goal was to apologize on behalf of Christians for the damage we've done in the past in hopes that we could develop real relationships with non-Christians. And let me tell you, it was an awesome experience! I'd like to summarize what we did each day and highlight a few things throughout because I want you to really understand the magnitude of it.
Monday and Tuesday we had two large marker boards set up and asked the question: "What is your biggest complaint about Christians?" We had a lot of people answer the question and recorded their answers so we could apologize specifically for those things. More than that, we were able to have conversations with these people about their complaints. Just think about the first step in restoring a broken friendship. It's talking about it and usually someone taking responsibility and apologizing. That's how I envisioned this campaign. Satan has done a great job of ruining relationships between Christians and non-Christians, but we can overcome that through building real relationships like Jesus had. Jesus accepted people for who they were and He truly understood them. He didn't see the sin, but rather the person behind it, and He loved them. How Jesus loved them so. Isn't it exciting that we have opportunities to love people similarly?
Wednesday and Thursday we posted our written apologies (about a few hundred). We also asked two new questions. We wanted to emphasize personal and specific instances and continue to have engaging conversations with people.It was VERY interesting to see the responses. Some of the hurtful things made me cry. One girl had written that she lost two babies and her pastor told her they went to Hell. Another guy I met, who was the president of an atheist group on campus, said that a kid threw a Bible at him in high school for being bisexual and an atheist. The first response to our second question was from a Christian who was upset that we were "demanding" them to apologize to us. We had to make it more clear that we were also Christians! Something further in that regard was that Christians tended to be offended at what we were doing until they talked to one of us more to get a better understanding of our purpose. One girl told me her Christian friends didn't like it because it made Christians seem like terrible people. I explained to her that all humans are terrible people and we just wanted to break down the misconceptions about Christians being self righteous through taking responsibility. Nearly every single person we talked to genuinely liked our efforts once they understood fully.
- How have you been personally hurt by Christians?
- Christians, what are you personally sorry for?
On Friday we wanted to shift to a more positive note. We asked two new questions that produced similarly engaging conversations:
- What good experiences, if any, have you had through knowing a Christian?
- Christians, what are you sorry for on behalf of the Christian church?
The main result from this week-long attempt at evangelism was our group made several new relationships with non-Christians. These relationships weren't formed under false pretenses nor were the people lured in by sneaky tactics. They were genuinely interested in friendship with someone they know is a follower of Jesus. My prayer is that we can diligently maintain those friendships and reflect Christ to those people without turning them into a project or watering down the gospel. The only people we seemed to offend were Christians because they either didn't like that we made Christians look like terrible people or they thought we were wrong to apologize because Jesus never apologized. Like I said earlier, almost all of them changed their mind when they understood our intentions fully.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of this as well if you have any. I also encourage you to think of ways to engage the people in your workplace with similar questions. Or at least attempt to get to know them on a deeper level. One thing I kept reminding students who were intimidated by talking about spiritual things with non-Christians was that spirituality includes a lot more than "religion". I think Rob Bell hits on that concept pretty well with his movie called "Everything is Spiritual." There aren't really spiritual things and non-spiritual things. You can find out someone's beliefs about life simply by asking about their family background and what it was like growing up. That breaks the ice so you can drill down into other areas by asking more questions. It's an important skill to be able to lead conversations with people. That's one of the main reasons we do campaigns like this on the college campuses. It obviously has a good impact on the people we encounter through it, but the experience for our students receive is even more valuable because it equips them to better reach out to the people around them for the rest of their lives. We really try to give them a vision for not just their college years, but also their post college years. What will it look like for them to remain a disciple of Christ after graduating and finding a career? After moving away from their Christian community? Getting married? Having children?
Please be in prayer for us as we finish up the semester and move into the summer. The summer time usually has a lot going on with SICM (that's our student leader training conference in Washington), School of Ministry (we like do teach some form of graduate level theological class since our students all go to secular schools), and just our summer FOCUS big group meetings. Also we will need to start figuring out student leadership for next year and think through how to utilize the interns in a way that is best for them to be successful in ministry.
Be in prayer also for one of our students. His name is EJ and he has a cancerous tumor in his neck. This tumor has already disabled his vision some and caused him to have severe headaches nearly all of the time. Currently he is waiting to be scheduled for surgery (which needs to happen soon!). After that he will have to undergo three treatments of chemotherapy.
Thank you so much for all of your prayers and support! It does make a difference. You have made an impact on the UNT campus.
Yours for the Campus,
Matt
Friday, March 1, 2013
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 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
Friday, February 1, 2013
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
Monday, January 7, 2013
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:
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
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:
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| (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
Monday, December 3, 2012
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
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
Thursday, November 1, 2012
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
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
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