You Rarely Grow When You're Comfortable

   

    I hope everyone in the Texas area is having a good snowpocalypse 2021. So far we've been enjoying it, and our students have a variety of responses between being overjoyed, freaked out, and super annoyed. I'm really pulling for -4 degrees so we can break the all-time coldest temp for Denton, but I don't think we'll quite hit it.

Our first in person leader meeting of the year.

    This month has been a pretty tough one for my personal ministry. One of my favorite axioms we have around FOCUS is You Rarely Grow When You're Comfortable. While I love the idea, and try my best to embrace it, it's not always so fun when it is thrust upon you. That's basically been this month in a nutshell. God has really been using this season to put me into a bunch of situations that are pretty challenging and uncomfortable, but ultimately good for me and others. Most of these situations have revolved around having some pretty tough conversations with those in my ministry and having some tough sermons to give. Although I really do believe confrontation can be a catalyst for change as I've talked about before, it doesn't make it anymore fun. We've had some of our leaders engaging in some pretty unhealthy and ultimately sinful dating practices, and another of our pastors and I had to step in and have a pretty serious conversation with them a couple weeks ago. Then immediately after that one of my Core guys started going down a pretty rough path, and I needed to have a wake up to reality conversation with him as well. The Lord was super faithful through those conversations and it seems things are heading in a very positive direction. Same with the sermons I gave that were more out of my wheelhouse. God has been so faithful with using what little I have and doing great things with it.

The nice thing about meeting people outside because of COVID is that this is my view

    Though my personal ministry has been tougher this month, the ministry in Denton as a whole is doing really well. We're starting up some new things around service that I'm really excited about, like connecting students with specific needs to students who feel like God is calling them to help/meet those needs for others. Our leaders are getting more and more on fire for reaching out to those on campus this semester as well. It's so exciting seeing them building outreach into their lives, and I can't help but be very hopeful that it will produce great fruit either now or later. 

    It also seems like we're seeing more and more potential leaders in our Core groups, which is always exciting. There's a saying that Christianity is always one generation away from dying, and you never feel that more than when you're doing campus ministry. With our leaders constantly graduating and moving to the workplace, the pressure is always on to be responsive to the Spirit and see where God is working to raise new leaders up. The Lord has been very faithful with this is the past, and I am confident that this year will be no exception, so I'm incredibly excited to see what our leader team looks like 6 months from now! Make sure to be praying for that!

Prayer Requests:

    Pray that the Lord raises up strong leaders for the next year

    Pray that we can reach the lost on campus

    Pray that our students continue to build and feel connected to community