September Update

This past week I nearly lived the life of a college student at UNT (The University of North Texas, where I am now doing ministry).  It was Welcome Week so there were lots of events every day.  I forgot how draining that can be!  We (Amy, Melissa, and I) have been encouraging the student leaders to think of this as the biggest opportunity to meet new people and develop lasting relationships in order to fulfill the mission of making disciples.  The students took on the challenge we gave them and worked hard to invite new students into their lives.  It was a long week, but I truly think it will yield a bountiful return.

Last night was our Friday Night Fellowship kickoff event.  (By the way, if anyone in the area ever wants to visit on a Friday night, feel free to do so!  We meet on the UNT campus in Matthews Hall room 311 at 7:30pm.  Call if you need any other info. - 817.992.3987)  We nearly packed out a room that seats 144 people.  Keep in mind that this ministry started only 2.5 years ago.  Here are a couple pictures of last night:

Front left is Melissa (our intern) and front right is Amy.

The main agenda last night was for Brad, the former campus pastor, to formally give his blessings to Amy and I leading this ministry.  Then we both shared our stories of how God developed a heart for ministry within us.  I wish you could have heard them!  I almost cried sharing my story and Amy's nearly brought me to tears as well.  The point of that was to help the students begin to know who we are and why we are here.  Many of the students told me later that they really enjoyed that.

So now that the year has finally begun I am really starting to feel much more comfortable with the role God has given me.  It is truly a testament to His power how much He has changed me (even in just the last year) to take this on.  Much of this could not have been possible without you.  I am so thankful to you for that, but even more so I hope you realize the impact you have made on the Kingdom.

I would like to ask that you pray for a few things as well:

- That I will speak pastorally to the students at UNT despite the fact that I am young and look like many of them.  That I will keep in mind the advice Paul gave to Timothy as a young leader (1 Tim. 4:11-12).

- That I will always be growing in my ability to plan meetings and events.  This is so important as the amount of planning directly affects the outcome.  I've always loved that old axiom, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail."

- That Amy, Melissa, and I will be able to challenge, encourage, and communicate effectively with each other.  That we can lead this ministry through our actions and how we relate with each other.

- That our student leaders will be consistent in new relationships they have developed.  It is vital that we show people what real friendship looks like and what it means to have Christ's love compel us.

Again I am so thankful for you.  Please know that I have been praying for you and the specific requests you have asked me to pray for.  May God continue to bless you!

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

August Update

Our staff retreat this past weekend went very well.  We were able to meet in the house of one of our elders from the Northeast Church (they are the largest supporter of our ministry).  One of the best things about it is we all get to spend some quality time together and purposefully learn more about each other since we added three brand new staff and four interns to our team.  That was accomplished through playing board games, discussing various ministry topics, answering personal questions about ourselves, and simply relaxing together.  We also took some time to talk about each campus' outreach plan for the beginning of school and a few different events to prepare our student leaders for the year.

Our outreach plan for UNT (University of North Texas) is to attend several of the events that the school puts on each year during the first week before school starts.  This is a really exciting time of the year!  The university plans these events primarily for new students to make friends and get involved with student organizations.  Our ministry always spends time strategically planning how the student leaders can utilize these events to develop new friendships with others before they are bogged down by a lot of commitments once school starts.

We have a student leader retreat planned for August 18 & 19th to prepare the students for that week of events.  Again, we are very blessed to be able to meet at one of the large houses here in Denton that several of our student leaders live in.  During that time we will give them some goals and advice to help them stay focused on the mission.  On top of that we will use this retreat, just as we did the staff retreat, to help build the relationships within our team.  This is actually really important this year since all of the staff will be new at UNT and so are many of our student leaders.  You should be able to see Amy (our other campus pastor) and Melissa (our intern) on the anyfocus.org/updates page soon.

So I have a few things to ask you to specifically pray for:
- God to lead Amy, Melissa, and I as we lead the students.  Pray that we will be able to develop close relationships with the student leaders this year and work well to lead the ministry through them.
- The student leaders to be mission-minded as they start out the year and utilize this time to make several new friendships for the kingdom.  Pray also that we will all work hard to maintain these new relationships and show them what true relationship looks like.  That's how they will see God in us.
- My transition into this new role.  I'm still a bit nervous, but I know that God will use me in it as long as I am faithful to Him.  Pray that I will have a servant's heart.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support.  I really can't tell you how much I appreciate it.  I cherish the notes and comments that I receive from you.  None of what I do could be possible without you.  May God bless you.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

Upcoming Staff Retreat

We are going to delay our blog posts until August 6th since we will be having a staff retreat this weekend.  This is our time to spend a few entire days together in fellowship and prepare for the year of ministry on each of our campuses so please be in prayer that God will guide us in that time.  Thank you!

Matt

July Update

Well this is the last month of my internship with FOCUS.  That hasn't changed much of my workload since I will be moving to Denton soon to do ministry at UNT.  There are many things to do in preparation.  I am very excited to make this change, but I'm also pretty nervous.  I will have a lot more responsibility being one of two campus pastors up there.  Please be in prayer for me in that regard.

When I look back on my life I couldn't have imagined while coming out of high school that I would end up where I am now.  My dream back then was to become an electrical engineer and live a life of comfort and materialism.  It has been interesting to see how God changed that during my time in college.  I never would have chosen this for myself and I think that truly validates it, at least in my mind.  It gives me courage despite my insecurity.  Please pray that God uses this opportunity for me to lead a college ministry to do His will.

This Thursday we will be continuing our "Fired Up" sermon series.  Last week Amy Knoles, the other new campus pastor at UNT, talked on being "fired up" about spiritual growth.  This week I will be sharing my thoughts on "fired up" prayer.  I'm really excited about this subject!  Over the past few years I've struggled a lot with trying to figure out what prayer is and how to use it.  That's mainly why I chose the topic.  Ultimately, I believe prayer to be much simpler than we make it out to be.  It's all about finding ourselves in the presence of God and relating to him as Father, Creator, Healer, etc.  We use that time to center ourselves on Him.  It's no wonder Paul taught to pray without ceasing.  Now I ask you to pray that God uses me to speak His words with fervor to the students that night.  I think it's important that they be engaged by this topic so they explore it more on their own after they leave.

We successfully took the second group of 8 students to SICM (Student Institute of Campus Ministry) a couple of weeks ago.  The June conference was quite a bit different as there were the same number of students total, but we were the minority (if you don't remember my post from last month, we took 49 students).  This year I was reunited with a couple of friends who I had originally met and developed friendships with when we had attended the conference as students in 2008.  They were there as campus pastors as well!  How cool is that?  Here is a picture of us:

Me, Liz, and Kristin

Like I've said before SICM is where we take our potential student leaders.  Now that the conference is over we are working hard to develop our leader teams for the coming school year.  The leader team at UNT alone could very well be close to 40 students total.  Just imagine the impact that many young people can have on their campus, especially considering these guys and girls are committed to making disciples of Jesus.

We want to be a light to the campuses and through them change the world as Jesus did in his time.  Pray that God uses us in whatever way necessary to make that happen this year and every year after.  Thanks again for all of your support!

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

June Update

I apologize for not posting until now.  We have been so busy making sure that our summer ministry activities are planned lately that we decided to postpone our blog entries a week.

Well...the summer is off to a great start!  Last week we had our first combined summer FOCUS meeting at a local church in Richardson.  They are graciously letting us gather there for free.  We have a sermon series planned for the students based around the idea of being “fired up” inspired by what Paul says in Romans 12:11 (NIV) – “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.”  Each week throughout the summer a different staff member or intern will be delivering the message on a different topic to be “fired up” about.  Last week the sermon was an introduction to the theme and this week one of the other interns will speak on “fired up” worship.  There will be several other topics such as being “fired up” about the mission, having “fired up” relationships, prayer, etc.   

Our UNT (the University of North Texas) chapter is having its own separate meeting on Monday nights up in Denton for the students who can’t make the potentially one hour drive to Richardson and back each week.  To start my transition to UNT I will be leading that meeting with Brandon, the director or our collective ministry.  We are going to work our way through Philippians with that group to see how God’s message inspired that city and how they responded to it.

In the picture below the students are working on an exercise that tied in with the lesson on building strong foundations quickly.  We had talked about how Paul had stayed in Philippi for probably only a few weeks and laid a foundation that lasted.  Just try to understand the magnitude of that: imagine starting a church with some people who just learned the gospel for the first time in the time frame of a few weeks and then leaving them on their own.  Talk about discipleship!  So the implication for our students was to learn how to lay a foundation as an expert builder in their ministry to other students as Paul does with so many of the churches he started and ministered to.

Our School of Ministry discussion groups started last week also.  This is something we offer each summer to provide some sort of graduate level class on the Bible since all of our campuses are secular.  This year we have given the option of doing an Old Testament Foundations or a New Testament Foundations course.  The students listen to the audio recordings of lectures from Regent College (a school in Canada) and meet once throughout the week to discuss with their group.  I’m leading one of the discussion groups on the New Testament and so far it has been pretty interesting.  The professor has lectured for nearly 5 hours so far and is still essentially on the introduction.  He has a tremendous wealth of knowledge, but balances it with an incredible passion for Jesus.  Please pray that this challenges the students to think differently about how they approach Scripture and use it.

SICM (Student Institute of Campus Ministry) a couple of weeks ago was awesome!  If you don't remember, that is the conference in Bellingham, WA we take our potential leaders to each year so they can spend time learning how to do campus ministry.  I think it says a lot when the students hear the same messages they hear back home from the ministry leaders in Washington.  It gives a greater sense of vision and unity of the Church at large.  This is probably the biggest reason we like to send students to SICM.  UCM (University Christian Ministries), the ministry that runs SICM, has been doing campus ministry for 40 years now so they have a lot to teach our group.  We took 49 students and 5 staff this time!  It’s such a good experience for each of the students because they spend the whole week learning how to disciple other students effectively on their campus back home.  The student who shared his testimony this month on the Staff Updates page talks about the impact of SICM on his life.  I suggest reading it if you have a chance.  The students also get to stay with a host family who provides their meals throughout the week and usually will spend time with them in the evenings.  My host family this year had two kids so my three roommates (all students) and I had an all out Nerf war with them one night.  The cherry on top is that the conference is in Washington State so everything is absolutely beautiful.

What’s really neat is we get to send at least 8 more students up to SICM in a couple of weeks since they offer a conference in both May and June!  Please be in prayer for this group as well.

These are pictures of my host family:

These are some other pictures from SICM:

Please be in prayer for us throughout the remainder of the summer as we fundraise for our ministry.  Our staff has grown in order to adequately support the growth of our students this year.

Thanks again for all of the support you have given.  I can’t say that enough.  I get to see God do a lot in the lives of these students, but it wouldn’t happen without people like you providing prayer and/or finances.  May God bless you for that.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

May Update

We are now at the last two weeks of the semester.  I'd like to ask you to be in prayer over the things on our updates page.

When I think back over the year I see that God has taught the guys I've been mentoring quite a bit.  I remember one guy who was involved in the Bible study with David who had eventually asked to stop.  Originally I started the study, but then later it was taken over by James while I sat in for support.  That was his first time to lead a Bible study.  Another one of our student leaders started his first study with a guy and has learned a few lessons about confronting him about certain issues.  Often learning confrontation and being real with people is one of the more powerful lessons for students.  Following Christ requires boldness as we see in the apostles and Christ himself.  Another guy that I've put a good deal of time into this semester has been studying with a kid who seems to be emotionally unstable.  That has been a real growing experience for him especially considering he isn't naturally inclined to be very relational with people.  Lately he has been asking me questions about developing relationships with people especially when it feels unnatural.  It's neat to me to see that he is taking so much initiative in trying to change himself to be more effective for the kingdom.

My Bible studies with Greg and Preston are still going well.  We won't be finished by next week since it takes about 3 hours to get through a lesson with each of them and we generally only meet for half of that each week.  That's not a problem because we can just continue to meet over the summer.  Anyway Greg has been struggling with some things lately and I've been making sure to talk to him nearly every day to check in and help him keep his focus on God.  It's really made our friendship deeper by having that much interaction, even if it isn't much more than a text message asking how his day went.  I have been challenging Preston to continue to go deeper in examining himself while reading the word.  He grew up in church so I don't think he has ever really had to think deeply about his faith.  It's definitely a skill that needs to be developed!

In core we have wrapped up by talking about what we learned this year so that we could see how God has changed each of us and where he is leading us moving forward.  I think it's really important to help these guys see what God has done.  It's easy to miss, but when realized can be a great source of encouragement.  Just as important as that is giving them a vision of how they can continue to grow and the impact they can make on the kingdom.  Last week we had an encouragement time where we shared how we saw Christ in each other and spurred one another on toward increasing that trait.  Tonight will be our last official meeting for the semester as exams are next week.  We will be having a fun event which has commonly been called Core Prom.  The plan is to dress up then go out to eat and bowl.  We always have a lot of fun together so I'm sure tonight will be really enjoyable.

We had an event a couple of weeks ago called Help us Help the Homeless on campus.  Basically we took about one hundred cardboard boxes and built a fort outside the main entrance to the school to raise awareness of homelessness in Collin County.  We collected various donations for the only homeless shelter in the county, The Samaritan Inn (http://thesamaritaninn.org/).  Overnight some of the guys, including myself, slept in the fort!  It was pretty uncomfortable, but I think we made a good statement by doing so.

Recently, we have been going through Paul's letters in our intern Bible class.  It's a continuation of what we have been doing all year long: going through each book of the New Testament.  We just finished talking about 1 Thessalonians yesterday.  Reading each book with the mindset of understanding what Paul was trying to do, especially considering the big picture of his different missionary journeys, has made a huge impact on how I read scripture now.  Not only that, but I have majorly expanded my understanding of all sorts of topics like faith and grace by thinking deeply on what Paul explains.  He really is one of the most amazing writers, but he was undoubtedly inspired by the Holy Spirit.  Ronnie, the pastor at Northeast church and our teacher for this class, has always reminded us that our foundation should always be found in Christ's words rather than Paul's.  It's important to remember that Paul was just a man and Christ is our Lord.  Sometimes when I say that I have to take a few moments to really let what that means sink in.  Christ is our Lord...

Again I would like to ask for you to pray over our body of students as a whole and for the guys I have had the opportunity to spend time with directly.  I will still see most of them over the summer so please continue to pray for us.  Thank you again and again for all of the support you have provided me over the last nine months.  God has really blessed it.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

April Update

The school year is wrapping up!  Cores and Bible studies will be ending soon.  For a lot of students this is a time for making a decision to follow Jesus.  We have had several baptisms already over the last couple of weeks.  I wanted to share one with you here:

Alex's Baptism (sorry this is kind of long and hard to hear at times)

Please pray that other students will be led to make decisions like this, but that they would also count the cost before doing so.  One of our goals is to share with them the whole truth of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus so there are no surprises later.  At the same time we don't want anyone to be a halfway committed Christian so we do lead them to a decision.

Over the next few weeks in core we plan to wrap up a series on purity talking about being whole for God.  An example we got from Brandon to demonstrate how unappealing it is to be even a little impure was offering a water bottle to anyone in the group who was thirsty.  When someone said that they would like one, I opened it up and spit in the bottle.  Of course no one wanted the water anymore even though my saliva was only 1% of the bottle's contents.  If we really want to give God our best we can't be content with spitting in what we offer to him.

After that talk we plan to spend a week taking stock of what each guy has learned this year in regard to God and how to live for Him.  It will be a great time for them to remember what those things were and if they haven't put them into action yet to formulate a plan to do so going forward.  This will help them to get a vision of what their lives can look like as core ends for the summer or as some of them transfer to other schools.  The idea is to get them kingdom focused.  To help facilitate that even more we are planning to have an encouragement time the next few weeks.  In this time each guy will be able to share how they've seen each person grow over the year or the impact they have had on their lives plus challenge them in areas they could grow as well.  This is so often a very meaningful and intimate time.  Please pray that God will use it to move these guys to where he needs them in the future.

My Bible studies with Greg and Preston are going great!  There are a lot of penetrating questions throughout this study as it uses scripture to examine their hearts.  This definitely makes some people feel uncomfortable.  A lot of people these days are afraid of the truth.  Just look at the culture around us.  How do you even know what is real anymore with TV, the movies, video games, the Internet?  Our culture tells us that we have the power to do anything on our own if we are dedicated enough.  God wants us to put our faith in him.  This world is tough to live in and often things are not easy, or even possible, to handle on your own.  Our job as ministers is to teach people to trust in God.  "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."  Greg had trouble with giving up control at first when we met last school year, but God has really changed his heart over time.  It's one of the most encouraging things to me personally because of how sad I was when he quit for the time in between.  What God has done in Greg's life is surely praiseworthy!  Preston isn't having the same difficulty, but I would ask that you pray for him to continue to be open to God's word and strive to challenge himself.

I'm sad to say that my friend David no longer seems to be interested in any sort of relationship as I have not been able to reach him lately.  I can understand that he didn't have an interest in doing the Bible study, but it's painful that he has removed himself from my life completely.  Please pray that God is with him wherever he goes.

Kenneth and I are still able to get together occasionally although it hasn't been to continue our study of the Bible.  I'm still not entirely sure what his reasons are for stopping, but I'm glad that he still comes to me for support and lets me speak into his life.  It may be that it was just too intense for him to have an hour and a half spent on deep discussion of how Biblical principles apply to his life, but perhaps he would be more engaged by smaller chunks or one thought at a time.  I ask that you would pray for me to be led by the Spirit and be able to efficiently minister to Kenneth.

One pretty neat thing that God has done through Kenneth is in regard to an 18 year old kid he has been ministering to for the past few years.  Essentially this kid has become entangled in a bunch of his own lies and now he has started to believe a lot of them.  He is really hurting his relationships with his family who loves him and he decided this weekend to move out of his parents house.  Kenneth convinced him to at least stay at the house I live in with four other guys in our ministry so that he will have some positive influences.  Hopefully God will use this situation to teach him something.  I can't help but think about the story of the prodigal son in relation to this kid.  My prayer is that he will one day realize the mistake he made and return to his parents who desperately want their son back.

On another note we are going to fly over 50 students up to Washington this summer for SICM in May!  And another smaller group in June.  It's so exciting to see how God has moved in our ministry to impact that many people to step up and lead in ministry.  Please keep these students in your prayers that they can take advantage of the opportunity to learn while on the trip and that they can put it into action in their lives next year and beyond.

Thanks again for everything you do!  May God bless you.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt