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 being a musician is needed, and sometimes I feel like a manager, supervising this really neat team of 7 (now 9 this fall) of our Denton FOCUS pastoral staff. Sometimes a biblical studies major, or event coordinator when we need to have a camp or plan our our events for welcome week. The list could go on, but it might get tedious for both of us if I continued. The variety is something I love about this job. (Although I do sometimes daydream about getting to work with a congregation that doesn't change so much) It also is one of the things that makes it challenging. At the end of the day, all of those different aspects of this job are meant to serve a much more focused and narrow goal: pastoring students and building a community where they can encounter Jesus and let Him change their lives.
I believe (because I've seen it) that the effects of this life change go beyond their personal spirituality. It affects what kind of moms and dads they become, what kind of employee they will be, what kind of member of the next generation of the church they are. As an article I'll link below points out it also affects their mental health, their lifespan expectancy (crazy right?) their stability and their generosity. I see science starting to publish more of these studies that correlate human's involvement in community and spiritual belief as huge variables for a lot of markers of health and well being. It's almost like science is finding that when God told us to do all these things, it was because he made us this way and knew it was what was best for us and for societies. We shouldn't be surprised.
But anyways, all that is a set up for me to share a couple of things with y'all this month that encourage me greatly in what God does through ministry and how it impacts people. The first is broad, its an article in The Atlantic about a study that aimed to understand why church attendance and community involvement is steadily declining. It's conclusions greatly encourage me to continue in the work we do on the college campus to try and intervene in people's lives in these formative years before they go the route that so many in the article are described as taking.
The second is on the opposite end, both in terms of its scope, since it's about specific person, and the focus of what kind of impact it's measuring. This is from an alumni who is finding that the leadership skills he learned as leader in our ministry are carrying over into the type of employee he is able to be and his leadership ability there. We are super passionate about this too!
This is from our FOCUS Director, Brandon:
one of our UTD grads got a prestigious accounting award! When I congratulated him he told me that he ended up not doing accounting so the skills he learned as a Corefa have actually been more helpful in his career. I asked him to tell me more about that and here’s what I got back:
“My job is a business analyst at Capital One, which is a mix of data analysis and strategy. It’s basically using data to make different business decisions.I think being a core-fa built up a ton of skills for me, but maybe most importantly it has boosted my communication and relationship building skills a ton. My job involves quite a few presentations and meetings, and leading core was great preparation. It has been very helpful for being able to read the room and ask good questions.I also feel much more prepared to talk to and relate to people that are very different than me, which is much more important than I expected. Being able to be purposeful in relationships, relate to others, and manage conflict are all some of the most important things to my job and I’m sure many others. Many axioms fit in here!I loved my time in Focus and learned a ton - thank you for being a determined, thoughtful, and purposeful leader!”
These are two aspects of our mission on the campus that really excite me. On the one hand, there is a great need spiritually for people to rediscover the importance of living in close community, experiencing Jesus and reorienting their lives based on the vision of following him laid out in the New Testament. This is our primary goal as pastors on campus, and again the college time frame is such a pivotal opportunity to try to reorient people towards this kingdom focused life.
On the other hand, we focus a lot on leadership development. Partially because we believe that is a part of God's vision for his people, to lead in whatever capacity and context that they are called to, but also because leadership skills impact peoples lives in many other ways. It affects their ability to be a positive contributor in their workplaces, which is a part of their witness. I think we don't have to look far to recognize that we have some leadership crises happening in our culture. Good, Godly and righteous men and women who do leadership right are needed in every job field and arena of our society. If their time in FOCUS can be a big part of preparing them for that, then we feel like we're doing our job well. We spend time with them teaching the leadership axioms, sharing skills from leaders that we've learned from, and helping them think through how to lead in their role as Corefas in our community.
Thanks for reading! I hope this encouraged you and gave you a bigger look at some of how we approach things and view the mission of reaching college students. If you weren't able to open the article because of a paywall, I apologize!
Next month I should have some exciting news from our welcome weeks at UNT, TWU and NCTC! We have three seperate welcome weeks this week where we will be really working hard to meet as many student on the campuses as we can. Please be praying for this time.
Thank you for your support and love and prayers!
Ryan
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