January Jottings

May the Lord bless you in 2015! I'm hopeful for many great things this year: in the FOCUS ministry at large as we move onto other campuses, the UNT & TWU ministries as God reveals His emerging leaders and continues to develop the current leader teams, my own development and growth goals for 2015, and many more good things I can't currently conceive but know that He has in mind!

FOCUS140 update

We raised over $22,000, which is just amazing! Thank you to all of you who donated to that effort - we really appreciate your decision to invest in what we are doing. That money will definitely help with our expansion to UTA and NCTC. God is good!

Changing gears

The time while the students are on winter break is such a great opportunity for staff members to meet with students they aren't normally able to. I see it as a perfect time to get more time with up and coming leaders that our current student leaders keep telling me about. It's helpful for me to have spent some one-on-one time with them so I can have more insight into each person when it comes time to send out SICM invites and select next year's leader team.

Please continue to pray

• Our staff has a retreat starting today and going through Tuesday morning in order to synergize, edify one another, and grow closer in the Lord together in preparation for the new semester.
• We are meeting with our student leaders from all campuses next Sunday afternoon to do something similar and prepare them for Winter Camp. Pray that the students are well-rested and refreshed for the coming semester.
• Winter Camp is the 16th-19th. It's a time of renewed vision and purpose when many of our newer students start to make some bigger decisions about their faith. Pray that as many students as possible will attend and be blessed through that experience.
• The Spring semester begins the next day on the 20th - please pray for all of the students on our campuses, that the Lord would be working in their lives and lead each of us (staff and students) to those who are open to Him.

As I look back on the past year, there are so many things to be grateful for, but something I'm consistently thanking my God for is all of those who believe in and support the work we are doing on college campuses. Thank you for everything you have personally invested this year! You are making an invaluable difference in the Kingdom.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

December Digest

I hope you had a good Thanksgiving holiday! It's hard to believe that it's already December (even though we all say that every year, right?). Yesterday morning I accidentally wrote the date in my journal as 9/30/14 and didn't realize it until Sarah mentioned that it was November several minutes later. She, on the other hand, keeps accidentally writing the year as 2015 already. Time is complicated I guess. But there are more important things to talk about...

Coming Up

This is the last official week of classes and finals begin on Saturday at UNT and TWU. Unfortunately, we aren't allowed to meet on campus at our normal time this Friday because it is a "reading day." We typically have our Christmas party off campus in place of it. That will be our final time together as a ministry before the break.

We will also be having a prayer service project on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Our group will disperse across the campus in order to pray and cheer people on for their finals next week. Hopefully we will have some small items (like pencils) with encouraging statements on them to give out!

Reflection

Yesterday morning at our Denton church meeting I was reminded of how thankful I am for the people God used in my life to draw me to Him.

I thought about when I was a brand new student at UTD. I had taken no initiative on my own to seek out a Christian community despite my upbringing in the Church. One night I was lost on campus after a late night event. The person I asked for help finding my apartment just happened to invite me to visit her ministry, called FOCUS. Despite my lack of effort the Lord sought me out.

With my roommate at the time I visited FOCUS. We sat in the back and made little effort to meet people, but I did fill out a card to join a core group. I didn't visit FOCUS again, but got a call from a guy to come to his core meeting. Even though I wasn't persuaded by my visit to FOCUS, the Lord kept pursuing me through a more personal approach.

The guy who invited me to his core eventually asked me to study the Bible with him. God used that friendship and study to challenge my faith. I learned to think deeper about my relationship with God and my understanding of who He is. I still had no idea what He was doing though.

During the following years I was asked to lead in various capacities, eventually finding myself in my current role. I would have never gone down this path on my own. It wouldn't have even been a consideration in my mind. God aggressively invited me onto this path. If he hadn't, I would have missed out on something amazing. If he hadn't, I would have surely led myself into a miserable place. I did nothing to earn it, yet the Lord continued to draw me and hasn't ever stopped.

It makes me wonder though. How many times did I miss hearing His voice before college? Was that simply His timing or was I that dense?

Regardless, I'm very thankful that God was persistent in drawing me to Him. I'm thankful that He used my parents and a few other people to develop me into someone who would eventually respond to Him. It's unbelievable how much He has done for me, but that's what we should expect from the Almighty Yahweh, right? God is good!

So what about you? How has the Lord brought you to where you are today? Who are the people He placed in your life to initiate with you? How have you responded to His attempts?

FOCUS 140

You may already know, but FOCUS has launched our first annual Keep FOCUS Growing Initiative. The goal is to raise one-time donations in order to financially sustain the growth of our ministry. The primary way we intend on growing in the new year is by planting campus ministries at UTA and possibly NCTC in the fall. Check out the FOCUS 140 video below and if you want to support the vision, you can donate here!

If you have any questions about the FOCUS 140 project, feel free to ask me about it!

Prayers

• Pray for our prayer service project to be a successful way to serve the universities.
• Pray that our students do well on their finals (Dec. 6-12) and have safe travels.
• Please pray for our students over the winter break. Especially for newer disciples who have grown spiritually this semester it can be easy to revert to old habits while around family or old friends and disconnected from their Christian community. Our core facilitators will be making an effort to keep all of their group members connected in some way even it is just an occasional phone call.
• Keep our core facilitators in your prayers: that their winter break would be restful so they are refreshed and ready for the new semester.
• We also need lots of prayer for our students to come to Winter Camp (Jan. 16-19). It's a challenge to get college students to sign up for anything in advance. If that wasn't enough, our last large group meeting before Winter Camp is the Christmas party this Friday! Our leader team will have to contact people one-on-one, but we will do whatever it takes!
• Pray for the FOCUS 140 project and for guidance in our efforts to plant new ministries.

Thank you for your support! I'm blown away by the ways God blesses me through His people.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

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