Introducing our 2019-20 UTD Pastoral Staff!

This is our amazing staff team for UTD this year! 5 full-time staff, 4 adjunct staff, and 7 apprentices!
Back row: Erin, Peter, Maria, Kylie, Hanna, my beautiful mother Tana, and me
Front row: Amy, Sarah, Hannah, Ashley, Rhett, Cort, Jesse, Melissa, and Mandy

I spent last weekend on retreat with our new and improved staff team for UTD. This year brings a number of changes:

1. First off, the Richland and SMU and TWU Dallas staff members have formed their own team working independently under Sirak's leadership. It's sad to not work as closely with them, but it's exciting to see those ministries flourishing and becoming self-sustaining!
2. We made the decision to pull all the apprentices back to UTD and Collin and Richland. We hope this will give them an improved experience--more consistent, more access to our most experienced staff, and MUCH less time in the car! The result is our largest ever group of apprentices at UTD.
3. We are continuing (and refining!) the Tuesday night service that we started last school year, so our staff and student leadership will be split between Tuesdays and Fridays. The topics will be the same week to week, but they'll be taught by pastors who are present in those services and know those students.
4. Melissa Kenfield, who was an apprentice way back in 2012-13, is coming back to volunteer a few hours of her time weekly to working with our student officers, the ones who manage all of our many room reservations, event approvals, service projects, and campus staff relationships. We're so excited to have someone who is excited to mentor those students and help them be successful.
5. Briefly about our apprentices: 
• Kylie Von Runnen and Cort Thomas grew up at Northeast Church. I remember holding both of them in the church nursery! They were both great leaders in FOCUS, first at Collin and then at UTD. 
• Hanna Mason came from the Northeast Church teen ministry and went through Collin and UNT as a student leader. She's been teaching special education in a public school for the past couple of years.
• Maria (Lefki) Stufflebeem has served at UTD and TWU Dallas. I once went on a 2-week road trip across the western half of the US with her and her brother! She loves God's word and will be an amazing addition to our team.
• Erin Campbell and Ashley Obregon were leaders at Collin and then UNT. Hannah Diaz also comes down from Denton but from TWU. I don't know these 3 as well, but I'm excited to have them on the team. I know God has big things in store!
6. As for the other adjunct staff, Tana will continue supervising apprentices, Amy will be mentoring corefas, and Jesse will be driving evangelism along with the apprentices. They've set a goal to go out one on one with every single corefa and returning member to do conversational evangelism on campus at least once a semester!
7. (In case you're curious, Mandy and I will continue to co-direct and oversee UTD as well as our staff across all 12 campuses. Peter is our assistant director and manages the week to week operations of our UTD ministry on top of leading a core and mentoring some corefas. Rhett and Sarah will mentor many of our student leaders and will also be leading the Tuesday night service.)

If you have any questions about the team, I'd love to answer them. With our biggest pastoral team ever, we have some exciting plans for the year!

Thanks for all you do and give to make all this possible!

Alumni Testimony

In August, with no students around, we usually do a testimony from an alum about the long-term impact of campus ministry. Chelsea continues to be a blessing to our students in Denton!