Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Harvest Time

The school year is wrapping up: students are taking finals, end of the year parties are being celebrated, and we just had our last Friday night meeting of the school year.  Now is the season to see the harvest of seeds planted throughout the 2014-2015 school year.  

Taking notes at Pizza Theology

On April 12, we held our last Pizza Theology of the school year.  Around 300 students packed into an auditorium at UTD to spend four hours learning about our topic: Heaven, Hell, and Everything in Between.  A handful of our staff have been studying this topic in depth to prepare to teach on it.  Questions of the afterlife have always been a primary concern of major world religions.  Our speakers presented a well-developed, thoughtful theology of the afterlife that challenged many popular assumptions while remaining faithful to the biblical metanarrative.  If you would like to listen in, you can do so here.

Pizza Theology was a clear sign of growth in the lives of students.  All year we have taught young people at our six campuses to become true students of Jesus.  We encourage them to put as much effort into studying the Bible as they do into studying textbooks and learning material related to their college majors.  The enthusiasm these young people showed for learning the deep truths of their faith was such an encouragement to me.  

As we move into the summer, we will continue to emphasize the importance of education in the life of a disciple.  Each summer, FOCUS holds informal classes called School of Ministry.  Students are invited to study the Bible in depth through commentaries and seminary classes from www.regentaudio.com.  For many college students, summer is a purposeless time of boredom or laziness.  We challenge students in FOCUS to use the freedom of a summer schedule to grow in wisdom and knowledge as they pursue God.  Please pray that these School of Ministry classes would help our students in this kind of growth.

SICM is another time to see the harvest of what’s been planted in the lives of students.  SICM (Student Institute of Campus Ministry) is a one-week training conference in Bellingham, Washington, where our students are trained to minister to their peers on a college campus.  On May 14, we will take 80 promising young leaders to SICM!  These students have invested their time and energy in their Cores, on campus outreach, and one-on-one Bible studies over this past school year.  Please pray that SICM is a time for these young men and women to learn, grow, and begin to see themselves as ministers and disciple-makers at their college campuses.

Finally, I want to share with you a picture of our new upcoming interns.  These amazing young people have seen the value of campus ministry in their own lives.  They have been changed powerfully by God through FOCUS.  Now, they are dedicating a whole school year to see that many others would have that same opportunity to encounter God on campus.



I am thrilled to be working with these new interns in the 2015-2016 school year!

Thank you for your prayers and support.  Because of you and others like you, students across DFW can encounter the life-changing power of God.  Thanks!!!