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It's a God Deal

 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...
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Recent posts
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...
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An Amazing Start

 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'...
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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   
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Reflections on Mark 4:26-29

“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.”
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May

SICM time is here again! If you're not familiar with this event, this is our ten day trip up to Bellingham WA for leadership training and development of our newer students who show potential to be evangelists and disciple makers in their coming years in school. This year we're excited to bring 40 students from the Denton campuses alone, which is a huge growth spurt for us and we're waiting to see what kind of fruit comes from this over the coming years. I am going to be going this year again and it's always such a key time to get to know these future student leaders better.  We had our last TNF until June when we all meet together with all the campuses together. This last one we did something special and rented a big pavillion at Rockledge park next to grapevine lake. We had a great time of worship and honoring the departing seniors, as well as some fun swimming and playing together at the park! It was beautiful. Someone brought a huge ice chest of crawfish and we did a...
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April

 Baby #2 is here! Joni is now almost a month old, and she is getting used to life and everyone in her home. This is the first picture we've gotten of her smiling at me! Jude is a great big brother, always excited to give her kisses and hold her with us. It's very sweet. She is doing great! Eating and sleeping well.   Ministry is going well! I took a week off and enjoyed some family time and now I am back into the swing of things. The end of semester is fast approaching and we are finishing up our series on Philippians at Thursday Night Fellowships. Our small groups have had a GREAT year this year. I am so encouraged by the stories of people loving it so much that they invite their dorm mates and classmates.  We're going to have one more TNF this week and our community members are going to have a time to share the ways they have seen God move and work this year. I'm so excited to hear about what they're experienced and see our community encourage each other in this w...
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