Jesus Style Community

We're a good handful of weeks into the semester, and so far, it has been going great! I've been so excited to see God working this year in big ways and have felt so encouraged by the direction that this year has been going. Thank you so much for helping make that possible! So many students are getting to grow in their faith because of you. 

There have been a couple of distinctive things going on this year that I want to touch on this month. The first would just have to be the amount of sweet Jesus centered things that I see our students doing to help create such a sweet community. We've had multiple students unprompted decide to spend some of their free time between classes going around campus and asking random students if they would like prayer for anything. So far, they've had really awesome results and people seem really open to it. I love that these students just decided to do this on their own and have been so faithful with it. We've also had so many of our leaders continually be sharing what they are learning and reading in scripture with one another, once again unprompted. They'll be posting in the group chat sharing these super encouraging messages to one another. Basically, like little sermons about what they are learning in their walk with God and through scripture. It is so awesome to see this 20 something year old students be so on fire for God. 

Ping pong tournament after event

Another thing we've been seeing a lot of is an influx of non-Christian students coming to our things. It's become normal this year for each of our small groups to have a handful of people in them that aren't Christian but are open to learning about God. There have also been quite a few people new to our ministry this year that identify with being LGBTQ but still want to come to our stuff, be in our community and learn more about God.  There's been in increase in people who are involved in different athletics through the university, and we've even had some people from different fraternities and sororities on campus reach out wondering if we can come speak to their group. All in all, it seems like God is bringing a lot of different people that tend to be the most unlikely to be interested in Christian community into FOCUS this year. 

Yesterday I preached a sermon on a Jesus centered community. It was about how the community that Jesus set up wasn't about who was well behaved enough or had everything together. That's the kind of community the Pharisees had. It was all about in group and out group defined by a line they had drawn in the sand of enough good behavior to get in. What Jesus did was make a community not about if you're good enough, but about if you are moving towards Him or not. That was his criteria. If you were as messed up as Matthew the tax collector, but wanted to move towards Him, then come on! Jesus' community wasn't about our willpower to be good enough, but about the fact that He is the only one that is good, and we've got to head towards Him and be open to Him, wherever our starting point is. 

I think I see glimpses of God transforming our FOCUS community into that kind of community this year. A community that isn't about fitting into the normal religious crowd, but a community that is truly open to anyone who is heading towards Jesus, no matter where they are starting. I'm so excited to see what God does with this year, so please join me in praying for Him to do big things! 

On a personal note, baby Eli is due basically anytime now. Darby and I basically all set up and ready to head to the hospital on a moment's notice as our kids due date fast approaches. We are excited and nervous and aware that our whole lives are about to change real soon. It's a wild feeling for sure. So, if you'd join us in praying for Eli and a smooth delivery that would be amazing! 

Thank you all so much for what you do and your support to us, it means so much to us to have people we can count on praying for us and helping us out! 

Also, the student testimony for this month is one of the guys I get to meet with weekly!