Skip to main content

Ministry in the Middle of a Pandemic

Hey friends,

What a wild month. I've no doubt you feel similarly. The types of situations we have going on are unprecedented for at least the past many decades. I wanted to give you guys a quick hello and insight into how ministry has been looking the past few weeks. In a lot of ways, everything is the same, just online or over the phone instead of in person. I'm thankful that the bulk of our time before all of this was focused on ministry at a 1-1 level, so that is something we're still able to do albeit in the virtual format. So my days look similar, but instead of driving time I now have more time for learning and continued education in ministry, which is actually a huge blessing. For some official insight though, here's a letter from our director, Brandon, on how we're responding to all of this as a ministry.

A Letter From Our Director On COVID-19


To the FOCUS Community:

I want to update you on how FOCUS is responding to COVID-19, especially in light of so many of our campuses extending spring break and moving to online instruction only afterward. As a community, we need to be praying diligently for our world during this concerning time. We don’t need to panic, because we know our hope is secure in Christ, but we do need to take action in order to love our neighbors well. Those actions may be personally inconvenient, uncomfortable, and/or expensive. The situation is evolving daily, and spring break has disrupted our normal schedules and access to one another, so we will hopefully have more definite plans in the coming 2 weeks, but here are the actions we are currently taking/considering:
  • The 3 SSI trips from Washington State that were scheduled to arrive on March 22 are cancelled.
  • Pizza Theology will not happen in its normal format on March 29, but we are considering our options for livestreaming a special teaching time, so stay tuned!
  • After tonight, we are cancelling our weekly large group fellowships (TNF, TNT, FNF) on our various campuses. We will be following the various policies on each campus to determine how long that will be in effect. We are also considering livestreamed weekly services to replace these. 
  • One-on-ones and FOJ studies will continue as planned, moving to phone or video calls depending on the health and comfort levels of the students and pastors involved.
  • For cores and other small groups, we are working with student life offices to determine what policies may affect those. We will not stop small groups of adults from gathering together, but we are also working on developing a video conferencing option. We will certainly encourage all sick or exposed students to stay away from others.
  • Leader development meetings on Monday nights will move to small groups led by a pastor, whether in-person or virtual.
Thanks for being gracious and flexible. We as a team of pastors are committed to providing pastoral care to the students in our community and beyond.

For the kingdom,
Brandon Worsham

In essence while our big group events have had to either be cancelled or change a lot, the basics of the ministry are still able to continue thank God!

Here's our Denton Staff meeting now. 


The good news in this time is that God is still working! This situation may be difficult and a new kind of challenge, but I've been spending time reflecting on God's goodness in the midst of this, and I encourage you to do the same. Thanks for reading, and stay healthy!

Ryan


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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'...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Will be Happening this Fall?

Hello all, We're two weeks out from what is typically our craziest week of the school year: fall semester welcome week. This is when campuses usually throw big events to welcome the incoming freshman, and welcome back students who have gone away for the summer. Obviously, this is prime time for a ministry to be on campus to be visible and engaging with the new students. So many of the people we have throughout the year come from us meeting them during welcome week. This year, things are going to look different. So as you support campus ministry faithfully, let me tell you what we're going to be doing this year to still be faithful on our end to minister to college students. Outreach: Reaching out and meeting new students is a vital part of our ministry, and because of COVID, the way in which we do that is going to have to look different. Not all of the students that normally attend classes are going to be in person on campus, so we can't expect to rely on holding in person ...
1 comment
Read more
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   
Post a Comment
Read more