November News

As I sat down to write this and reflected on the past month I was surprised at how fast the time passed. It's the one month in the fall semester where routines are generally solidified and everyone (students and staff) has found a groove for ministry, school, and work. Then November rips everyone out of that routine as the holidays approach, studying for finals begins, and we prepare the students both practically and spiritually for the winter break. To put things in perspective, we have three more big group meetings, then we won't meet the week of Thanksgiving, the next week we can't meet on campus, then finals, and everyone is gone. That's just the nature of college ministry!

Fall Camp

Fall Camp went very well! We had almost 150 students at Mount Lebanon Camp down south of Dallas. I talked in my last post about our goal for camp being to relationally integrate new students into the ministry through various activities and talk about how to deepen relationships with God and people. Each year we do this event I wonder if it's worth all of the work to prepare for a 24 hour camp and I'm always astounded by how effective it is at facilitating new friendships. I guess it's no surprise that bringing a bunch of students into the same space for several hours in a row, challenging them to develop deeper relationships, and giving them opportunities to talk one-on-one with other students actually creates the perfect setting for relational deepening.

Last year we tried to replace Fall Camp with Park Day (6-8 hours spent at a nearby park doing similar activities). The idea was that more people would be able to make it if it was a closer, shorter, and an "easier to come late or leave early" event. Unfortunately, less people actually came! Plus the setting was far from ideal for initiating or deepening relationships with the shorter time frame, many people not staying the whole time, and no overnight experience. Park Day was a great learning experience to say the least!

Leadership Conference

This is a conference that our family of churches started last year in order to cast the vision for how we are going to further the Kingdom. This year's conference was better than last year's (which was already really good), but instead of telling you about what happened there I wanted to share something really encouraging. Take a look at this picture and keep reading:

From our network of ministries (3 churches, 3 universities, and 3 community college campuses) the attendance was about 75-85% college students. Think about that. It's a Christian leadership conference lasting from 8:30am to 5:30pm on a Saturday which was predominantly attended by college students. These students are developing a deep commitment to the Lord and learning how to lead others through that. They are young men and women who God will use to change the world. Now that is exciting!

Please keep us in your prayers!

Pray that our student leaders will be able to end the semester well with their core groups, one-on-one studies, etc. Also be praying that each of our members will be able to effectively use the upcoming holiday breaks to rest, reflect on their year, and be purposeful in spending time with their family, friends, and the Lord.

Pray for guidance as we explore the possibility of starting ministries at UTA and NCTC (a community college district in the Denton-ish area). There are a handful of students who are interested in either transferring to UTA for studies. Also we have a couple of graduates who are interested in moving to Arlington to work and support that ministry. Several students have also expressed interest in doing the FOCUS internship at UTA if we started something there. Additionally, one of our UNT student leaders ran into a NCTC student last week who is currently trying to start a Bible study group there because there aren't any campus ministries. Hopefully we can work together to do something on that campus!

Please also be praying that God provides us with a Christian counselor in the Denton area who we feel good about referring our students to. There is just a great need for professional counseling that my staff and I are not equipped to fulfill. It's incredible the number of people who have had to live with very seriously painful experiences. It's often difficult for college students to find the help they need in order to deal with those experiences in healthy ways either because of cost and/or embarrassment. There are two great counselors we normally refer our students to who charge $30-50 per hour, but they both work about 45+ minutes away from Denton and many of our students do not have cars. Anyway, I ultimately trust that God will provide what we need, but please be praying for us to see how He intends to do so.


Thank you so much for your thoughts, prayers, concerns, financial support, and relationships. I thank God often for all of the people who believe in what we're doing on the college campuses. That encouragement is one of the ways He gives me strength!

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

October Update!

Thank you for all of your prayers for our core groups, stronger relationships within the ministry, and stress. It's very encouraging to know I have people praying over my ministry!

With the new month I've got a few things I want to share with you:

Fall Camp

This event is coming up on October 11th and 12th. It's a 24 hour camp (noon to noon) specifically intended to further connect new people into our community. The theme we are pushing is developing a deeper relationship with God and people. We want to focus on both together because they go hand in hand. I don't think Jesus coincidentally said the two greatest commands were to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind AND love your neighbor as yourself. We plan on having student testimonies of how they have deepened their relationships with God or people to give an example to younger students of what that practically looks like. Also we will be talking about the different names in which God has been referred to because what we call someone absolutely plays into our relationship with them. Then as a follow up activity we will have them write a Psalm or letter to God using some of these names that are meaningful to them. I'm really excited to see how it goes!

Leadership Axioms

We use leadership axioms to teach practical ministry lessons to our student leaders in a way that gives them a lot of meaning packed into a smaller phrase. I've really grown to love this method and wanted to share with you some examples:

• One-on-one is how it's done - We use this axiom to emphasize our value of doing one-on-one ministry. All of our leaders have had several examples of one-on-one mentorship before they get to leader team so they can pretty easily see the importance. We strongly believe that without one-on-one relationships the amount of depth possible is severely limited. The fact is simply that ministry is personal because our God is personal.
• Teach the person, not the lesson - Again, ministry is personal. This goes primarily with our written Bible study, Focus on Jesus, but is applicable in any aspect of ministering to someone. The emphasis is that every time we study the Bible with someone it's going to look different. We must be needs oriented, which should always include seeking guidance from the Lord and time in thought because it's easy to focus on felt needs as opposed to real needs. We can't simply use a template and successfully bring people to the Lord. Instead we have to be led by the Spirit and lead that person to the Lord from wherever they are. They aren't on the same path toward Jesus as the last person you studied with. You've got to go find them before you can lead them to Jesus.
• Move your feet and talk to each other - The big deal here is to communicate with other leaders and staff. We are a team so we have to be able to talk to each other about what's going on. A common example of how this plays out in our ministry is if a guy meets a girl who is interested in being a part of the community in some way, they know to introduce her to one of our female leaders. Also when a core is overwhelmed with members, the leaders know they can get help from the leaders of a smaller core to invest one-on-one in their members. Yet another example is if a leader at UNT had a friend going to UTD, they could talk to one of the UTD FOCUS leaders and introduce them to each other. It's all about working together, but that can't happen if we aren't communicating.
• Think pastorally - As a staff we don't see ourselves as the only pastors of the community. Our student leader team IS our pastoral team. They are the ones who are primarily ministering to those in our body through one-on-one relationships - our role is to support the student leaders. It's because of this reality that we want to emphasize to the leaders how important it is that they think pastorally. When facilitating their core group or a one-on-one Bible study, they have to go beyond their own preferences and the preferences of others to ultimately move people onto God's agenda. Doing that will require a lot of prayer and forethought. There is no template. This experience as a student leader will give them powerful and foundational ministry experience that I think can make them effective disciples for the rest of their lives.

Art Worship Night

One of our students put on a creative worship event this last Saturday. The prompt was essentially to spend time in prayer asking the Lord to speak to you then in response to paint, draw, or write something. At a certain point everyone shared what they had worked on and what it meant to them. It was really neat to be a part of that experience and worship God in a new way. Check out some of the pieces involved:

Click to zoom in.

Your Prayers are a Tremendous Blessing

Again, thank you for all of your prayers over the past month. I wanted to make a few quick comments about those things.

About 150 students have signed up for cores over the past few weeks, which doesn't include anyone who was invited and didn't sign up. That's just a really cool thing to have such a large percentage of the ministry involved in our smaller communities.

I've witnessed the impact of newer students developing friendships with returning members - many of them have noticeably never had a real friend before. It's a sad reality that it's really easy to be someone's best friend these days. That's probably the number one reason people are drawn to our community. The students here are a great example of living out John 13:35, "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

I believe your prayers in regard to the stresses on our staff and students have been very helpful! Please continue to pray for us to find our strength in the Lord always as it is just the nature of laboring for the Kingdom to be difficult. Each year I have new reasons to believe Jesus' words when He said, "In this world you will have trouble." Yet I'm increasingly more aware of the power and truth in the statement immediately after: "But take heart! I have overcome the world." The business of intimate relationships (ministry) is risky, but we are called to follow Jesus in His sacrificial love for others even when it costs us everything. The good news is He has gone before us and we know He's worth following!

Thank you for all of the ways you support this ministry and me personally. I have seen God's faithfulness displayed time and time again in how invested others are in campus missions and in how much care others have had for me. God is good!

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

September Update

The past few weeks have been difficult, but the Lord has been working! Our students have been so on top of meeting new people, inviting them into their circles of friendship, and letting them see the love we have for one another. I've been encouraged by how welcomed our new members and visitors seem to feel in our ministry already.

Corefa Prep

This was such an encouraging time to hear how excited the students were to go out and meet others on the UNT and TWU campuses. Most of the weekend was spent in group discussion/encouragement prepping for the past few weeks of outreach. Each year I'm just more and more impressed with the hearts of these young disciples. It's inspiring!

Welcome Weeks

These are probably the longest few weeks of our year. There's no other time that I use all my spare time for napping to recuperate! Again I'm very proud of our student leaders (and even the other members in our community) who sacrificed their time for the Kingdom. These weeks are critical for reaching as many as possible. What we tell our leaders is they can do anything for two weeks if they put their minds to it. They took that seriously. Here are some pictures from after one of our outdoor athletic events (capture the flag). The event started around 10pm and this is around midnight on a weekday! There were probably still 100 or so people just talking to each other. How cool is that?

Corefa Retreat

While "Corefa Prep" is geared toward preparing the student leaders for the couple of Welcome Weeks, Corefa Retreat is designed to prepare them for starting their Core groups and 1 on 1 Bible studies. We also use this retreat as a time to have some heart-level activities to minister to them rather than simply dump a lot of information on them.

These are most of the student leaders from all of our campuses!

Devotional stations at the retreat.

Friday Night Fellowship

Our large group meetings on Friday nights have been great. I usually get nervous as summer ends because I haven't talked in front of so many people in a while, but my transition has been much smoother this year. Our theme this year is Words of Life, which is intended to push two different values: 1) a disciplined reading of God's word at the individual level and 2) stronger devotion to pursuing a real relationship with God. The first week was an introduction to the theme, highlighting the goals and giving them very specific challenges for the week to get more involved in scripture and relating with God depending on where they were at personally in those areas. This past Friday I talked about the authority of scripture. I made the assertion that perhaps the Bible more accurately points to God's authority by revealing His truth rather than having authority itself. We see God's authority by what we learn about Him in the Bible. Then through obedience to the Lord and a relationship with Him we experience His authority first hand!

FNF Kickoff

This Past FNF

Please feel free to come check out our Friday night service anytime! We meet weekly at 7:30pm in the Eagle Student Services Center (ESSC) room 255 on the UNT campus. You can call, text, email me for directions as well.

Additionally, you are welcome to attend the church that supports us, the Denton North Church. Their meetings are on Sundays at 10:45am in the MLK Jr. Rec. Center in Denton.


Please be in prayer especially for the following things:
- cores starting
- strong relationships developed all across our ministry
- stress on students and staff

Thank you, thank you thank you for your commitment to campus ministry. I'm so thankful to be surrounded by many Godly people who believe in the work being done on the college campuses. May the Lord continue to bless you richly.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

August Update, Part 2

Our staff retreat earlier this week was very good. It's an important time for us to deepen our unity in Christ and think through our goals for the coming year. We shared about our lives with each other to deepen our staff relationships. We spent time in prayer and song to deepen our corporate relationship with the Lord. We talked about the values we want to emphasize in our ministry, how we want to articulate them, and the practical ways of implementation. I'm excited about getting this year started!

2014 - 2015 FOCUS Interns

Our Entire FOCUS Staff!

I'd like to give you a snapshot of the next few weeks so you can have a sense of what our ministry will be up to and how you can better pray over it. Before I get into that I'll define a few terms so you can actually understand what I'm talking about!

Core - Our smaller, same-gender communities which involve studying scripture, worshiping the Lord in various ways, and serving others together. It's also a place to challenge and instill courage in one another to boldly do our part in advancing the Kingdom. We consider these groups to be the "core" of our ministry because it's typically where the most growth occurs.
Corefa - Core facilitator. These are the students who have committed to our student leader team for the year. They co-facilitate their core group with a partner and spiritually mentor the members in the group. The staff devotes time each week to these students to support them in their ministry. We view and equip them to be pastors of the community.
FOJ - Focus on Jesus. This is our primary Bible study that each new member is invited to do with their corefa or other experienced member of their core group. It's not a requirement, but we have designed it specifically for our ministry model. With so many meanings attached to the word "Christian" and "disciple" it is helpful to go through FOJ to get a sense of where someone is spiritually and for non-Christians it gives a great foundational starting point to helping them see what Jesus is all about.
FNF - Friday Night Fellowship. This is our large group meeting at UNT, which the TWU ministry attends also.
UNT - University of North Texas. FOCUS has been at UNT for just over 4 years now.
TWU - Texas Woman's University. FOCUS was established at TWU last year and will still be strongly connected to the UNT ministry as it matures.


Here's that snapshot I was talking about...

Corefa Prep

For roughly 11 hours we will have all of the UNT and TWU corefas (44, possibly 46 total) and staff together to prepare for the beginning of the year, specifically for welcome week. This is also our first opportunity to get this team together and help them feel comfortable working with each other. We will have a few different discussions and times of sharing to develop vulnerability and openness. The three focal points will be:
1) Discussing our theme (Words of Life) so the student leaders have a sufficient understanding of the direction we will be going with our teaching.
2) Talking over the welcome week schedule and letting more experienced students share advice about how to best reach out during this time.
3) Sharing our visions of how we see God using us individually and collectively this year to do His work in the lives of others.

Welcome Week

Starting the next morning after our corefa prep is a week of activities planned by the school. UNT requires all new students to participate in several of these events so it's an easy way for our students to meet incoming freshmen and transfer students. We do however plan a couple of extra events like capture the flag and board game nights. TWU has a different schedule with less events, but our goals are similar and methods easily adaptable.

First FNF

This is usually our biggest large group meeting of the year since many new students show up to check out what we are all about. With so many new faces there it is imperative that our regular members take advantage of the opportunity to welcome and befriend them. We don't have a structured system for this - we merely train the corefas to keep a keen eye out for visitors each week so they can initiate conversation. The most important part is the follow through: inviting the new person to sit with them and/or exchanging contact information to continue developing the new friendship. The most common reason people consistently come to a Christian gathering is because of the human relationships they find there. We don't want that to ever be lacking in our community.

Corefa Retreat

This is similar in a sense to our corefa prep because it's designed to prepare the corefas even more for the year of ministry ahead of them. It's different because we have all of the corefas from our larger ministry (well over 100 total) and we prepare them more for facilitating core, leading FOJ studies, mentoring, etc. Also while the corefa prep is geared toward predominantly practical things, the corefa retreat is focused more at the heart level - us challenging and pouring a lot into the corefas to help develop a passion and excitement.



My biggest request at this time is that you would take some time over the next week to pray over the beginning of the school year and specifically the events listed above. Our organization can't do anything without God's power and guidance. Thank you so much for your support! It goes a lot further than you probably realize. I appreciate everything you do!

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

August Update, Part 1

Today is the first of our organizational calendar which means we are entering the busiest part of the year. August is when everything starts up for the school year. Our new interns started orientation today. Our new staff team will be going on retreat Sun-Tues to finalize plans for the year, prepare ourselves (spiritually, mentally, and emotionally), and spend time together as brothers and sisters. In a couple of weeks the UNT/TWU small group leaders will be meeting to prepare for the craziness of engaging new students during welcome week (Aug 17-24) - there's no other opportunity all year like this where our students can meet and befriend so many people at once. Our first FOCUS big group meeting is on August 22nd and school starts on the 25th. Also as a side note the Denton church we planted roughly a year ago will begin weekly meetings this month!

Please be in prayer over our student leader team, staff, the Denton church, and the beginning of our year. I'll write a longer post after our staff retreat. Thank you so much!

Matt

July Update

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

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

Thursday Night Fellowship

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

Summer School of Ministry: Genesis

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

Experiencing God

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


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


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

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

SICM Testimonials!

I wanted to share a few of the SICM experiences with you in hopes that it blesses and encourages you. God is going to use these students to make a noticeable impact on the world!

Autumn

SICM was such an incredible experience all around. The relationships I built there are so deep and it is encouraging to see how much God is doing in each of our lives. One thing that stuck out to me was the fact that the Kingdom movement is so much bigger than I can possibly comprehend. God has graciously invited us into this grand plan and it is so easy to get caught up in the "it's between me and God" mindset. God wants a relationship with us all, but he also calls us to spread His glory everywhere we go. SICM was a great reminder that our lives are about so much more than ourselves and that we are part of the biggest movement to ever sweep across this earth. God's plans are pretty wonderful.

Troy

Going to SICM taught me that asking the right questions can be very beneficial to making disciples. Asking good questions in a small group setting or in contact evangelism can help you to guide others to a significant truth. This is important to the disciple-making process because you are not actually telling people what to believe, instead you are challenging them to think, and leading them to find spiritual truths.

Takisia

SICM has changed my life! It was truly a gift from above to be able to attend SICM and it was fantastic to get to worship and learn about the Lord with some of my brothers and sisters in Christ! I finally learned how to accept the Lord's  unconditional love and how to pour out that same type of love into small group members. I truly realized we are called to a much higher purpose than blindly walking through life immersed in Earthly things. Through SICM God equipped me to be a light everywhere I go and by His grace we can all be Christ's disciples by living to lead others to Him. I thank God I was able to go to SICM!

Nathan

From my experience at SICM, I learned of the power of our actions as Christians through God's will. Through the tools we have been given, we can minister and develop closely knit bonds with those who have not yet become a part of this glorious Kingdom. These opportunities are present in class, small groups, or really any given period. We do not have to set a time for discipleship. In my mind, that unfolds a future full of heartfelt joy and life changing scenarios, and I wouldn't want a future any other way than that.

Kristen

Historically, I've been a person who values solitude over fellowship. The Lord had graciously poured so much love into me, and my response was to keep that love locked inside. I couldn't build God's kingdom the way that I've been called to because I didn't know how to love people well. When the week of SICM had come to an end, I found myself wishing that I was always around people who love Jesus. God used that week to teach me the importance of community, of loving the people that He created, of pouring myself out for His children. He showed me what Acts 2:42-47 looks like. He doesn't love simply so that we can feel loved, although that's a part of it. He loves us so that we can love others.

Josh

One of the most influential lessons I took from SICM is the importance of not focusing too much on the church. While the church is important, it seems like congregations tend to focus too much on their members and how to keep up attendance, and lose sight of the fact that people outside of the church are just as important if not more. It's also my understanding that his can pertain to more than just evangelizing, it can include community service programs that could benefit our society as a whole, and often this goes hand-in-hand with spreading the word about God. This idea reminds me that Christians are expected to lead Christ-like lives, showing Gods love through actions as well as faith, which ideally would be evenly balanced.