Denton TX College Missions

  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 ...

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 be...

 Hello all! Just finished the first half of summer. Despite the sweltering heat, we are all mostly intact. Only one of our staff's A/C's has busted. Not bad.  We're fundraising whatever amount of our support is still not up to our budget over the summer so please be praying for that! God provides and we're just looking for the right people to connect with who would want to support the mission of reaching college students. Let me know if there's anyone who would be interested in hearing from me! Thank you for all of you who support this mission month after month or year after year. Your support is life changing! We're doing an 8 week study on preaching over the summer with our Denton Staff, and reading a book called Between Two Worlds by John Stott. It's been an excellent read, and I love that we get some time in our schedule over the summer to do some more broad prep work like this, and we're hoping this will only help elevate our preaching game to reach...

SICM 2023 As you will be able to tell from the photos below, we recently took another group of young students up to Bellingham, WA for the Student Institute of Campus Ministry. It's something we do every year to help equip and train the next generation of student leaders. I love getting to go. Even though it's a long trip to be away every year, the amount of time I get to be with our new leaders is worth it. We had a really neat group this year.  Group photo of the 100 or so students we took this year from all of the FOCUS campuses in DFW! Here's what their classes look like for the week. Lot's of learning and they get to spend some time on the campus having conversations with students and putting some of the evangelism learning into practice! We got to drive up to Mt Ranier before the classes started. Very beautiful.  Here's some of the UNT men who we took this year.  At the end of the week, every campus gets prayed for as we send out a new group of students to go ...

Wisdom Hey all!  I wanted to do something a little bit different this month. I've talked about Pizza Theology on here a few times before, and we just had another one. This time I want to link this semester's talks and encourage you to listen! It's about a 4 hour time commitment, but they are broken up nicely for you based on where we split up the talks.  The wisdom literature is definitely not a topic you hear preached on or talked about most often in sermons, but I think they are incredibly timely and important for Christians in our current world. These books are challenging and will engage our theology in some really key ways for a culture that currently struggles with discernment and wisdom.  It was one of my favorite Pizza Theologies we have done so far so I hope you enjoy them! 1.  https://open.spotify.com/episode/0PfiIl6DRD5lBBJuAZUPuN?si=4b-sH9M4TCqx3T49khY-ew 2.  https://open.spotify.com/episode/5hUc0sYZ4cLZYRkcE03FMh?si=e43My2gBS0mBtzKUdmLIUQ 3.  h...

 Hey folks, I know, I know, you just heard from me! Not trying to spam you I promise, but I am trying to get out some updates and communicate with you all more frequently.  Thank you to all of you who commented for us and the rest of the religious orgs last month! It's another way you were able to support us, and in this case not just us but religious freedom for a lot of people! We are waiting to hear what the updates on that will be.  You saw this as you opened the email but this is a picture of all of our student leaders at the Denton Campuses (UNT and TWU) Great group of leaders that we have the privilege of serving with and leading! Jude is loving learning right now! He's got counting to 10 down and is getting there with his ABC's. He loves his pre-preschool, as we call it. It's a really fun time with him and we're loving it.  Our Church (Denton North Church) Spent a day out at the lake last weekend, and it's a little hard to tell but this picture is a mix ...

Hey friends, I know you already heard from me this month about the commenting opportunity for religious freedom protection (here's the link again in case you missed it or forgot!  https://anyfocus.org/campusaccess/ ) but I still wanted to send an update about campus missions in general this month! We've been trying different methods of reaching out to the campus, but have definitely noticed it getting more challenging to engage with students walking around on campus. We're trying different things, and one of the most consistently successful new ways has been upping our social media presence. Students will reach out through our social media as we post and many have come around and gotten involved. Pray for us to continue to find new ways to reach students on campus. We're also in the middle of a four part special class we're holding on campus called Discipleship class. We haven't done this in a few years, but typically we teach through something topical at a grea...