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Winter Retreat and More!

Hey all,

We're just a couple of weeks out from our Winter Retreat! It was a really encouraging time for us and for our students. We had many people who made decisions to follow Jesus at retreat or from conversations after. We are praising God for that. The talks were focused on Discipleship, how do we follow Jesus in every part of our life, with our identity and career and through hardship and also good seasons. Sounds basic maybe, but it's essential and we always have ways we need to renew our thinking about what that looks like in our lives. 

I've been thinking about 2 Timothy 4 which says:

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

I definitely have felt some of the description Paul uses here especially in verse 3-4. There's certainly a big part of our culture right now that feels like it pulls heavily to sources that reinforce what we want to hear. Algorithms even work that way. It can feel discouraging sometimes as a minister trying to speak truth to a congregation who spends hours each day being shaped by media and algorithms and you might get a hour or so a week to speak into their lives as best as you can. I think that's where the great patience and careful instruction part is helpful. We can be urgent without being impatient. We can be emphatic without being haphazard and not careful in how we teach complex topics and challenges. God is certainly patient with us. We've been doing this series on Identity and Idolatry on Thursday Nights for our sermons, and this has certainly presented a lot of opportunities to learn how to do this well. Few things seem to ping gen Z more than the topic of identity. Our culture has definitely shaped warped views of this in some pretty serious ways. The gospel is good news to this confusion. God created us, made us to reflect his image, and to find who we are and our meaning through relationship with him. Please pray four our ministers and student leaders as we try to live out this passage of scripture in our daily ministry situations! We need wisdom and guidance from the Spirit. 

Thank you for your continued support and prayers. You make doing ministry possible and I am so thankful. 

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