As a pastor it is easy to get used to looking at the goal that is right ahead of you. Selecting next years leader team, planning the next big event, brainstorming our next sermon series, etc. It's kind of like going on a hike and doing what I normally do, instead of looking at all the pretty sights you're mainly focused on not tripping over the next rock. Then sometimes you'll sit down and look up at where you're heading. The 12000ft summit of the mountain, or in Texas the 500ft summit... Either way you see where you're going, and maybe you look out across the landscape and see where you're at roughly. I think that's pretty normal for us on FOCUS staff as well. We have regular meetings to talk about where we're heading in the next 5 years, what our vision for our campus is, who we want on our staff for the long haul, that kind of stuff. But I think the view that we most often forget about, and certainly the one we most often forget to tell others about is the 30,000ft view from up in the airplane flying over. The view that holds all the other views together. The one that can see the whole picture of where we're at and where we're going.
Our Denton Staff and some of our Denton students at our End of Year Party
The FOCUS 30,000ft Vision
I wanted to take the time to tell you and remind myself about our 30,000ft vision, because while it's maybe not the most practical, it is the one that keeps us going. Our vision is for a world changed. Pretty big place to start right? But that is what we are aiming for. We believe that every person in this world is in drastic need of Jesus. He is not only the one that can heal our personal brokenness, but also the brokenness of our society, of our culture, of the various nations and peoples all over the world. He died for us, and so many around the world still don't know that or choose to pay attention to it. Our belief is that the college campus is the open door to the world. Every year thousands of students come through campus from all over the world, and thousands more will go on to move to far away places taking what they've learned with them. So the question becomes what did they learn in their time in college? Was it a life of faithfulness to Jesus, or was it a life of parties, or cramming for tests, or loneliness?
Our 2020-2021 Denton Leader Team
We want to transform the college experience for every student that steps onto campus. We want campus to become a place where people can thrive, where they can belong and feel loved. Where they experience real community, deep learning, meaningful service, vibrancy in every part of their life. Where they can fall deeper and deeper in love with Jesus and have that propel them to love those around them more and more. We want every college campus to be touched that way. We want every pocket of those campuses to be touched by Jesus. We want these students who experience Jesus in college to take it into every workplace. We want Jesus loving school teachers, Jesus loving engineers, Jesus loving counselors, Jesus loving mechanics, Jesus loving programmers, Jesus loving politicians, Jesus loving stay at home parents, the list goes on. It's a big vision, and we are obviously a ways off from it, but I also see it slowly but surely coming into reality each day. This vision is what gets me on campus every day and I hope that it encourages you because you're a part of this vision as well.
We started up Summer FOCUS and we had around 225 people show up!
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