SICM Testimonials!

I wanted to share with you what some of the UNT students have to say about their SICM experience.  It's really encouraging to see the impact that trip had on these young people!

Carmen

For me, SICM opened my eyes to how most discipleship is done through relationships whether that is through campus evangelism and taking an interest in their lives and views, or small groups and one-on-one conversations. I saw how we are to use Christ as an example of how to conduct our relationships and how to love. It is through that love that we enrich other people's lives, challenge them, and help them grow as we learn from them and grow ourselves. Discipleship is about the time we invest in others and how we spend that time.

Elizabeth

There are so many things that I learned at SICM, but that would take all day.  Something that really stood out to me was learning why we do so many one-on-one and small group studies.  Learning how much Jesus had real RELATIONSHIPS with his disciples.  They were his friends and he spent meaningful time with them, which is what we should be doing as disciples.

Joey

SICM was a very encouraging week for me.  I feel better prepared to talk to people about Jesus and about all of the great things He has done in my life.

Kurt

SICM taught me that there is no better time than the now to be a disciple.  In college, time is so precious, and I must make the most of every opportunity God has given me.  SICM taught me how to be more intentional with my relationships, and in turn be faithful to Jesus' command to make disciples of all nations regardless of how fruitful our endeavors may be.

Natalie

When I first came to FOCUS, I was amazed by how much people really wanted to befriend me. Suddenly there were these great people in my life who really discipled me. At SICM, I learned so much about that and how to do it Jesus style. Now I feel like I can be that person in someone else's life. Having people there for me in this way has been so incredibly important in my life as well as my relationship with Jesus, and because of SICM, I know I can go out and be a friend to someone in the same way.

Ryan

SICM was a week that represents what I would wish everyday life could look like. There was worship and constant community shared with a family of believers, lessons that take active listening and thought, and opportunities to go out and evangelize and apply what you've been learning right away. This is what our lives should consist of all the time!

June Update

One week ago we returned from our trip to SICM (Student Institute of Campus Ministry) in Bellingham, WA.  That's the leadership conference we take our potential student leaders each year.  As usual, it was such an enriching experience for the students and the staff.  It's really cool to see these up and coming leaders start to understand why we have been doing certain things the way we do.  Up until now most of them have just been participants in things like core groups or one-on-one Focus on Jesus studies.  All they had to do was show up.  Now they see how much purpose goes into those things and the importance of reaching out to their peers.  Even more, they are excited to do so.

The UNT group

Our entire group from Texas (UNT, UTD, TWU, Collin, & Richland)

My host family and the guys who stayed there

On Wednesday we had our first summer FOCUS meeting at UNT.  It was an introduction into our series over the book of James, focusing on practical Christianity.  After briefly framing the historical context of the book, I asked the students to stand up while I read the whole letter to them.  The father of the family I stayed with in Washington had told me he was impacted by a guest speaker at his church who talked about reverence for scripture.  The speaker read a large chunk of scripture to the congregation and had them stand up as well.  This resonated with me and seemed like the perfect way to start our study of James.  First of all it helped us be better engaged in the letter by delivering and receiving it the way it was originally intended.  Also, reading the words of James (most likely the brother of Jesus) carries more authority than anything I could say on top of it.

I have asked some of the older student leaders to prepare sermons for the upcoming weeks.  We like to give students an opportunity to be challenged in their ability to teach and also let the students hear from each other.  The summer seems to be the best time for this.  I'm looking forward to working with them on those lessons and seeing how God uses them to affect the community!

Update on TWU:
We missed the deadline for registering as a student organization at TWU, but we should easily meet all the necessary requirements by September when the fall semester begins.  The last registration deadline for the year just happened to be before we had a chance to register.  Unfortunately, that means we won't be able to be at the orientations over the summer for new and transfer students.  That really shouldn't be a big deal and to make up for that we intend to plan some unofficial hang out events on campus to meet new people.  Our goal is to start developing a small community over the summer so we have a solid foundation to build on once school starts.

Thank you so much for your support!  Keep us in your prayers, and let me know if there is anything we can be praying about for you.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

May Update

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

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.

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.

1. How have you been personally hurt by Christians?  
2. Christians, what are you personally sorry for?  

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.

On Friday we wanted to shift to a more positive note.  We asked two new questions that produced similarly engaging conversations:

1. What good experiences, if any, have you had through knowing a Christian?
2.  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

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