Trust and Obedience We had our fall retreat this past weekend, with about 280 students from Denton FOCUS who made it out. We had a lot of fun, and spent our session times and worship sets focusing on learning to trust God. This is so tied to obedience in my mind it's hard to imagine them separately. We had Ronnie, one of the pastors with our family of churches come and share from his 50+ years of ministry experience and walking with the Lord what this area has looked like for him. It was very meaningful and an impactful weekend! We always feel a sense of solidifying the community for the year when we take this time every fall. New people get more plugged in and it pays dividends for the time we invest in terms of growth for our community the rest of the year. Praise God for another successful retreat! Waiting for the New I've been getting going on teaching the latest group of 8 apprentices one of their theology class on the Spirit. It's based on the book Paul, the Spirit a...
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Incoming Photo Collage from our 3 week outreach intensive. We made it through another start to the year!! By God's grace haha. It's always a wild, exhausting but rewarding part of this role. Here's a little bit of the payoff: If for any reason it won't load, its a video of over 300 college students gathered in a classroom on campus at UNT for our first Thursday Night Fellowship of the year! They're practically shouting their devotion to Jesus! This is awesome stuff, and we're so thankful we get to stay on campus where the students are for our worship and preaching time. Many of the students won't leave campus until they feel more settled, so we've always felt that we can do the most by doing as much as we can on the campus! We're continuing our sermon series on the gospel of Mark, these first two weeks have been covering the call to carry your cross and the story of the Transfiguration. I got to tackle preaching over the Transfiguration passage an...
Hey all I am back. We are over halfway done with the summer already. It's been a summer of fundraising, getting meetings with a bunch of students to solidify our leader team, and planning big time for the fall, especially our first couple weeks back on campus. More to come on that soon! We've been having weekly meetings on Thursday nights, all campuses together, and have been in a sermon series on the promises of God. We want our students to have a sense of God's consistent character. So much of gen z reports feeling instability and wanting something solid and trustworthy, and that is very much found in our God. I’ve been leading a small group over the summer that’s over a book called “Surprised by Hope” by NT Wright. It’s one that I first read 8 years ago and has stuck with me all these years. I wanted our students to get a sense of the profound and very tangible hope that the resurrection of Jesus promises us, and I’ve found no better resource for it than this book. If ...
Hey all Just back from another amazing trip to SICM with 150 of our students who were going to learn how to evangelize, make disciples and share about Jesus back on their campuses. We are in great shape for the fall because of this trip every year! This is what most of the days at SICM look like. Lots of learning! We went up to Canada during one of the days to do outreach on the campus up near Vancouver. Here is the group that got to go to SFU Burnaby! Got to play some pickleball one night with the man who hosted us all at his home for the week! He was way better than any of us. These are some of the guys from UNT FOCUS who went this year. Great group of men who love the Lord. Pray for a great return on this investment everyone made by going on this trip. The goal is to equip a new year of students to go back to campus in the fall ready to make Jesus led community happen. It's the end of the school year and our gears are switching from constant 1-1's and sermon plannin...
Happy Easter! Tonight marks our last leader meeting for the school year and this Thursday is our last Thursday Night Fellowship, which will be on the beautiful cliffs of Grapevine Lake. Bittersweet, as it's been an amazing year to celebrate but also the end always means seniors graduating, and sometimes our staff changes. This year Steven, (center top left in pic below) is going to transition off of ours staff to go do mission work in Thailand for a time! God's calling to foreign missions has been something he's felt for a while, so this mission trip marks a step in that direction. Excited to hear about what God does over there but definitely sad to lose a key leader on our staff team. Becca, (center bottom in photo below), will continue in campus ministry at our Richland College campus, so we are keeping her but also losing her. Join me in praying for these young staff as they go out onto the next stage of ministry. Our Denton Staff Team Our Denton Student Leader Team! T...
Hey all, We just got done with a really exciting week for us! We had some friends from the Christian Campus Fellowship ministry in Bellingham WA come visit us for a week of outreach on our campuses. This is something they do every year on their spring break, different groups of their students go serve on some kind of outreach or missions trip and we were lucky enough to have them! We got to do outreach every day this past week, and met a lot of new students who we were able to engage with about Jesus. Of course we had to give them a little taste of Texas so barbecue and seeing some longhorns in Ft Worth was also on the agenda. It was Texas Night at TNF We're in the middle of going through the book of Mark in our sermons at TNF, which has been a great way to dive deep into scripture every week when we come together. I hope you all are doing well. Ministry is flourishing in our little corner of God's kingdom, so praise him for that. If you have any prayer requests ...
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...
Hey all, Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were wonderful, and that you're enjoying the post Christmas stretch. Nicole and the kids and I had a great time visiting San Antonio to see my family, and spending it with family and friends up here in the DFW area. The ministry has been doing really well. The semester ended with a big frenzy of Christmas party, listening to our apprentices give their sermons for the ned of the semester, and a bunch of meetings and 1-1s before everyone left for the break. I'm excited to be back at work today, we're looking ahead to winter camp, which is only a couple of weeks away. Prayer requests: - Our staff keeps getting sick! In some ways this is the theme of this time of year for people, but we would love some time with some healed bodies and protection from those pesky viruses that go around so we can continue to do what we need to do. - Winter Retreat. Jan 17-20th. If you could, set a reminder to pray for that time. We are doin...
We are on the North (South?) end of fall retreat! Wooho! This always a big moment in our year, it marks the transition from people being new and still getting to know us to more bought in and excited to call this place home. We do a lot intentionally leading up to camp to make that transition happen but camp is always a huge boost for that for people. We were able have Ronnie Worsham from our Garland church come and give a message and that and the worship and student testimonies we worked into the weekend gave us all the place to go away and encounter God together for a weekend. Great stuff! Over 260 Students this year just from our Denton FOCUS campuses came. Very exciting to see! We have our small groups get together with another small group of the opposite gender the weeks leading up to camp to do a combined small group and that group is their team for the challenges at camp. Its something we started a couple of years ago and we love it! It helps get people who are on the fence...
Hello all If you prayed for the prayer requests last update, THANK YOU. It has gotten a lot smoother working with UNT to accomodate our event needs. We are in a room that holds us much better now and not having to scramble or turn people away. As we head into October we're hitting some critical points in getting people to go from people who come check out our community to people who who stay committed to small groups and committed to one on one discipleship. We're still having the good problems of growing pains, trying to find enough people to help us lead 1-1 bible studies with students. Pray for that. We have had an explosion in baptisms lately! This is so exciting and has been such a neat move of God to witness. Every week at our weekly gatherings we have new announcements of baptisms for people in our community and its super encouraging. This month is fall retreat, so please be praying that students make it to that, we need that time together to solidify new relati...
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'...
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
“The kingdom of God is like this,” he said. “A man scatters seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day; the seed sprouts and grows, although he doesn’t know how. The soil produces a crop by itself—first the blade, then the head, and then the full grain on the head. As soon as the crop is ready, he sends for the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
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...
Baby #2 is here! Joni is now almost a month old, and she is getting used to life and everyone in her home. This is the first picture we've gotten of her smiling at me! Jude is a great big brother, always excited to give her kisses and hold her with us. It's very sweet. She is doing great! Eating and sleeping well. Ministry is going well! I took a week off and enjoyed some family time and now I am back into the swing of things. The end of semester is fast approaching and we are finishing up our series on Philippians at Thursday Night Fellowships. Our small groups have had a GREAT year this year. I am so encouraged by the stories of people loving it so much that they invite their dorm mates and classmates. We're going to have one more TNF this week and our community members are going to have a time to share the ways they have seen God move and work this year. I'm so excited to hear about what they're experienced and see our community encourage each other in this w...
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...
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 ...