Denton TX College Missions

 This month has been a very exciting month in ministry! We had our FOCUS open house, where parents and friends come out and go to a TNF to see what they're students. Another Pizza Theology is in the bag, this one covering the way that the Bible was canonized, and translated and passed down from century to century. It was an excellent time of teaching.  Denton FOCUS is in an exciting phase. We're experiencing a lot of fruit and positive momentum in ministry. This is always a blessing and a time to be grateful for what God is doing in our midst. We're in the midst of a series on Philippians and talking about unity in the Spirit the past couple of weeks. As we grow as a ministry, this is a topic that needs heat and attention.  On the personal side, Nicole and I are welcoming another baby, Joni Maeve into the world. We're so excited to introduce her to all of y'all.  There have been a few students in our ministry really struggling with grief and loss. Please be praying

 Hello all! Welcome back. Here to update you on some of the happenings in Denton FOCUS lately. Thank you for investing in this vision, let me express to you some of the exciting things we're seeing. We're experiencing a real growth spurt lately. Not sure why, but we're thanking God. I think part of what's happening is that we have been blessed with a leader team that is full of zeal and energy for this mission. They are continuously pouring into the new students that come in, and we are so thankful for them.  We're also seeing a renewed thirst for spiritual things in this younger generation. For all of the news of the mass exodus from the country at large being associated with any specific religion. (non affiliated is the fastest growing cohort in the US), among gen z we're actually seeing a real thirst for spiritual things. The paths that they seek out for "spiritual things" definitely are not all good, there's renewed interest in the occult and o

Hello all, I hope you had a Happy Christmas and a good New Years. We are back after a break for the holidays and in the midst of planning for winter retreat. We have a speaker, Dr. Lee from Fuller university coming in to speak to our entire student ministry about "Disruptive Grace." I'm excited to hear what he has to share and see the impact and growth from camp this year. It's always a special time!  At the local level in Denton, we are ready to start another spring semester. Our sermon series this semester is going to be about fear. Based around the John passage on "perfect love drives out fear" Given the rise every year it seems of anxiety and fear in our student body, we feel it's a timely topic and hopefully will minister the truth of God's word back into those thoughts and feelings.  Please pray for our winter retreat! It's looking like a very cold one. BRRRR. Hopefully we can make it excellent still. Love you all, thank you for your suppor

 Fall Retreat Our annual fall retreat went AWESOME this year! Thank you for your prayers. We had amazing turnout and the students that we have heard from about it have talked about how impactful it was for their relationship with God and each other. This is what we prayed for! We did talks centered around decision making, and had Ronnie Worsham, the founding pastor of our family of churches come and give a talk Sunday morning that was so good for our students. Thank you for your prayers. I've been reading a book called Cuckoos in our Nest by Ian Provan. He is a recently retired scholar at Regent, a seminary that we have partnered with for many years. His book is about the truths and lies about being human, and what it means to recapture the essence of those truths from scripture as we watch our culture sink further and further into lies. I highly  recommend it.   This Monday we are having The University of Texas Law and Religion Clinic come up and speak to us about how to navigate

  Still going strong I'm here again and happy to report that this year is going really well! I am so thankful that God blessed us with the leaders and community that we have this year. Our leaders and staff are really putting in hard work and it's paying off, we're growing, and the number of students saying yes to studying the Bible 1-1 with us is at our highest rate in recent memory. This is EXCITING. I firmly believe that people's lives are changed when they encounter the gospel and scriptures and they allow it to mold and shape them, and 1-1 Bible study is our favorite way to try to set up a place where this can happen for people.  We're about to have our fall retreat in a couple of weeks, so please pray that people will sign up and come to that. It really makes a difference for new people feeling like they belong and them wanting to stay committed. It can be daunting for people to spend a weekend somewhere with people they don't know super well so pray that

A little different sort of update this month. Coming to you from Kimsey's Coffee in Argyle today. One of my favorite little "offices" for getting things done. It's an odd building, designed to look something like a cross between a hobbit house and a European hunting lodge. (As best as I can tell anyways). "Why don't you just work from home?" Jude thinks that me being at home but working and not playing with him is an extremely unsuitable arrangement. So here I am! Plus they have pretty good coffee.  Kimsey's Sometimes someone who is really unfamiliar with what a campus minister does will really dig in and ask, yeah but like what do you DO? It's usually those moments that I'm reminded how strange my job can be. I'm a pastor, but my congregation changes significantly every year. This month, we're really working  on expanding our social media/advertising for this next year. So I'm a graphic designer/marketer this summer? Sometimes be