Matt Clark's February Update

The Spring semester is well on its way! We are back from Winter Camp and three weeks into classes, core, etc. There's a lot to be thankful for and much to look forward to this semester.

Here's what I'm talking about:

Winter Camp

This year's camp was amazing. It's funny for me to tell you this merely through text, because I don't think I could ever fully convey what I mean! The experience is powerful for a few different reasons: first because we just have so much time to be around each other as a community (basically three full days), second because our student leaders are so purposeful with their time spent around other students which insures everyone is included in fellowship, and third because of the thoughtful and heartfelt words from Rikk Watts (our speaker for the weekend).

If you remember from my last post, or from a few of my posts last summer, I took a theology class in Canada at Regent College with Rikk. Many staff and students have listened to the recordings of his lectures (as well as other professors there) over the past few years. We have come to appreciate their humble and deep respect for God and his Word. This is why it was such a treat to have Rikk visit us. We are glad to consider him a friend and brother in the Kingdom. The words that Rikk shared with us over the weekend were about who Jesus is - we wanted our students to hear Rikk's passion and be enamored by the amazing person of Jesus, God among us. The impact on our students was a tremendous blessing as so many hearts and minds have opened up more to our Lord. Their understanding of who our God is has been stretched and expanded. One of the ideas Rikk shared was that God is not about good versus evil, but about life. That we are trying to be good people in order to be accepted by God, but we simply need to come to Yahweh, the Creator, in order to find real life. Nowhere else can it be found. Anything apart from God is dead. He inspired us to be people who take this life to those around us - that our role as God's people would be to show others his life-giving nature. We have to avoid making it about rules and being good. "God isn't about rule-keeping, but about people-keeping."

I highly recommend listening to the talks from camp because I believe they will enrich and challenge your own relationship with God. You can download the audio here. I would love to hear your thoughts or discuss any of these ideas if you want!

Here are pictures of some of our groups at camp!

University of North Texas

Texas Woman's University

North Central Texas College

All FOCUS campuses!
Includes UNT, TWU, NCTC, UTD, UTA,
Collin College (Spring Creek and Preston Ridge campuses), and Richland College

SICM invitations

SICM, as you may remember from years past, is the Student Institute of Campus Ministry. It's a week-long conference in which we send our potential leaders to be trained in reaching out and making disciples on a college campus. We have a long relationship with the staff who lead that ministry and have learned much of what we do on our own campuses from them. They are, in a real sense, our spiritual fathers and mothers. If interested, you can check out their websites for more information (CCF Ministry & SICM).

Last year we invited 25 students from our Denton campuses to attend SICM. We also had about 20 of our student leaders graduate last year so we barely maintained the size of our leader team this year. However, this year we invited 55 students to SICM! And significantly fewer leaders will be graduating. This is great news for the number of students we can reach next school year! It's also a little scary thinking about how we, as a staff, will be able to support the student leader team. Please be praying about that! We strongly believe in a 1:1 mentorship structure so that our leaders are consistently being poured into by a staff mentor. Also these students will be raising support for their trip so please be praying for that and if you are interested in helping a student pay for SICM, you can do that on our scholarship page. The trip is in May so we are still in the preliminary planning stages at the moment.

Please also be praying for students as they decide whether or not to go on this trip. They have to register by Feb 22nd. It's not for everyone, but we pray the Lord will guide each of them in this process.

Fundraiser results

You may also remember our fundraiser from back in November. We had set a goal of $45,000 and two weeks in to the three-week campaign we were maybe at around 10% of our goal. It was a little discouraging, but we prayed fervently and kept driving forward. Amazingly, as only God can do, the goal was reached...it's unbelievable! We are still in awe. God is so good. He is truly awesome! This money will go toward so many things in helping our ministries continue to grow in the years to come. Thank you so very much for your contribution to our ministry! We appreciate everything you do to support us. You are a blessing from our Lord!

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

Matt Clark's January Update (finally!)

The new year is upon us and it's surging forward!

This past Sunday we met with all of our student leaders for 4 hours to prep them for the semester and continue training them as ministers. It's just incredible that they are so willing to invest that sort of time in ministry during their time off from classes. The Lord has blessed us with some amazing men and women!

Winter Camp

We're getting ready to scoot over to Sky Ranch (in Van, TX) this Friday through Monday for our annual winter camp. We expect to have over 500 people in attendance from all of our campuses! One of the main goals of this event is to maintain the relationships of our larger fellowship - it's so encouraging for staff and students to be able to spend quality time with so many brothers and sisters across the metroplex. For that reason alone winter camp is very special.

It's also an exciting time to deepen our relationship with our guest speaker, Rikk Watts. Rikk is a professor at Regent College in Vancouver. You may remember that I visited Regent College last summer. Well, I was actually blessed enough to be in one of Rikk's classes! He is passionate about Jesus so much that he literally bounces when he talks and even when he lowers his excitement I was on the edge of my seat simply in awe of who God is. I'm looking forward to our students meeting him.

I'll post a picture of all the students from camp in February!

Special Prayer Request

Over the past month or so there have been several tragedies in Denton. Two UNT students were killed - one boy, Ryan, was shot by a police officer in self defense and a girl, Sara, who was shot in the head while driving her car on New Year's. One of the students I mentor weekly knew Ryan since childhood. I'm glad he has people he can go to in order to help him cope. Unfortunately, there are many other students who don't have that support system. Plus I can't even imagine what the families are going through right now. Please be in prayer for the families and friends of Ryan and Sara.

Two days ago a couple in their 60s was found in their home and it's suspected that their son killed them. Perhaps the son is innocent, but the situation is a tragedy regardless. Many people in Denton are mourning these losses and I pray that we don't lose any more of our friends, relatives, or neighbors in such an awful way. I ask that you pray for the family and friends of this couple as well.

Despite these tragic events I also pray that we don't lose hope. May we hope in the Lord, who is faithful even when the world seems too dark. He is more powerful than death, which he proved when he raised Christ from the dead! His light still remains in this world because he is good. He is always good! I read this line in a book last night before bed: "An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it." Satan is always trying to keep us in the dark or convince us that the light has gone out. Often it seems like so many bad things are happening in our world that it's just hopeless. Unfortunately, so much of the News is depressing. In politics it's frustrating and overwhelming to think of making positive change. "Evil" seems to be running rampant and "good" is nowhere to be found.

The truth is that there is significant good in our world. The fact that our world exists is AMAZING! The fact that most of us don't die every day is unbelievable (like on the highway, in airplanes, not getting sick, we woke up this morning, children living until adulthood, etc.). Plus we get to enjoy relationships with other people every single day (if we so choose)! So let us never refuse to see the light of God in our world, and let us never forget our purpose to also be that light. God is doing something in this world far bigger than we can comprehend. His ways are higher than ours. We must trust in his goodness despite what the evil one throws in our faces. Our God has defeated death and we must remember that.

Please also be praying for this semester. We have many plans, but I ask that you pray for the Lord to guide and direct us. Core groups and one-on-one Bible studies will be picking up where they left off. Often newer students who go to Winter Camp will be majorly impacted due to the amount of time spent with others in the community (a lot of this happens through the initiative of our student leaders). The beginning of spring semester is another opportunity to meet new students who have transferred or just never plugged into a community in the fall. We are going to try some new things with reaching out on our campuses this semester as well as have a group of students from Western Washington University join us for a week of outreach in March. We are going to have some topical classes for students who want to deepen their thinking on subjects like Old Testament Overview, Culture and Christianity, Science and Christianity, and Rethinking Worship. Over the next few weeks we are going to be determining which students are our potential leaders for next school year, which we will invite to SICM (a week-long conference for training students in college ministry). I'm sure there are other things I missed, but I know having a specific focus for prayer makes it easier on you. 

Thank you so much for your investment into our work here! God is good to us in providing brothers and sisters in the faith like you.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

Matt Clark's December Update

I hope that you were able to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday with friends or family. If not, my heart goes out to you. I'm reminded of my sister, Meagan, in India right now. My family and I haven't seen her since January! Yet even though she was missing her family, she still embraced her time with the friends around her to give thanks for what God has provided. I'm looking forward to seeing her this month when she finally returns (briefly)!

Meagan's attitude of her situation combined with what I read in Joshua recently reminds me of how sometimes our expectations when unmet can cause unnecessary disappointment. This can especially be true during the holidays. At the end of Joshua 17, in the middle of distributing allotments of land to the Israelite tribes, the people of Joseph ask Joshua for more land because their allotment wasn't enough. Joshua tells them to go up into the forest to clear out land for themselves. The people respond with excuses and Joshua's final response rebuffs their excuses and he essentially says, "God has provided what you asked for. Take it or leave it." I can't tell you how many times I've looked at my life and thought, "This isn't enough. God, I need more ______." And the Lord's reply is most often similar to Joshua's response: "It's right there waiting for you to just take it!" I think the disconnect is that we don't want to work for it or we expect something different. We fail to see the good things that God has provided for us and instead see how he failed to meet our unrealistic or subjective expectations. This is a problem because we cause ourselves to miss out on 1) the blessings God has given us and 2) a deeper relationship with Him, which is what actually matters.

So my encouragement to you this Christmas season is to look for the good God is doing around you and praise Him for it! We must be careful not to measure the world by our own expectations of it - that's not fair! God doesn't work by our standards but His own, which are so much better! His ways are higher than our ways.

We are nearing the end of our 2nd annual Keep FOCUS Growing fundraiser. This is an important event because it helps provide a means to maintain growth in our organization. As we expand to more campuses and reach out to more and more students, we must grow our staff team. As we grow our staff team, the administrative roles increase and become more complicated. It may not be as exciting to help fund an administrative position as sponsoring a child with World Vision (or something like that), but it's important because of the impact it has on college students. This impact on a few individuals can make a tremendous ripple effect on the lives of many others - in this way, we passionately believe that God will change the world. Sure He is working in many other ways; this is just our calling and we're excited to be called! The money from this fundraiser will go toward many other things like materials for studying the Bible, professional counseling for students who can't afford it, advertising that reaches people we may never have met, etc. - all of which will directly impact college students. I ask that you pray for this fundraiser and prayerfully consider giving. You can either click on the image above or the following link to get more information on the fundraiser and how to donate: anyfocus.org/itsworthit.

Check out #itsworthit to see why our students

think it's worth it to invest in college ministry!

(If you aren't familiar with hashtags, other non-related items may appear here as well)

Denton FOCUS Christmas party!

Our Christmas party this past Saturday was the last large group meeting we have with our students until January. Please be in prayer for students over the Christmas break, as many will be separated from the community. Although not for everyone, this can be a trying time for newer members of our ministry who have just become serious about their commitment to the Lord and will be around family/friends who may trigger a relapse into old ways of thinking or behavior. Also pray for our Winter Camp attendance. We don't have any other events before camp so it's always tricky getting students to sign up. It's a significant event, not simply because of the teachings we have planned, but more so because of the enormous amount of time the students get to deepen the bonds of friendship within their small groups, campuses, and our entire family of 8 campuses. It's exciting for me, personally, to see my friends from the other schools but I'm deeply encouraged by the deep inter-campus friendships our students develop as well.

Speaking of Winter Camp, I want to invite you to visit (even just for a day) if you are available and interested. We will be at Sky Ranch from Jan 15-18. Just let me know if you want more information - I would love to see you there!

Thank you so, so much for all you do to invest in our ministry. No matter how small, I appreciate your contribution. It's people like you that God's Kingdom is built on.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

Matt Clark's November Update

The semester is nearly over already! I can't believe how fast the time has gone by, but there is really only a bit more than a month until the students are done with their finals. Please be praying for them as they finish up the first half of the school year.

Here are a few other things to update you on:

Fall Camp

This was our best Fall Camp yet. Part of that is because I've now planned this event a few times and the staff I have is a little more experienced in event coordination than my previous teams, but the major factor I noticed was just how invested our student leaders were in making camp successful. They didn't let responsibility fall solely on the staff. They didn't simply focus on how they could individually enjoy the experience. They took ownership. And their involvement makes Fall Camp what it is. The sole purpose is to help newer members, who have developed friendships in their small groups, now integrate into the larger community. Without the student leaders leading by example, this goal might be impossible.

Additionally, God's Spirit was active throughout that time working in so many students' lives. Our theme was centered around how God works through community and individual relationships to change us. One girl who has been a part of our ministry for a year and a half now decided to change her major while at camp in response to a conversation with a friend. Her reasoning was because the intensity of her degree plan wasn't allowing her to be involved in spiritual community. She had asked herself what would be more important to pursue in the long run?

Another student confessed to me some burdens he had never shared with another person before. He was terrified to do so, but knew that God wanted him to stop trying to deal with it on his own. I'm glad he finally took initiative to seek help.

And there were many more examples like these!

Leadership Conference

You may have noticed we put a lot of emphasis on leadership in our ministry. Well, that's no accident and it permeates through our entire family of churches. Last weekend we had our annual leadership conference (involving our three churches and nine college ministries) which focused on the theme of friendship. Our main goal each year is to continue casting the vision of making and maturing disciples - actively advancing the mission Jesus gave to us through our predecessors at the end of Matthew's gospel. We want to call everyone in our body to be leaders in this mission, just as Jesus does.

I'm convinced this is critical. If we don't call each person in the community to leadership, how can we expect the mission to move forward and expand? This has a lot to do with how much our student leaders invest in their peers. We call every person in our ministry to a high standard, but it's simply what Jesus called people to in His teachings.

The theme of friendship was perfect because of how much our culture struggles with developing healthy friendships. Many things contribute to this, but the point is that without developing real relationships with people it's difficult to actually teach people how to relate with God. How can we expect to be successful in reconciling men to God when we avoid the specific design He intended for us? He made us relational beings in His own image. If our culture doesn't see friendship as a significant thing, then how much less significant does a relationship with God seem to them? And I think we also see this in the passiveness of so many Christians today. So much of what is said in Scripture teaches us who God is and how to treat other people. It's no wonder Jesus says the greatest commands are to love God and love people.

2nd Annual Keep FOCUS Growing Initiative

I had mentioned last month that we are raising funds again this year for the purpose of helping FOCUS in our efforts to continue expanding the Kingdom! To be connected to what's going on, you will need to visit our Facebook page (click the link below) and "like" our page. That will allow you to see the promotional videos we post on your own Facebook news feed later this month.

www.facebook.com/anyfocusministries

These are some of the guys I mentor at UNT!
(Left to Right: Bradley, Jason, me, Sergio, Pedro)

If you would like to pray for any, or all, of our campuses, we have compiled a simple prayer for each one below. We appreciate all of your prayers and I especially want to thank you for supporting what we do on the college campuses - it makes all the difference!








Yours for the Campus,

Matt

Matt Clark's October Update

I'm excited to update you on a few things going on!

One thing is our new NCTC FOCUS community is developing slowly. It can be a little discouraging to the student leaders at times, but building community on a community college is ironically very difficult! Still they have been busy developing one-on-one relationships with students they have met on campus. We are currently planning to have an initial larger group fellowship/worship meeting near the end of October. We'll just have to wait and see how it goes! Please be praying for God to direct us on that campus and to build His Kingdom there through this emerging community. There is no other Christian organization on this campus...so we believe God will use us to change this.

Here are some of the students we have been developing friendships with:

Fall Camp is coming up next weekend! This is an event we do every year a few weeks into Fall semester. Now that most of our students have joined a Core group and developed friendships there, we use Fall Camp as a way to help new students integrate more into the larger community. Our returning students even pay a higher cost for camp to offset the cost for new students. I'm very encouraged by how much our community believes in the importance of being unified. Please be praying for these goals to be accomplished: all of our new students will attend Fall Camp if they are able and will be able to develop several new friendships within the larger community.

This week I started my class with the new intern group. Many of the senior staff members teach various classes to the interns throughout the year as a part of the academic portion of their internship. Personally, it's something that I really enjoy because I don't get to spend much time around that group (in Denton we only have one intern, Aaron, and there are 14 total!). What's even more exciting is I get to help them think through the depths of relating with God in my class, titled "Pursuing God." We will be talking through spiritual disciplines that have been practiced by many influential Christians throughout history and work toward incorporating them more and more into their lives. Please be praying for this because what the interns learn and develop in their personal lives has a tremendous impact on our students. We want to constantly be growing our staff and interns to be better ministers.

Here is Aaron! We took a goofy picture of us pretending to be in the middle of an intense mentoring meeting.

This is our weekly Denton staff meeting! These are the amazing Jesus followers I get to work with.

One last thing...

How We Used the #FOCUS140 Money

So almost a year ago we launched our 1st Annual Keep FOCUS Growing Initiative (#FOCUS140) and raised $31,000 to keep FOCUS going and growing!

In the 10 months since then, so much has happened. Together with your help, we:

• Established a major new ministry at UT Arlington and started groups at both NCTC and TWU Dallas as well. This means we are reaching students on 9 campuses now!
• Finished establishing FOCUS as a separate church legally, which protects our assets and ensures they will be used for campus missions in the years to come. It also gives us increased flexibility to meet the specific needs of our mission field.
• Launched a new website to meet administrative needs and better communicate with incoming students.
• Welcomed 14 new full-time interns, our largest class to date.
• Trained more than 150 student small group leaders to be missionaries to their campuses!

We are poised and ready for future opportunities because of those generous gifts. We've outlined below (in rounded numbers) how we spent that money. We tried to keep it general, but I'm happy to answer more specific questions as needed.

Purpose	Amount
UTA launch expenses (leader retreat, moving expenses, sound equipment, etc)	$5,200.00
Outreach and advertising to new students (for 9 campuses)	$4,500.00
Printing FOJ books for the new year (enough for 675 one-on-one Bible studies!)	$900.00
Staff development (seminary coursework and staff prep days)	$4,300.00
Paying for counseling for students (who need it but can't afford it)	$1,400.00
New website (design, launch, and first year)	$1,400.00
Internship expenses to help fund 14 interns (books, event costs, etc)	$9,000.00
Legal expenses and fees as we finalized our new corporation	$2,800.00
Prepping 150+ student leaders for the year (materials and meals)	$1,500.00
Total	$31,000.00

A special "Thank You!" to all of you who gave. Our 2nd Annual Keep FOCUS Growing Initiative will launch in November! Stay tuned for details.

Aside from that, I want to thank you for your continued support of the ministry we do. It doesn't go unnoticed and it is making a difference in the lives of college students from all over the world. One example is the student testimony below. This is a direct result of ministry partners like you (click the image to see a larger version):

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

Matt Clark's September Update

God has answered our prayers on the Denton campuses!

We have been asking all summer that God would prepare the hearts of students at UNT, TWU, and NCTC for the beginning of the school year when we attempt to meet as many as possible. I don't think I've ever seen so many people open to Christian community (believers and non-believers alike) as I have in the last few weeks! It's amazing.

At the University of North Texas many of the students have not only been open to starting new friendships, but have been very aware of the undeserved kindness extended to them. I've heard from many of our student leaders that the people they have invested time into have expressed their gratitude for this. Additionally, so many of the non-believers that our students have met are interested in being involved with our community!

We had about 200 students at our first two Friday Night Fellowship meetings this year at UNT!

A little blurry, sorry!

When I helped move new students in at Texas Woman's University, all but one was excited to be invited to check out our ministry. And even that one person was already connected to another ministry on campus! I was baffled by that since only two years ago this campus was plagued with a spiritual darkness that seemingly resisted our efforts at every turn. A lot of prayer has been lifted up toward TWU and God has clearly moved here.

A few student leaders, and several new students met during move in day at TWU!

With our new ministry plant at North Central Texas College we have mainly been "testing the waters" on campus. We had no idea what to expect. In comparison to the darkness we first experienced at TWU, there was nothing at NCTC - no dark spiritual powers nor a single Christian ministry (at their Corinth campus; I hear they have a great Christian representation at their main campus in Gainesville, 40 minutes north). This neutrality was interesting. Did Satan not see this community college campus worth his time? How many college ministries have you heard of at a community college after all? Many students are there for two years working on their associates degree before going to a university. So often these two years are seen as almost a waste of time, simply necessary to get to a school where their time will actually matter. But those two years matter and we can't ignore the students there! We want to be there to befriend whoever is open to spiritual friendships. We want to invest time making disciples even at the community colleges around us. We think that time is just as precious as any other time.

For the last two weeks a few staff and a handful of student leaders have spent a couple of hours each day playing games and hanging out with students on the NCTC Corinth campus. We had several students join us! Through that we've made some new friends. Right now we are just trying to build a community of friends and develop one-on-one relationships. In that context we plan to get to know these people, get a gauge of where they are spiritually, and slowly build the foundation of our new NCTC FOCUS ministry. Please be praying for God to be moving powerfully in this!

NCTC "Welcome Back Bash" - Bad Tattoos booth
Wade (left) is a new friend of ours and Ryan (right) is a student leader.

Another bad tattoo! Jon (left) is a student leader and Hector (right) is another new friend.

Here's our booth! Michael (a new friend I made at NCTC) is the one looking back at me.

Another cool thing that happened recently was one of our returning students, Malaika, was baptized! Here is a video and a picture of us praying over her right afterward.

Please continue to pray for our ministries as we begin to minister to the wave of new students God has brought us. Our small groups (called Cores) started this week and soon many of our one-on-one Bible studies will begin. Please be praying all of that as it is such a foundational part of what we do.

Also please pray for students to attend our Fall camp coming up in October. We will start announcing it soon to make sure our students can make time in their schedules. Our goal for this is to further assimilate newer students into our community through developing deeper one-on-one friendships within the larger group (by that time many of them will have developed decent friendships with their Core groups).

Thank you for your prayers and support! I'm so excited to see what God will do on our campuses this year after seeing what He has already done! Please pray big and specific for us! I would love to hear about what you pray for :)

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

Matt Clark's August Update

I would like to start out by sharing something less positive than usual, but for the purpose of sharing something considerably more uplifting.

One of the most surprising things to me while transitioning to full-time college ministry was how elusive relaxation is during the summers. I won't go into the details (feel free to ask if you're interested), but the stress of several projects and a never ending task list coupled with limited routine can be rough. This summer has been particularly difficult for me in this way - simply too many things coinciding. Furthermore, when truly overwhelmed, I'll occasionally find myself in a rather melancholy state.

This was the case last week. I started to question my abilities as a minister...as the director of our Denton campuses...as a spiritual leader, etc. I allowed myself to pensively wonder if another career might fit me better than college ministry. This thinking persisted a few days moving me toward a general lethargy. At the low point, a fellow staff member happened to say something to me which reminded me of the reasons I'm doing what I do. God saved me yet again.

This is the moment I remembered that college ministry is what God called me to. I know this because he brought me into it against my own persistence to pursue other careers (likely why my mind will wander that direction at times). I know this because he has developed within me a passion for raising up leaders within the college campus when I had no prior interest. It has become my conviction that college ministry is the cutting edge of evangelism and discipleship. I am convinced that my work with college students is the most effective way that I can personally impact the Kingdom.

College campuses are convergence points of the best of the best AND natural centers for distributing leaders back into the world. Consider the following:

1. College campuses attract the brightest young minds from all over the world.
2. These are young men and women who are starting to figure out who they are, without as much influence from parents and past mentors. It allows students who grew up in Christian homes to "leave the nest" and let their faith be tested in new ways. Basically, it forces them to reevaluate their world views and develop their own convictions, probably for the first time.
3. These young men and women are developing their core character, which generally changes rapidly during these few years then begins to slow down post-college. During this time their character has potential to be very malleable when exposed to God's truths.
4. These young men and women are in an environment driven by learning new things at an accelerated rate. This is a great opportunity to teach them who God is and how to be a part of his people.
5. These young men and women are developing friendships that will likely last to the end of their lives. Those friendships are ideal for them to figure out spiritual community with. They will be their foundational spiritual relationships. The college atmosphere is a great training ground for community - it's easier to learn before life gets complicated.
6. These young men and women will be taught how to be the leaders of our world in an array of career paths and in most of the nations in the world. Then they will be sent out to lead.

Consider the significant difference it makes to reconcile any one of these students to the Lord. We're talking about future doctors, lawyers, computer scientists, neuroscientists, fathers, mothers, foreign missionaries, local ministers, etc. Many international students will even return to their country of origin, allowing them a potentially deeper impact than someone outside the culture. College ministry is in fact changing the world.

Now that is exciting! It shows the greatness of God - that he can use small people like you and me to do big things. There is a price we all pay for building his Kingdom, but it is always worth the cost. In the midst of the overwhelming chaos of life, we must seek to find the Lord's peace instead of attempting to conjure our own. We must trust that he has all things under control and he can handle our inadequacy. We must believe he will follow through with his promise of being with us always.

In light of this, please be praying for our ministry as we approach the beginning of the new school year. Starting August 16th the students and staff will be reaching out to new freshman, transfer students, and any other students on campus to develop friendships and invite them into our community. The following two weeks will be filled with as much interaction with new people as possible. We will broadly sow the seed of Christ's good news to see who is seeking spiritual nurturing.

It's crucial that our team is diligent these first two weeks because we have no other similar chances. Students' schedules quickly fill up and it's hard to find time to invest in another community at that point. Some of these students will have found their place in another ministry (which is awesome!), but not most. So my request for you is to pray fervently that all of the Christians on the UNT, TWU, and NCTC campuses will put everything we have into reaching the lost and that the Spirit will be our source of power during those two weeks (roughly Aug. 16-29). I am excited to see what the Lord will do on our campuses this year!

Thank you for price you pay to build the Kingdom through your money, prayers, and other sacrifices. They do not go unnoticed.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt