Denton TX College Missions

 Hey all, Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were wonderful, and that you're enjoying the post Christmas stretch. Nicole and the kids and I had a great time visiting San Antonio to see my family, and spending it with family and friends up here in the DFW area.  The ministry has been doing really well. The semester ended with a big frenzy of Christmas party, listening to our apprentices give their sermons for the ned of the semester, and a bunch of meetings and 1-1s before everyone left for the break. I'm excited to be back at work today, we're looking ahead to winter camp, which is only a couple of weeks away.  Prayer requests: - Our staff keeps getting sick! In some ways this is the theme of this time of year for people, but we would love some time with some healed bodies and protection from those pesky viruses that go around so we can continue to do what we need to do.  - Winter Retreat. Jan 17-20th. If you could, set a reminder to pray for that time. We are doin...

 We are on the North (South?) end of fall retreat! Wooho! This always a big moment in our year, it marks the transition from people being new and still getting to know us to more bought in and excited to call this place home. We do a lot intentionally leading up to camp to make that transition happen but camp is always a huge boost for that for people. We were able have Ronnie Worsham from our Garland church come and give a message and that and the worship and student testimonies we worked into the weekend gave us all the place to go away and encounter God together for a weekend. Great stuff! Over 260 Students this year just from our Denton FOCUS campuses came. Very exciting to see! We have our small groups get together with another small group of the opposite gender the weeks leading up to camp to do a combined small group and that group is their team for the challenges at camp. Its something we started a couple of years ago and we love it! It helps get people who are on the fence...

Hello all If you prayed for the prayer requests last update, THANK YOU. It has gotten a lot smoother working with UNT to accomodate our event needs. We are in a room that holds us much better now and not having to scramble or turn people away.  As we head into October we're hitting some critical points in getting people to go from people who come check out our community to people who who stay committed to small groups and committed to one on one discipleship. We're still having the good problems of growing pains, trying to find enough people to help us lead 1-1 bible studies with students. Pray for that.  We have had an explosion in baptisms lately! This is so exciting and has been such a neat move of God to witness. Every week at our weekly gatherings we have new announcements of baptisms for people in our community and its super encouraging.  This month is fall retreat, so please be praying that students make it to that, we need that time together to solidify new relati...

 Hey all, Here to update you on the first few weeks of Denton FOCUS. It's been a whirlwind, we had two weeks of doing events on campus, lunches with new students, tabling and giveaways, big night events outside on campus playing capture the flag or lawn games. The 6 foot beach ball made multiple appearances :). It's been a really awesome start to the year, and so far the students have been responding really positively. By and large it feels like the ones we are meeting are interested in engaging, many of them wanting to get involved and even the ones who aren't are less hostile than some of our previous years, so that's something we are praising God for!  Our second TNF, last night. We got a bigger room thank goodness, our first week in a slightly smaller room had people lined up along the walls! Our first two Thursday Night Fellowships have seen a bit under 300 students show up, which is awesome! (Fo context, last year our biggest Thursday night was in the low 200'...

Prayer Requests Going Into the Fall - Hey friends, we're about to start another fall semester of ministry in a couple of weeks, and that means a new leader team, a bunch of new students flooding the campuses and looking for belonging and more importantly looking for Jesus whether they realize it or not. Our goal is to meet as many of them as we can.  - Please pray for us to cross paths with those seeking and lost and that we can bridge the gap between them and their relationship with God and Christ loving community.  - Please pray for our leader team to be inspired to share the gospel boldly and bring people in with openness and love.  - Please pray fro our staff that we would also be sharing the gospel boldly, preaching and praising God well, and taking care of all of the logistics that go into a really busy few weeks.  Thank you for your support, and for being on mission with us.  Ryan   

“The kingdom of God   is like this,”  he said.  “A man scatters seed on the ground.     He sleeps   and rises   night   and day; the seed sprouts and grows, although he doesn’t know how.  The soil produces a crop   by itself—first the blade, then the head, and then the full grain   on the head.   As soon as the crop is ready, he sends for the sickle,   because the harvest   has come.”