March Update

Brothers and Sisters in Christ, I am thankful for and encouraged by you! My hope is that in reading the following things you will also be encouraged and excited to hear what's going on at UNT.

Student Institute of Campus Ministry (SICM)

For anyone who is unfamiliar, SICM is a campus ministry training conference in Bellingham, WA, that we send our potential leaders to each year during May. The students will be taught on a variety of subjects including how to lead small groups, disciple students one-on-one and study the Bible with them, develop deep spiritual friendships, do evangelistic outreach on campus, etc. One of the days they will even go out on the Western Washington University campus to engage others in spiritual conversation.

This year, from our six campuses, we have 68 students registered to attend the conference (24 from UNT and TWU)! These are all students who have shown leadership potential and have already been leading in the community to varying degrees. On top of that, several of our staff will be going. That is a lot of people to be transporting across the country so please be praying for our safety and logistics! Even more importantly, pray for the Lord to be preparing the students' hearts to learn and grow in their faith as well as their ability to minister to those around them. Pray that God will use each one of them to do amazing things on their respective campuses when they return home. Also pray that these students will all be able to raise the money to cover the trip cost. If you would like to donate money to help send a student to SICM, let me know.

Check out the testimonies from some of last year's UNT students who went to SICM.

Parent Night

I have to say this might be the event I get the most nervous about each year. There is something about having to stand up in front of all of the students' parents and talk about what our ministry is all about that just puts the pressure on! Needless to say, I pray A LOT leading up to that night and the Lord always blesses it. Coming out of parent night last weekend was very encouraging to me. The prominent segment of the night was when we had our "open mic" time, where any parent or student could share what they have seen as valuable in the FOCUS community. The purpose of this is for newer parents to hear testimonies from people who have experienced it and get a better sense of what we are all about - far better than any message I could ever convey to them. Getting to hear parents and students say so many things about how this ministry has impacted their children or even themselves is powerful. Not only do I feel encouraged to know that God is blessing people through our community, but so do the students and their parents. That's something I love about God's design in Christian community: everyone is edified by lifting each other up.

I also wanted to share a note that I received from one of the UNT parents who emailed me a couple days later. This note, to me, is just a powerful example of the value of campus ministry and the impact that it can have on a person's life. I hope that you are just as encouraged as I am.

Spring Student Initiative (SSI)

For the past few years we have had students from Western Washington University (with the ministry that hosts the SICM conference) come to Texas during their spring break and help us with a week long evangelism project on each of our campuses. This year we will have about 20 students again. Please be praying for each of them as they give up this break in order to reach people for God's kingdom. Also pray for our staff to be able to prepare adequately to provide them a great experience. The students will be here from March 23-29th and will be on campus M-F. I'll provide a report on how this goes next month!

One other thing to be praying about is our prospective interns for next school year. We have 11 applicants and will be making final decisions over the next week.

Thank you so much for being involved (even if you are merely reading this post!) in the ministry going on at UNT. I appreciate your support. The Lord works through you to make what I get to do possible.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

February Update

Beginning a new semester is always intense, but I think we've finally settled into a routine now. I'm really excited about this semester coming out of Winter Camp, going into a new sermon series, and thinking about next year's potential leaders.

WINTER CAMP
I really wish you could have been there. To remind you, our topic was "Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is Freedom." The main focus of the weekend was an understanding of the Holy Spirit. I, along with many others, prayed fervently that God would be there with us and move in us. I believe that He did. Our times singing worship songs were more expressive than I've ever seen in our ministry. Several students walked up on stage sporadically between songs to share something the Lord had put on their hearts and minds. Many there were more open to God's spirit than in the past, I being one of them.

Beyond that, it was encouraging just to have the whole FOCUS community together again. I greatly enjoy intermingling the campuses and watching new friendships come out of Winter Camp. That's actually one of my favorite parts!

This is our group at camp:

SERMON SERIES
The sermon series that we just started at UNT is "Embracing Spiritual Adolescence: Developing an Adult Relationship with the Almighty." At first I thought it should be titled "Coming Out of Spiritual Adolescence." Then I realized adolescence isn't the opposite of maturity, but the process of growing into maturity. I want all of the students in our ministry engaged in that process!

In the next several weeks we will be going deeper into three important aspects of spiritual maturity:

1) Intimacy: seeking relationship

2) Self-control: surrendered obedience

3) Love: doing what's best

Last night, for example, I talked about idolatry with examples from Exodus 32 and 1 Kings 11. In these two places we see how seriously God takes idolatry. There are major consequences. For making the golden calf, most of the Israelites were killed and the remainder received a plague. God couldn't even be with them any longer on their journey as we see in Exodus 33:3. Solomon, who up until chapter 11 in 1 Kings seemed to be impervious to evil, falters. Despite all of the wisdom he had, he chose to marry women the Lord warned about and ended up serving their gods.

In Exodus 20:2-6 the Lord gave His commands in regard to idolatry. We see here that He is a jealous God. The meaning of the word here from what I understand is not that God coveted or envied His people. To covet/envy means to desire something that someone else has so much that you want to take it away from them. Jealousy is about an intolerance to losing something or someone you appreciate to someone else. It's about losing something you already have. Can you imagine the despair of our Lord when we walk away from Him? Or even when we just sneak off for a few moments?

My encouragement to the students was essentially to remove the spiritual infections from their individual lives and our community: to cast down their idols, to rebuke each other - only out of love - as Moses did to Aaron in Exodus 32. We need to take a step back and figure out what we are worshiping instead of the Lord, and then demystify those things by realizing they can't offer any security to us. Only in God can we find security. And the more we pursue Him, the less we will pursue false gods.

Read 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 when you get a chance. Paul encourages the Corinthians in light of all of this and more.

(I just realized my last post also included a mini sermon on idolatry. Perhaps God has placed this on my heart for you.)

POTENTIAL NEW LEADERS
As you may remember we invite our potential new leaders for the following year to a college ministry leadership conference in Bellingham, WA, each year in May. This week we just finalized our invitations to that conference which came out to 35 invites with an additional 6 maybes for UNT and TWU!
(UNT is the University of North Texas and TWU is the Texas Woman's University)

One last thing I need to mention: TWU FOCUS is now an official organization on campus! It's the beginning of something great that God is going to do on that campus. I say that because there are few Christian organizations there and very little social activity. One of our goals is to change the culture of the TWU campus to be more active, but even more so to be a place where God is known to change hearts and lives.

STAFF RETREAT

I told you that I would let you know how the staff retreat went and so I'm going to tag it on to the bottom here. One of our themes was how we each deal with conflict. I personally enjoyed this because it was a time of vulnerability for most of us that brought our team closer together. We also had some discussions about what our dysfunctions as a team are, the sources of influence for leaders, and various other things geared toward staff development or administration to prepare for the semester. This was a very brief summary, but I will tell you that these retreats are essential to growing our staff team together in the Lord, as a spiritual family, and in effectiveness for the Kingdom.

Please see the prayer requests on the left! Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your support. I appreciate all of the people who make it possible for me to be ministering to students at UNT and TWU. May God bless you always.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

January Update

The fall semester wrapped up quite nicely despite the ice storm causing us to reschedule/cancel a few events. Since church was canceled that Sunday during the bad weather, some of us walked over to Whataburger to meet together! The Christmas party was so fun. We got together to sing worship songs, do some Christmas devotionals, and enjoy each other's company. It was great to see everyone one more time before they left for the break! Also we sent a small group of students to New Orleans for a service trip, but you can read more about that on Sarah's blog since she actually went on that trip.

The body meeting at Whataburger.

I'm really excited to see what God does this semester with the time and effort our student leaders have invested in the students they have been ministering to. One thing that is often a turning point for newer students each year is Winter Camp. I think this is primarily due to the relational depth they experience in being immersed in Christian community for an extended period of time.

Winter Camp 2014

Winter Camp is quickly approaching (Jan. 17-20th). If you are unfamiliar with what I'm referring to, it's our biggest event of the year. This will be our second year at Sky Ranch in Van, TX.  All six of our campuses will be there. 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 are interested in visiting 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, Brady Bobbink, is the director of a campus ministry in Bellingham, WA, that we have had a relationship with for many years now (http://ccfministry.com/). Their ministry has actually taught us a lot of what we know about ministry on the college campus 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). Brady's series of talks are titled: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Freedom." I'm excited to hear what he has to say and I'll likely try to relay some of that to you!

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 this can add up to a large sum of money rather quickly. If you are interested in providing a scholarship for a student, please either let me know or fill out a Winter Camp scholarship form. 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.

Recently on My Mind

Something I have been thinking about lately is the issue of idolatry. That's arguably the most common sin in the Old Testament. The main stipulation God puts on His promise to David about his descendants always being on the throne in Israel is that they cannot forsake Him by worshiping other gods. Then we see nearly every king of Israel and Judah forsaking the Lord through idol worship afterward. Growing up I always wondered why they continually messed up, generation after generation. Even when one of the more righteous kings would rise up they would eventually falter near the end of their reign. Of course I eventually realized that I'm following the same pattern with different "gods" and I am left with the same question: Why do I keep doing what is obviously counter to God's ways?

I recently found an insightful comment regarding one of the kings of Judah in an article: "His dependence on God was consistent when the odds were clearly against him. It was in depending on God for the day-to-day plans and actions that Jehoshaphat was weak." Looking at king David we see this daily dependence on God. The book of Kings continually compares later kings to David and they were not as righteous in the Lord's sight. He may not have been perfect, but David seemed to always be conscious of the true Lord. I believe to some degree that's what Paul is getting at when he says to pray without ceasing: practicing the constant presence of the Almighty. Do you practice the presence of God? Are you mindful of His desires in your day-to-day plans? Do you inspire others to think this way? Consider how God sent His prophets when people needed to be reminded of who is Lord. I would suggest the reason we as humans fall into idolatry so easily is our tendency to forget. We need our brothers and sisters to remind us of the truth regularly so we don't forsake our God; so that we can be true men and women of God.

Prayer Needs

Our winter staff retreat is this weekend, where we will spend time together in fellowship and planning. Please pray that the Lord strengthens the bonds of our team during that time in order to maintain the unity of our ministries. Also pray that He guides us in our planning and preparation for this coming semester.

Please pray for our six campuses as the semester starts (UTD, UNT, TWU, Collin, Richland, and Preston Ridge).  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 please pray that we will see many transformed hearts this semester.


Thank you so much for all you do.  God uses you to help advance the gospel.  May God bless you in 2014 for your commitment to Him and His workers.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

December Update

Things are winding down for the semester already. Due to Thanksgiving falling on the last Thursday of the month and finals starting at UNT this week, we will not be able to have a big group meeting on campus before the Christmas break. Fortunately, we do have a few more opportunities to engage with the students before they go home to their families for the break:

- Our leader team will be having a party Monday. The primary purpose of that time is to bring our team together, worship God as a body, share encouragements with each other, and fellowship. These students have worked hard this semester.  

- We are having a Christmas party this Friday off campus. The venue isn't very conducive to having a stage or much sharing, but we will sing some worship songs and prepare some various interactive stations to encourage the students to think deeper about the spirituality of this season. 

- The last Discipleship Class for the semester will be this Friday also. We weren't planning on meeting this week, but the students were very excited at the idea of doing so to catch up for missing a week earlier in the semester.

Please pray for these events as well as any one-on-one times the staff will have with students before the holidays.


One thing to note from this past month was we had an event called Pizza Theology. This is a longer teaching time (4 hours) with a break for dinner in the middle. This year's topic was "Breaking Free from the Chains of Addiction and Compulsive Behavior." Our guest speaker was Eddie Traughber who is a professional Christian counselor in our area (his website is http://faithwalkcounseling.com/). Our ministry has developed a relationship with him over the past year and we have grown to really appreciate him. The lecture was very insightful and I've heard a lot of positive feedback from the students. Feel free to listen to the recording by clicking the topic above!

A word from one of our student leaders at Texas Woman's University:

Albert Rodriguez

"Being part of the TWU plant has been quite an adventure. The semester started out with a lot of prayer and planning, not really knowing what to expect. But God has blessed and is still blessing our efforts. 

The second week of school 3 freshman initiated the idea of a small group and asked me to lead it. So I did! This wasn't expected to happen until spring semester but the hunger for learning was there. So now there's a guys core with 9 guys that meet in the dorms, and they have been very consistent! 

Contact evangelism on campus has also been a blessing. I have met a few students who are curious about God and some that have even wanted to meet up to talk about it more. I think the effort of putting God's presence on campus is slowly growing. 

With men being scarce on campus it really has been a challenge to find some that do care for a friendship, let alone about God, but for the small amount that I have been able to reach, God has blessed them. 

One thing I learned about going into the semester was that 'quality is better than quantity' and that I had to trust God with that. But I didn't know what that looked like in starting a campus ministry until it happened. Had I been focusing on quantity I would be a little discouraged at this point. But as far as quality goes, the guys I meet with regularly have been so responsive and reciprocal to our friendship. We value each other and our words very much and I think that's where the kingdom starts. We share things about life that allow us to grow and I feel that's what true quality is. 

Overall God is doing big things at TWU and I feel that things are only going to get better. It's starting off small, but I know God will make it grow! He is too good."

Prayers needed, especially over the Christmas break:

- That the momentum in students' lives from Friday night fellowship, core, and one-on-one studies is not lost from time spent away from the body.
- That all of our students will go to Winter Camp in January.
- Clarity to the staff for planning events, sermons, etc. next semester.
- Student leaders and staff will find time to rest purposefully.


Thank you, as always, for your support. Your money, prayers, and encouragement all go toward building God's kingdom on the college campuses. May the Lord bless you with true riches for your generous gifts.


Yours for the Campus,

Matt

November Update

October is gone.  November is here.  I hope this isn't news to you!  We are now a little over a month away from the semester being over...and it seems like it only just started.  Anyway, here are a few things we have been up to lately:

Campus Outreach

One of the initiatives we have assigned to the interns this year is driving evangelistic outreach on our campuses.  The Denton interns have come up with a really neat plan for UNT and TWU campuses that is

 focused on increasing the number of conversations people have about God.  The first week they asked people who they thought God was and had suggestions, like Father, Judge, nothing, etc.  We want to know where others are at!  It confused a lot of people because they didn't understand why Christians would be asking what they thought instead of only preaching what we believed.

For the past couple of weeks the question has been, "Does God care about..." with several signs encircling it with topics like science, the American dream, humor, homosexuals, social justice, women, and politics.  We had several engaging conversations with students and faculty as they walked by!  Here are some photos:

Discipleship Class

We just had our fourth class meeting today, which meets weekly.  The point of this class is to provide a place for anyone in our ministry to grow in their faith and understanding of how to study scripture.  Our ministry puts a lot of effort into developing leaders.  Without them nothing would get done!  Jesus developed the disciples into leaders and left them to continue his work on their own.  Leaders are what we need to bring the Kingdom of God to the world around us.

That being said, we invest most of our time into our student leaders who have committed to serve on the leader team for the year.  These guys and girls are some of the people I am most devoted to.  Outside of that group of 39 students we don't want to neglect to impact the other students in our ministry with a passion for discipleship.  This is where Discipleship Class comes in.  The student leaders are also welcome to be there, but we already ask a lot from them so we don't expect their attendance.  The class is structured around the book of Mark, looking closely at the ministry of Jesus.  Our main goal is to help them see who God is and how to relate with Him.  That starts with understanding what Jesus said.  He said a lot of confusing and difficult things to understand or even grasp.  If we don't understand what Jesus' main points were in what He said, then how can we know what it means to follow Him?

Leadership Conference

Last Saturday our family of churches held a conference for anyone who leads in our ministry in any capacity.  It was an all-day event (8:30am-5:30pm) so I won't go into detail, but I do want to touch on it.  Our family of churches includes fellowships in Garland, Wylie, Denton, and all of the FOCUS campuses.  It's amazing to see how God has allowed us to plant so many separate ministries.  We try to have the best of big and the best of small by having our bodies all function independently, but work together.  One of the ways we maintain a unified sense of values and devotion is through events like this conference.  It's also a fantastic way of getting our student leaders more involved and integrated with the churches.  This is important because oftentimes the students who aren't members of our church (we didn't have a church in Denton for a long time for the UNT and TWU students to attend, so they are already members of other churches in the area) don't understand how much the other churches have invested into them or how much they are currently investing in them.  The FOCUS ministry really is a cutting edge ministry that's reaching young people before they go out into various parts of the world in influential positions.  What a natural way to develop and send out disciples!  In this sense supporting the FOCUS ministry is a mission of the Northeast church.  They aren't a big, rich family, but they are a people devoted to God and other people.  That's powerful.

Break Every Chain

We concluded our Break Every Chain sermon series this month and I wanted to share an activity that we did at our big group meeting.  I talked about how God has broken our chains to sin, setting us free to truly live.  The problem is we often aren't living as He intended.  It's as if our chains were broken and we clung to them instead of leaving them behind.  It's not enough to break the chain; we need to have a vision for where we are going to go now.  After the sermon I invited anyone who wanted to come down and share a chain that God had broken or one that they would like to break free from.  I asked them to write that on one side of a large sheet of paper, then on the other side write what they want to be transformed into or moved toward to replace that chain.  With that sheet of paper they individually showed both sides to the group to read.  It sounds very simple, but I assure you it was a very powerful experience.  I wish you could have seen it.  Unfortunately, there are no pictures!

Please be in prayer over the various things we have going on.  Check out the prayer requests on the left.  Thank you very much for reading this and for your support of this ministry.  I appreciate the fact that you are even interested to know what God is doing here!

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

October Update

This  month has been a little rough because I got a sinus infection and was trapped in bed for a couple of days and two weeks later I rolled my ankle bad enough to need crutches (still recovering from this, but off of the crutches!).  Those things in themselves weren't big deals, but they slowed me down from doing what I normally was able to.  There was good that came out of it of course.  Our first official Friday Night Fellowship happened during my sickness so the interns had to take charge and make sure everything ran smoothly during the service.  That was a great experience for them.  Fortunately, one of the other senior staff from Collin College was able to come preach for our group on such short notice.  God is good!

Our biggest event this month was Park Day on September 21st, which if you remember what day that is (and you live in Texas), you'll know that was probably the perfect day for this event.  It had just rained the previous day for the first time in a while so the overall temperature dropped considerably and since the sun was shining bright, all of the rain dried up!  It was beautiful...

Anyway, the goal of this event is to bring our whole UNT/TWU community together and invite all of the new people we've met to welcome them in; it's to help build new friendships so they are well rooted.  We started the day out with some goofy games to help everyone learn each other's names and get more comfortable around the others.  After that we had them split into pairs and do "walk and talks" with someone they didn't know very well.  The prompt during that time was just to share their history and ask each other questions to learn more about the other person.  Then for the next three hours they were free to pretty much do whatever they wanted.  There were several optional games that the staff planned, but the point was that our body was integrating the new people into our fellowship.  We had a delicious dinner of hotdogs and smoked pork and concluded the day with a short service.  Along with singing some worship songs that night we asked four students to share what they valued in the community in order to show new people what they could expect to find if they were a part of it.  Here are some pictures of the event so you can get a small sense of what it looked like:

Rock, Paper, Scissors battle

Bananagrams Tournament!  Very intense.

Our corefas have been very busy lately meeting with their core members and starting one-on-one Bible studies.  Please pray for the student leaders as they lead those studies and for the students they are teaching, that they would truly see Jesus in their study of scripture.

This Friday morning we are starting a discipleship class which will be open to our entire ministry.  It will be a study of Mark, but the primary goal is to help the students grow and be challenged in their faith.  That class will be led by Garrett, who is our campus director at Collin College.  I am really excited about this class, because it allows the students who aren't in leadership for various reasons to be able to step up into a higher level of responsibility.  We like to give our students ample opportunities to not be passive!  Please pray that God uses this to really move in the lives of our students.

The interns have been working on a weekly outreach project that will be on UNT and TWU campuses.  With the help of our student leaders, the aim of that is to get people talking about who God is, regardless of their beliefs, and ultimately make that a much more common conversation in the campus life.  The mission statement is to "Stir up an atmosphere of curiosity and exploration of God's character so that people get personally invested in the question of who God is."  Please pray that our students will be bold as they engage in conversations with a variety of people, that it would be successful in making them think about who God is.

Also our TWU ministry will have its first ever large group meeting this Wednesday!  Sarah, one of the UNT interns, will be leading that meeting.  She would appreciate your prayers in that and you can probably read more about it on her blog.

Please keep in mind that you are welcome to come visit on a Friday night any time you would like.  Just contact me and I will make sure you know all of the details.

Thank you again and again for your partnership and support!  May God continue to bless you.


Yours for the Campus,

Matt

September Update

The past month flew by.  Everything is fast paced at the beginning of school and there is a lot to do.  I'm just going to touch on the highlights:

UNT/TWU Corefa Prep

On August 17th and 18th we gathered the UNT & TWU small group leaders, known as corefas (core facilitators), and prepared for the start of school.  (UNT =University of North Texas; TWU=Texas Woman's University).

We started things off by introducing the theme for the year: Break Every Chain.  Click here to read a little about our theme meaning.  I read all of Psalm 107 to the group because it gives a fuller picture of how over and over God delivered his people out of the suffering that they brought upon themselves.  Still today we make decisions that bind us to ungodly things, preventing us from having a full relationship with God.  To help illustrate this point for the student leaders we tied bricks to their arms for most of our Saturday session (so for about 8 hours).  Then at the end of the day we cut each other's ropes to signify God using us to break each other's chains.  When someone cut another's rope, they looked them in the eyes and said, "The Lord has snapped your chains!  Let's give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love and the wonderful things He has done for you and me!" (Psalm 107:14-15 NLT, adapted).

That weekend was primarily targeted on Welcome Week to equip the leaders to meet and develop friendships with as many other students as possible.  It was so neat to hear the group of student leaders share about their excitement to reach out to their classmates.  I like to have a discussion of strategies and advice sharing so that the upper classmen can share what they've learned with the new leaders.  Plus hearing so many of their fellow leaders share about their willingness to devote their first two weeks to meeting as many people as possible is simply inspirational.  Wouldn't you feel much more encouraged to do something after hearing a room full of your peers say they are on board with it?  That speaks a lot louder than anything I can say to them!

The other major goal of the weekend was to get the leaders thinking about their visions for the year.  I asked them to think through what our mission here at UNT and TWU is.  The mission is to offer our best attempt at making and maturing disciples to the glory of God.  Then I asked them to think through all of the fears they have; what are the things that prevent them from working toward that mission?  After giving them some time to write these down, I asked them to answer another question: "What would it look like if you weren't afraid of any of those things?"  I think this helps them to visualize themselves personally trying to make disciples, with the added thought that they are doing it despite any personal obstacles normally in their way.  What would it look like for them to conquer their personal fears?  During worship that evening, after we broke each other's "chains", we had a time where we shared these visions with each other.  It was very cool.

One more thing that really impacted me that weekend is seen in the following photo.  This was taken 30 minutes after our 10 hour day of meeting, which concluded at 10pm and we were going to meet again the next day.  It amazes me how even after sitting together for that long and being mentally exhausted through discussion and lecture, they still want to spend time with each other.  I wanted to take a picture of it for you to see.

Welcome Week

Welcome Week was INTENSE.  It is the most exhausting week of the year.  It is also arguably the most important.  The universities both put on various events each year for the new freshman and transfer students to integrate into the campus communities.  For the most part our students just attend those events to meet new people each year.  FOCUS plans a couple of events on top of that when there aren't any university events planned.  So the staff, student leaders, and many of the other members in our ministry try to cast our nets wide during this time full of opportunities.  It's all about meeting people, attempting to purposefully develop a friendship with them, and seeing what God does next.  A lot is revealed over the next few weeks and months.  If we aren't diligent in making friends during Welcome Week, the door of opportunity closes quite a bit.  Not that it's impossible, but it is a lot easier to make friends at the beginning of the year when everyone is specifically looking for new friends.  That's when the soil is most fertile!

Anyway it seems like our students did a great job this year.  I can't wait to see what comes out of their hard work.  I look forward to hearing stories of changed lives later in the year!

First FNF

Last Friday was our first official big group meeting for the year.  I'm not exactly sure how many people were there, but I saw a lot of new faces.  Afterward I was able to meet many of them too which was really exciting.

During the sermon time I talked about the history of our ministry and the original vision that Ronnie, a pastor of the church family which supports us, had in 1989 to plant a college ministry at UTD, which led to the ministry plant at UNT.  I shared some of our core values with them like our unity being built on "Jesus is Lord", our mission of making and maturing disciples to the glory of God, some of our major discipleship tools being core groups (titled as such because they are the core of our ministry and a great way of developing Godly community) and one-on-one Bible study.

I also introduced the theme to them, but I think I've already sufficiently explained that to you!

All Corefa Retreat

This past weekend on Sunday and Monday we had a corefa retreat for all of our campuses (UTD, Collin College, Richland College, UNT, and TWU).  It may seem odd to have this two weeks after our previous "Corefa Prep" where we gathered the student leaders together.  While the purpose of the Corefa Prep was to prepare for Welcome Week, the purpose of the All Corefa Retreat was to prepare the hearts of the student leaders for the whole year.  Our philosophy is that if we invest a lot into our student leaders, they will be much more successful at ministering to their peers.  They can do far more ministry than our small staff can do, especially if they are adequately equipped both mentally and emotionally.

We packed a lot into this retreat so I won't go into all of it, because it would easily double what I've already written.  Here is a quick summary though:

• We listened to some TED talks by Brene Brown on vulnerability and shame.  She explains how necessary it is for us to be vulnerable to each other despite how uncomfortable and unnatural it feels, especially as leaders.  Overall I think this resonated with the students the most.  I would encourage you to check out the videos as well if you have a chance!  They may prove beneficial.
• We set up 10 "Heart of  Leader" stations around the room that involved various activities to help them think through different aspects of leadership at the heart level.  The list includes: Humility, Going Deep, Being a Servant, Submission, Genuine, Forgiving, Taking Action, Courage, Compassion, and Loving God.
• We had some other talks focusing on being a disciple-maker, thinking evangelistically toward non-Christians, and the cost of discipleship.  
• A large chunk of time was spent going over core planning, various resources, and other practical advice on being a successful leader.

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So going forward things will be starting to settle into a routine.  This week our core groups will be starting so please be in prayer over that.  Specifically pray that God will work through the student leaders to minister to whoever shows up to their group.  Soon many of the corefas will be starting up one-on-one Bible studies with the students they've met.  Also coming up on Sept. 21 will be our Fall Park Day.  The purpose of this event is to invite all of the new people in our ministry and try to better incorporate them into the whole ministry.  Usually they will have only really developed friendships within their core or they may have only been attending our big group meetings on Friday nights (which are not the best place to develop close relationships with others).  The students will be simply spending time together playing games and hanging out for the bulk of the time.  Of course we will ask our corefas to use that time purposefully to connect new people with other people in the ministry.  The day will be concluded with a cookout, worship, a few students sharing about the impact the ministry has had on their lives, and an extended communion service where we share with each other some thoughts about Jesus.  Please be in prayer over that time, because it usually is the time when new students will decide to get serious about their involvement in FOCUS, core, their one-on-one study, etc.

Thank you so much for everything you do to make all of these things possible for the students.  I couldn't make nearly as much of an impact without your support, even if it's just your thoughts and prayers.  I appreciate it when people just take the time to read my blog!

Yours for the Campus,

Matt