Matt's May Missive

As we close out the semester we are preparing for many of our summer activities as well. Our summer plans include sending a group of almost 100 people to Bellingham, WA for a week-long college leadership conference (SICM), combined summer FOCUS with all of our different campuses, and School of Ministry. We started School of Ministry for our students to have opportunities for deeper spiritual/theological education since they lack this element at the secular schools they attend. Additionally, here are a few of the things going on:

Pizza Theology

This is an event we do once per semester about a broader topic that can't easily be covered in a sermon or sermon series. It's also a great way of bringing our individual campus ministries together for fellowship. This semester we talked about Heaven, Hell, and everything in between. I actually missed it this time so I don't have anything to share about it! You can listen to the recording if you're interested, which is what I'll be doing :). Just a fair warning: it's nearly 4 hours of audio.

Field Day

Each semester this year we hosted something we referred to as a BOYF (bring your own friend) event. It's a part of our outreach efforts, encouraging our students to invite people they know who wouldn't normally come to a Christian event to something nonreligious. Our event in the fall semester was a Halloween party which had probably 200 people in attendance. The field day was less successful, but we are still experimenting with how to go about this! The cool thing is both of these events allowed our community to welcome outsiders in and give individuals opportunities to develop new friendships in the context of our ministry.

Spring Formal

This is essentially our end of the year celebration to close out the year. We honored the people who have served in our ministry as well as those graduating, reflected on the past 10 months, and looked to the future with how we'll build on the spiritual foundation laid this year. There was also lots of snacking and dancing!

You may remember me talking about Sarah King, my current peer staff person, leaving the Denton FOCUS staff to plant our new ministry at UTA in the fall. Well I'm really sad that she is leaving because it means we'll see each other a lot less. We took a picture at the formal to commemorate our time together:

SICM

We are just two weeks out from the departure for our SICM trip! This is such an exciting time because of the opportunity we get with potential new leaders. Going on trip, even at a basic level, allows you to learn so much about who a person is. It's also an opportunity for our student leaders next year to start building relationships with each other because so far they've mostly only developed deep relationships in their cores. Now they will be on long plane rides and car rides together, staying in host family houses together, spending free times together, etc. They'll have many opportunities to get to know each other and talk about what they're learning throughout the week. It's within this environment that the students will be trained all week on how to effectively minister to their peers on the college campus and make disciples of Jesus. This isn't just another camp or conference where people get a spiritual high. We believe sending our students here is a life-changing event only because it's a starting point to equip them to go back out into the world, even outside of college, and be spiritual leaders. Each year I post some testimonies of students who attend so you can hear their takeaways. Here are some from past years:
2014 & 2013

Immediately following SICM I will be attending a theological school (Regent College) in Canada for two weeks with a few of my fellow FOCUS pastors in an attempt to further our education on Biblical thought. I'll be taking the Gospel of Matthew with Rikk Watts, who we are hoping will come speak at our winter camp this coming January. One of the things I most appreciate about Rikk (as I've listened to a few of his classes via audio recordings) is his passion for God. He's one of the more expressive professors I've ever heard and often mixes preaching into his teaching. Please pray that the Lord teaches me more about Himself through this class and helps us to develop a relationship with Dr. Watts.

Last time I said I would give some thoughts on outreach over the past month. Obviously that hasn't happened. However I have a decent sized draft written up. Every time I start working on it I keep editing or adding to it so at some point I'm just going to have to decide that it's done. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that it's still coming - I haven't forgotten about it!

Please being praying for the things on my prayer list on the left. I appreciate your prayers so very much! Thank you for your support of this ministry.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

April Accounting

Student Spring Impact

Last week was our SSI (Student Spring Impact, apparently I had it wrong in previous posts!) outreach where 12 students and interns from a ministry at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA came to Denton, TX during their spring break to evangelize on our campuses. How cool is that?

The Washington Crew

This is possibly my favorite week of the year because we mobilize all of our Texas students to join our guests from Washington (and all of the staff is involved too!). It may sound odd that I enjoy it because it is so commonly an intimidating activity for so many people these days. I used to be very nervous about initiating spiritual conversations on campus, but I've learned a few things each time that have helped me. I wanted to share these thoughts in this update, but I think I'll post them in a few days so I have more time to articulate them.

Spring Showcase

This event surprised us all with how successful it was. I know many of the student performers and have heard them sing/play songs in the past, yet I was still blown away by their talent. I would be shocked if anyone left disappointed with the quality of the show. Several of you came and I wanted to thank you for that! We were able to raise nearly $9,000 in order to help send students to SICM. If you weren't there, I'm sorry you missed out! The good news is we will likely have an even better show next year.

Intern & Staff Placement Next Year

All of the decisions have been made! It's a relief to have it done and exciting to look forward to next year. This coming year, the Denton staff team will consist of the following (click on their name beneath the photo to see some of their current blogs).

Miriam Freeman

Miriam has been an intern at UNT this past year. She has been doing ministry on the UNT campus for several years as a student and as an intern with another ministry the years previous to her FOCUS internship. She will be staying on staff at UNT to continue mentoring student leaders and take on a bigger pastoral role with the Denton ministries.

Sarah Hubbard

Sarah has been an intern at TWU this past year. Sarah King, our current TWU director, is going to Arlington to help plant the UTA ministry so Sarah Hubbard will be taking on more responsibility on the TWU campus. She won't have to take that on alone though! Our Denton team isn't simply divided by campus - we're all in this together.

Kelly Schlitz

Kelly joined our team in January in order to fill a sudden need for mentoring student leaders. Her current role has been largely administrative, but next year she will have a much more pastoral role in Denton. We are very excited to have her join our staff team! Fun fact: Kelly did the FOCUS internship the same year that I did.

Cody McCarty

Cody has been an intern at the Collin College ministry in Plano this year. He is a UNT alumnus so it's fitting that he will be returning to Denton to be on our team. He will likely be playing a role in the TWU ministry with Sarah Hubbard as well.

Aaron Hollingsworth

Aaron will be our only intern next school year (starting August 1st). He has been mentoring our student leaders this past year as an older, more mature student in our ministry. Considering that experience, we wanted to give him an opportunity for further growth by facilitating the planting of a FOCUS ministry at NCTC (North Central Texas College), a community college in our area.






Two of our current interns, Stephen and Christian, will be moving on. Christian is moving to Philadelphia to go to medical school and Stephen is hoping to either pursue a PhD or start teaching at a college nearby. Sarah King, my "rock" in ministry this past year, will be moving to Arlington to start our UTA ministry. I can't express to you how sad I am about her moving, but I'm also excited to see how God uses her there. I'm proud of her for answering God's call to that campus.


Please continue to pray over our ministry as we will soon be making several transitions this summer. Many more than I have mentioned in this post even. We are very blessed to be supported by your prayers. Thank you for your investment in the Kingdom through our ministry!

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

March Message

I hope that everyone (in Texas at least) was safe during the chaos of last week. I checked the traffic with Google maps on Friday afternoon and was surprised to see the whole DFW metroplex covered in red lines and accident symbols. Texans just ain't good at driving in mildly bad conditions. Anyway I hope none of you were caught in any of that!

Parent Night

Each year I get really nervous about this event. Who wouldn't get nervous talking to a room full of older, wiser men and women who have come to see what their children are involved in? I find myself projecting a skeptical mindset on them as if they came to scrupulously evaluate the ministry for any and every flaw. Fortunately, through prayer and reflection, I find peace in knowing that God's got it and realistically parents are simply curious. Truly, I enjoy our Parent Nights. I see it primarily as a time to build up, encourage, and thank the parents for making the largest investment in their children thus far. We, as pastors, get to build on the foundation lain primarily by them and the Lord - what a blessing!

Later on in the service, we open the microphone up for any of the students or parents who have been around for a while to share how they've seen the Lord change people through the FOCUS ministry. It's much better than anything I could say to them, and always is a real treat for everyone to hear. I'm very thankful for the people the Lord has put into our body (parents and students) because I get to hear about so many neat things He is doing through all of His people.

If you're a parent who attended Parent Night this year, thanks again for making it a priority to visit! We really appreciate you being there.

SICM Showcase

I had talked in my last post about SICM, explaining what that was. I'd like to invite you to a fundraiser concert we are hosting to help financially support our SICM students. Several students in our ministry will be performing and let me tell you, we have got some very talented people!

This will be March 28th, 8pm, at Legacy Church in Plano. Tickets will be $15. I would love to see you there!

Here's the address:
4501 Legacy Dr.
Plano, TX 75024

Spring Student Initiative

Speaking of SICM, each Spring we host students from the ministry that hosts the SICM conference in Bellingham, WA. It's another way that we use to deepen our relationship with Campus Christian Fellowship. From March 21st - 28th we will have 24 students/interns visiting our various campuses to help us with a week of campus outreach. Unlike our normal weekly outreach efforts where we spend one day per week on one of our campuses, we spend every day during this week on every campus! It allows us to have a good progression throughout the week in our conversations with people. In years past we have put marker boards out and let passersby respond to various questions to initiate conversation (see below) Some people's responses were really sad or hard to hear, but that's all the more reason we need to talk about this stuff! Please pray for our efforts: that this would be beneficial to the students on our campuses and enriching to the Washingtonians visiting with us.

Prayers

• We are currently in the process of interviewing potential interns for next school year. This is very exciting, but we would greatly appreciate your prayers during this time for the Lord's guidance on acceptance and placement of each of the thirteen applicants.
• Please continue to pray over our efforts to start a student org at North Central Texas College this semester. Also pray for our efforts at University of Texas at Arlington!
• Continue praying for our SICM trip in May.
• Guidance for the staff in leading the ministry.
• Pray that the Lord protects our ministry from the forces of evil and emboldens us (staff, students, you!) to be people of the truth in every circumstance. May we all be children of our Father in heaven.

Thank you for all you do! God uses each person in different ways and I believe that you have made a difference in His work on the college campuses through your support of this ministry.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

February Feature

Check out what's going on in the Denton FOCUS ministry!

Winter Camp

This was a such a great experience. We had around 500 students from all of our campuses at Sky Ranch. It's getting to the point where I'm not sure I could name much more than 50% of the people there! It's such a great opportunity to see the larger FOCUS community and develop inter-campus relationships. For that reason, Winter Camp is one of my favorite times of the year. It's essentially our annual family reunion.

This was our first year to invite a speaker (Iain Provan) with whom we did not previously have a personal relationship. However, he is a professor at a theological school in Canada (Regent College) who we have come to have high regard for through listening to some of his recorded class lectures. It was a neat opportunity for us to bless him and be blessed by him.

Iain incorporated our theme "Words of Life" into his topics for the weekend. He shared words on creation, God, being human, evil & suffering, and hope. The main point of his talks was that God gives us His story through the scripture which starkly contrasts the story we are told by the world.

A few more pictures from camp:

University of North Texas

Texas Woman's University

FOCUS Alumni

Student Institute of Campus Ministry

It's that time again to be thinking through our potential student leaders for next year, and a part of that process is sending students to SICM. If you don't recall, SICM is a conference in May we take select students to in order to prepare them for being missionaries on their college campuses the following year. It's also a very exciting time for the staff to start developing deeper relationships with newer students in our ministry. We have already sent out invitations to the students who have exhibited spiritual leadership qualities so please be praying for them in their decisions on whether or not to go on this trip. If you are interested in donating money toward a student's SICM trip, please check out this page.

For more information on SICM:
Official SICM Website
2014 SICM Testimonials (UNT students)
2013 SICM Testimonials (UNT students)

Interns & Staffing for Next Year

We are currently accepting applications for the 2015-2016 FOCUS internship and making other staffing decisions. Please be in prayer for our discernment on these matters.

Parent Night/Open House

This is an annual event we do for the families, friends, mentors, etc. of our students to see what our ministry is all about. I'll share briefly about who we are, what our mission is, and how we try to accomplish it, but the most impactful part of this meeting is hearing from parents and students about how God has used the ministry to cause big changes in students' lives. If you are interested in visiting FOCUS on parent night, please come! You are more than welcome to visit on any Friday night throughout the year as well. Just contact me for more info on that.

Parent Night will be Saturday, February 21st, at 5:30pm in the Eagle Student Services Center (room 255) on the UNT campus.

NCTC Expansion

We are making progress toward registering a student organization at North Central Texas College in Corinth, TX. The campus is just 10 minutes south of UNT and TWU. As far as I can tell, FOCUS will be the first Christian ministry to start an official student organization on that campus. Often the community colleges are overlooked as places to invest in students spiritually. Even the students tend to see that time as a waste or just something to get through quickly. The reality is students are generally at a community college for two years, maybe longer. Then they often feed directly into nearby universities, especially when they have developed close friendships with students at those campuses. In fact, we started the UNT ministry with a small group of student leaders who transferred from Collin College.

I'm meeting with a few of the students who are heading up the NCTC registration process this Thursday to finalize all of the paperwork. Please be in prayer for this to go smoothly! Our plan is to start developing some community there before the summer so that we can start strong in August!



Thanks again for all of your support. God is good! I see that all of the time through the people who invest in and pray for this mission. May the Lord bless you for your participation!

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

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