Matt Clark's April Update

This past week 12 Christian brothers and sisters from Washington came to visit. Getting to spend the week with these students from Western Washington University was an amazing blessing. There's no way I could explain this fully, but they were some really neat people and they seemed to make every effort to honor us as their hosts. We loved having them!

After our Friday Night Fellowship, at the end of our week of outreach, some of them still had energy!

Apparently, a silly picture is mandatory :)

Getting a sweet treat from Beth Marie's after a good day of outreach!

If you haven't seen any of my previous posts, these students came to Texas during their Spring Break in order to help us reach out to the students on the UNT, TWU, and NCTC campuses. We spent a total of 20 hours having varying conversations about God, faith, life, etc. with students who were willing to talk to us. The display boards you can see in pictures below were a helpful way to initiate conversations by giving people a framework for what we were asking. The boards had questions like:

• Who is God?
• Who is Jesus?
• What is a Christian?
• What kind of a friend should a Christian be?
• What sort of impact should a Christian have on society?

Below each question was a list of possible responses that ranged from a conventional Christian perspective to a conventional non-Christian perspective. Our intention was to make anyone with any belief feel comfortable sharing their opinions with us so we could engage in real conversation about these important topics. Even if all we could do was show someone that having a conversation with a Christian can be a positive experience, that was a win. Changing someone's worldview in a single conversation is unrealistic, but having an impact on someone doesn't need to be so dramatic.

One of my favorite things about campus outreach (just going on campus and talking to people about their beliefs) is the variety of people you get to talk to. Just to give a few examples:

• I talked to a guy who was a single father raising two daughters in Plano (45 minutes away from UNT) who had nearly lost his faith in God, but only recently came to trust Him more deeply because of the impact one of his professors had on him. I hope to keep in touch with him to talk more about a paper he is writing in regard to how our culture responds to Christians vs other religions.
• Another guy I spoke with is a "non-theist" who grew up in a Christian home. He said that has read his Bible all the way through at least 20 times (which I believe based on the physical state of his Bible), but that he has started to realize that it is too hard to believe what it says (or at least that God is good). We talked for quite some time and even though we never really agreed on much, we shared a mutual respect for each other and I'm confident he walked away just as encouraged as I did.
• I also met a guy who worked at UNT in the IT department. He was actually walking past our displays with his daughter, who was talking to someone else. This man shared with me that he is Christian, a part of a church in Denton, has gone through a divorce and remarriage, has come out of a drug addiction, etc. It was neat to hear his life story and get to connect with him at a personal level.

I had many other meaningful conversations - too many to tell! This week was deeply encouraging to me to be able to speak to fellow human beings about who God is and what He is doing in the world. I'm also thankful for the students from Washington who spent their Spring Break ministering to our college campuses.

Lastly, in regard to evangelistic outreach, I wanted to share some general thoughts. It's sort of long, so I'll add this in at the end in case you don't have enough time to read it now.

Spring Showcase

The Showcase is this weekend! It begins at 7:30pm, but be sure to arrive early for the art sale starting at 6:30pm. Tickets are $20 ($15 for students). You can buy them here or at the door. The performances will be top-notch, including vocal, instrumental, dance, and theatrical pieces. You will not want to miss this event if you can help it!

And just as a reminder, this is a fundraiser for our students going to SICM in May. This is the week-long Christian leadership training conference we send our potential new leaders to each year. It's a highly valuable experience for these young disciples!

North Dallas Community Bible Fellowship
2801 E President George Bush Hwy
Plano, TX 75074

My Engagement

The last update I need to make is that I am now engaged! Danielle Rodriguez and I will be getting married at the end of this summer and she will be joining the Denton team as she is also a FOCUS minister. Danielle and I have been dating for a little over a year now, but we had also dated five years ago (for a just under a year) and remained fairly connected in the time between through the FOCUS/Northeast Church community. Needless to say it's been a long journey, but such a great blessing to both of us. We are very excited!


Thank you so much for all of your continued support! Thanks for reading! And I want to really encourage you to read the outreach thoughts below as well. I'd even appreciate comments on them if you have any. I have much more to say on the topic, but tried to keep it very brief.



Yours for the Campus,

Matt

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Thoughts on evangelistic outreach:

I think we often fall into two extremes with this: 1) we are afraid to broach the subject of faith because that person will think less of us or know more than us, or 2) we think we know it all and need to convert people.

Ultimately, God is the only one who can change a person's heart so we can get rid of the notion we have any chance at doing that. All we can do is offer an invitation and let them make their own decision. On the other hand, allowing our fear to prevent us from engaging those around us is a decision to reject Jesus' command at the end of Matthew. Now I don't mean this to be a shameful thing, but more of an encouragement! I've been there myself. Most of us American Christians are evangelistically shy and I don't think many of us really understand what effective evangelism looks like. Part of this is understanding the goal, plus having a reasonable expectation.

The goal, in my mind, is to connect people to God through relationship. He is the author of life, creator of everything! Jesus said that He is the vine and we are the branches. Anything connected to Him will have life and anything disconnected will die. This isn't a matter of good and bad (morality), but relational connectedness (life). It's not about us being good but God being good, a point often missed.

So what is a reasonable expectation in evangelism? Well in a single conversation, not much. We might be able to insert a new question into someone's thinking. We might be able to give them a positive experience with a Christian when all they've ever had previously is negative. However, if this is a person you work with or see on a regular basis, you can have a greater expectation. Perhaps you can develop a deeper relationship where mutual trust and respect is developed. Through a relationship they are more willing to listen to your opinion and accept your personal experience as personal evidence of a personal God.

That's how it works, you know? We exhibit faith in someone by making decisions based on the word of another person. We may go see a doctor by referral from a friend, but do you ever check that doctor's credentials to see if they are actually certified? In a similar way, we trust words in scripture to tell us who God is, but we also trust the words of other believers. The first step toward a trust relationship with God is trusting a good referral. Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." I don't know about you, but I'm naturally inclined to want the truth before I trust someone's word. Unfortunately, it cannot work that way. We will never actually know anything until we actually try it. We can't truly know what comes from following Jesus until we truly follow Him. Through real relationships with other people we can give them a good referral about who God is. We have the potential to attest to the goodness of our God in such a way that an outsider may become interested in seeking a relationship with Him. Again, we aren't in control. We are merely offering a good referral.

As I've thought more about evangelistic outreach I've come up with a simple guideline. This is in no way a template and it doesn't make it any easier. Nor does it always make sense in every situation! The conversations we have with other people will always be unique because every person is unique. We must develop our "dynamic conversation" skills - be ready to go anywhere. Perhaps this will make it simpler for you to wrap your mind around such a complex thing. And this guideline is for talking to anyone, even other Christians. When talking to someone, try to answer two questions:

1. Who is this person?
• What are they about?
• What is their conversational style?
• What struggles are they facing?
• What do they think matters in this world?
• What worldview do they claim to have?
• What qualities do they respect in other people?
2. How can I minister to them?
• How can you affirm them (without validating something you don't believe)?
• How can you connect with them through a similar/shared experience?
• How can you help them (even just a simple service like helping with Calculus homework or giving them a ride somewhere)?
• Can you give them something of value (maybe sharing an experience, encouragement, thought, feeling, etc.)?
• What question can you leave them with?
• What does this person need to hear? And how do they need to hear it?
• What is a truth you have earned the right to say to them? Perhaps suggesting something for them to consider.
• What can you learn from them?

I believe this is roughly the same approach Jesus took when he spoke with people. He had a divine advantage being Yahweh in the flesh though. We can't immediately know people unless the Holy Spirit reveals something to us, but as men and women created in God's image we do have the ability to know others deeply through relationship. When Jesus interacted with people, he always said the right thing - the thing they needed to hear - whether they liked it or not. Jesus was able to say what was needed because he knew the person. If we want to be effective disciples, we must also know the people around us so we can minister to them.

Knowing people through relationship is far more important than becoming a theologian. That doesn't negate the importance of knowing the scriptures well, but even theologians misinterpret God's word. One major problem we face in evangelism is these conversations seem to hinge on logical argument. Both Christians and non-Christians alike believe this. In actuality it's not a logical issue because we are not very logical creatures! The real reasons we believe most of what we believe (especially lies) come from our subjective perspective of our experiences. If we all believed things because of rational arguments, then we would change our mind when someone disagreed with us using a solid argument. How often does that happen though? Have you ever witnessed a Christian-Atheist debate ending in agreement? Aren't we more often unwilling to change our minds simply because we already believe what we believe? This is the main obstacle for all of us, Christian and non-Christian, to encounter God in real relationship.

So my encouragement to you, dear reader, is to engage the people around you. Be their friend, ask about how their lives are going, remember things about them, find ways to bless them. Then let God reveal to you how you can be His voice in their life. You don't need to have deep conversations about whether or not God is real. You don't need to prove the Bible's authenticity. Winning arguments is going to lose the person. Win people's hearts so that they might allow God to step in also. YOU can do this! I believe in you.

Matt Clark's March Update

I'm very thankful for you! I appreciate you taking the time to read about what's going on in the FOCUS ministries in Denton. May the Lord bless you!

Here are a few things of note...

Student Institute of Campus Ministry (SICM)

I wrote some about SICM in my last post but for those of you who are new, it is a week-long conference we take our potential new leaders to every May in Bellingham, WA. Campus Christian Fellowship (CCF), the host of SICM, is a ministry relationship that we have developed over the last several years. They have taught us much of what we know regarding college ministry - they have been doing it for over 40 years!

This year we are excited to take about 115 students from all of our campuses! Last year we had less than 100 people, including the staff. Please be praying for our students to be able to raise the funds necessary for this trip if they aren't able to pay out of pocket. Also be praying that God prepares their hearts and minds for this conference so they get the most out of the experience. This trip isn't intended to simply be a fun experience (although it likely will be), but more of a changing experience that equips each of them to lead and disciple their peers the next year. Additionally, it is potentially the launching point of life-long ministry leadership. That's our vision for these students!

In order to help our SICM students afford the cost of this trip, we are putting together a fundraiser event called Spring Showcase. You may have attended our Spring Showcase last year, but if not, it's a top-notch event. We bring in talent from all across our ministries: musicians, singers, dancers, actors, etc. In addition to the live performances, we will have an art sale in the foyer before the show and during intermission. We have collected pieces from the members of our community with artistic talent ranging from drawing, painting, photography, woodwork, etc. I was blown away by last year's performances and artwork and even had a decent idea of what to expect. This year should be even better because we have made some improvements! There are a few things I'd like to ask you for in order to help out:

1. Please pray that this fundraiser is successful in providing funds for our students.
2. You are invited so come out and support the students yourself!

Date: April 2nd
Time: Art sale starts at 6:30PM; Show starts at 7:30PM
Location: North Dallas Community Bible Fellowship

Purchase Tickets Online: anyfocus.org/showcasetickets

Apprenticeship

FOCUS has decided to change the name of our internship program to the "Campus Ministry Apprenticeship" in order to better communicate our goals. An apprenticeship (or a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and some accompanying classroom work and reading) is more accurate in describing what we are doing with these young ministers. "Intern" tends to have a less positive connotation.

Speaking of the Apprenticeship, this past weekend we interviewed applicants for next school year. We have almost made all of our decisions about acceptance and placement, which is very exciting! Please be praying for guidance as we sort through this.

Parent Night

This is one of my favorite times of the year. It's an evening when many of the parents of our students get to experience our community for the first time. I greatly enjoy honoring those parents for everything they have invested in their children's lives and initiating a partnership with them in God's greater kingdom. Each year we have a time of open sharing where students and parents can talk about how they've seen the Lord working through FOCUS in the lives of students. These stories are the real sermon! By the end of the evening I'll have cried (I'm not the only one!) a number of times from the amazing ways God has changed and impacted people. I may never be able to accurately describe what makes this night special, but perhaps you just have to be there.

I'd like to share with you one of my staff member's comments about parent night that they had written to me in their weekly report. I think it manages to further capture what is so special about Parent Night. In her report, this is in response to "A really encouraging thing in my ministry experience this past week was…"

Last year                ’s mom was absolutely against FOCUS and wanted her to quit. I don’t remember how she stayed in the ministry, but I definitely know it was a source of tension. Both of her parents came to our family night on Saturday. They invited me out to dinner with them as well. At dinner they were just kind of talking to me about how scary it is as your kid goes off to college. You just worry what they’re going to be a part of and whether that organization is actually teaching Christ. Her mom actually told me that she was really nervous when                started coming for that reason, and how it took her a long time to listen to her explain what it was about because her mind was already made up. She just kind of thanked me for our work and said she was really glad that her daughter had some place she approved of to go learn about Jesus. They’re also willing to pay for her to go to SICM. I hear a lot of the student's sides of stories, but it was so encouraging and cool to hear the parent's side. Parents just want the best for their children, and it can be so hard to let them go off into the real world. It just makes everything worth it to know that parents really do see what we do here as good work. I love parent night so much. It’s one of my favorite events that we do.

I couldn't agree more. God has blessed me tremendously through the various relationships I've developed with parents throughout the years. I'm already looking forward to Parent Night 2017!

SSI Week

SSI stands for Spring Student Impact (I think!). Some of the students from CCF (the ministry that hosts SICM) will be coming down to Denton for a week of evangelistic outreach on our three campuses. It's a neat experience because they give up their spring break in order to help us reach the students in our city - wow! They will be here from March 19-26 and we will be doing outreach on campus that Monday through Friday from 10am-2pm. Please keep us in your prayers during these days! I'm looking forward to share how it goes in my update next month.


Again, thank you for your investment in our ministry, whether it be prayers, money, time, or anything else. I am blessed to have you as a ministry partner! Please let me know if there is ever anything I can do for you.

Yours for the Campus,

Matt

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