Skip to main content

Student Institute of Campus Ministry

 Hey everyone!


I hope your summer has started off right! I wanted to update you all on what has been going on in our Denton ministry lately!

SICM

A couple of weeks ago we were able to return to our yearly ministry conference in Bellingham WA. We typically take around a hundred students up there to be trained for campus ministry with a group called Campus Christian Fellowship. They've been doing campus ministry for over 50 years and we have been so blessed to be able to partner with them every year to learn from them and equip a new group of students to come back and be evangelists on their campuses. It's hard to overstate how impactful this trip usually is on our students. Year after year when we take people, we see the fruit of their growth on the campuses next year as they come back and are energized and equipped to meet students on campus and invite them to follow Jesus. 

Here's the group of students we took this year! They are from all of our campuses. Denton, Dallas, Arlington, Ft. Worth. 
Me and these guys stayed together for the week with a family from the church who showed us incredible hospitality by taking us in for the week. Thank you Sims family!!

We did a hike before the conference started and it was beautiful. This is a lot of the students that came from Denton!

Seminary

Another exciting part of my work lately has been working through a seminary class. It is a class called 4 Short Letters from Paul, and it covers 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Colossians and Philippians. Myself and a few of our other staff did the lectures remotely on zoom, and that just finished up so we're working on the final two papers now. It's been a really helpful class, not just for familiarizing myself more with those books, but also giving me a lot of helpful content to think through and utilize more in conversations with students and preaching. I'm excited about the prospect of continuing to work through seminary in the coming months/years if that continues to be a possibility. 

Family Life

Jude just turned 1 this past week! It's crazy to think that this little guy has already been with us that long, time has seriously FLOWN by. 

He got to go to the Denton splash pad on his bday and obviously loved it. 

We love him so much. Nicole is doing well. She is still working as a wedding photographer and doing an amazing job at it. If you or anyone you know needs photography work done, check her out! https://catherinenicolephotography.com/

 She is also such a good mom, I'm so thankful for her. Jude and I are very blessed to have her in our lives. our life is super hectic right now with both of us working so much and raising a kid now, but I'm thankful to be partnered with her in this. God is good!
He was having fun most of the time. 

Fundraising and Thank You!

The other big project for this summer is fundraising for this coming year. I'm still a ways to go from my goal, so if you know of people you can refer to me who might love to be a financial partner with a college ministry, please let me know! 

That brings me to you guys, and a big thank you is in order. You all are the reason I am able to continue to work on the campus to minister to and reach college students, so thank you! I hope you know that your generosity is so very much appreciated. 

Ryan




Comments

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'...

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 ...

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...