I Will Always Be the Prodigal Son

So the quick update is that SICM was outstanding, as always.  It somehow gets better each year.  The group we took was really special, and the teaching staff up there said the same.  All of that bodes well for our next school year!  I've had a number of young men ask to be student leaders in the fall at UTD, and I know the other staff are getting the same.

Another quick story is that one of our alumni just graduated from medical school and Mandy (my counterpart for the women) got to go to her graduation party.  When Mandy met this young lady's father, his response was "Oh, you're from FOCUS?  I'm so thankful for FOCUS.  It was one of the biggest blessings in my daughter's entire life."  Wow!  I wish you (and I) could have been there.  What an honor to be a part of someone's story in that way.  Thanks for all the ways you support me and this mission to the campus--it keeps making a difference.

I wanted to highlight this month the two guys on my staff that I work most closely with.  They are both outstanding examples of what a young man of God should be--humble, teachable, and growing.  They are both very gifted in different ways and they have chosen to use those gifts to serve and bless UTD students.

Laurence, Sirak, and me.  I'm the really handsome one on the right.

Sirak is gifted musically and intellectually.  On the side, he teaches Sociology at Richland College, and his students love him because they know he loves them. (see his reviews on Rate My Professor) He oversees the worship teams for both universities, but he is especially gifted as a mentor for young men.  He's evangelistic, insightful, and encouraging.  He's entering his second year as a full staff member, and I'm so blessed to work alongside him another year.

Laurence just finished his internship with us last week.  At the end of the internship, each intern preaches a sermon to our entire staff about what God has taught them over the course of the year.  You would have been so encouraged to hear the kind of transformative work the Lord has done in those 9 lives through the FOCUS internship. Those sermons might be my favorite part of the whole year.  Laurence started by having us look up a painting on our smart phones and spend a few moments contemplating it.  It's called The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt.

He went on to share 3 personal axioms that sum up what God has been teaching him this year:

1. If I want to change, I have to choose to.
2. I've got to let myself be put on display. [think Jesus hanging on the cross, not a celebrity on stage]
3. I will always be the prodigal son.

That last point really ministered to me.  He shared about learning at a deeper level that he will always need God's grace, that he won't graduate from the cross.  He said, "The cross is it--you either kneel or hit the road."  The sermon was a powerful reminder to me that God wants to use us in our weakness, not once we get strong.  I encourage you to take it to heart--you will always be the prodigal son or daughter, but He will always be the ridiculously extravagant Father, hitching up his robes to run and meet you!  He doesn't start that way and then become like the older brother.  (Hopefully us older brothers become like Him.)  You won't graduate from the cross--God wants to use you as you are, where you are.  Obey Him today, and you'll end up where you need to be tomorrow.  That's the very nature of the faith relationship.

I'm so excited about Laurence bringing that spirit to our men's ministry.  He's an excellent teacher, but I'm always mindful of another leadership axiom: Character is caught, not taught.  Laurence is coming on as a full staff member to work with the men at UTD, and I'm really excited about what he brings to the table.

It's guys like these that have me more excited than ever about campus ministry.  It's on campus that we can find the best and brightest and give them a vision to spend their lives on things of eternal value, things of Kingdom-importance.  I could tell stories like these about everyone on the FOCUS staff, and so many more besides.  I appreciate your prayers--God is moving!

UTD Testimonies

We had an open mic night at UTD for our last Friday Night Fellowship of the school year.  So many really meaningful stories were shared of people coming to know Jesus and having their lives changed by Him.  The prompt was "What have you seen God do in your life or in the lives of people around you this year?"

A lot of students shared, so the audio is almost 90 minutes, but if you'd like to listen to some or all of it, I know you'll be encouraged.  It's at:

anyfocus.org/utd/resources/utdmedia/viewmediaevent/1386

The End of Another School Year

We've been in the process these last few weeks of wrapping up the school year--debriefing the year, cementing lessons learned, prepping students for summer and beyond, and saying goodbye. It's always a tough time of year for our staff.  Since it's our conviction that Jesus ministered in the context of friendships and that we should minister like He did, we get close to these great young disciples just in time to send them off. I know Jesus had to do the same thing and experienced some of the same emotions. I ask you to pray for our hearts this time of year, because they tend to take a beating!

But even as things die down, others are ramping up. We are about to head to SICM with 80 people--70 potential student leaders and 10 pastors and interns from our 6 different campuses.  That's up from 65 attending last year.  SICM (Student Institute of Campus Ministry) is one of the most important things we do every year to prepare our upcoming leaders for ministry and help them catch the vision of reaching these campuses with the good news about Jesus.  Please pray for safe travels, for lots of deep friendships to form, and for the things they learn to plant deep in their hearts and bear fruit in the right time.

Also in May, our incoming intern class will start assembling their support teams for the coming school year.  It's an outstanding group!  Will you say a prayer, right now, that God will provide plenty of financial and prayer partners to commission these young campus missionaries for the 2014-2015 school year?

I also wanted to share this testimony from Ana, who will be an intern for us at UTD next year. She's awesome!


Breaking Chains - Ana from Matthew Wills on Vimeo.

Thanks for your prayers and thank you to those of you who partner with us financially. Together, we are helping raise up a generation of passionate and mature leaders for the kingdom, workers sent out into the harvest field.

The Past Two Days

The last week of March, we hosted 20 students and interns from Washington State for SSI (I'm not actually sure what that stands for--some mix of student, spring, strategic, impact, initiative, etc :).  It was an amazing week but was covered well in other staff updates. To get an idea of what you would have seen our students doing every day on campus, you can read Laurence's blog about it.

Last night we had a great event called Banquet on the Bayou, which is a fundraiser for our annual SICM leadership training.  SICM costs each student who goes around $800, and this fundraiser is for those who can't afford that.  We also use this as an opportunity for our interns to learn how to plan large events.  It was so great!  For those who couldn't be a part of it, you would have loved hearing students from our various ministries performing, many of the songs written by the students!  We raised over $6000 to help about 16 of the 68 students going to SICM.  If you'd like to help scholarship a student for SICM, let me know!

The interns made everything look amazing.  So elegant!

One of the many unique bands that played.  This one is made up of Collin students.

After the event, one of our UTD girls was baptized.  It was such a sweet moment. Nikki didn't know Christ coming into the year as a Muslim, but He has made such an impact on her.  I wish you could have seen her tears up close when she shared about the spiritual family He has given her.  Hopefully some of that comes through on the video!

And at our UTD Friday night meeting this week, Sarah Hubbard, one of the students, got up and read a poem she wrote about discipleship that really ministered to me:

OUR CROSS
It seems so impossible to carry- weighing me down, having become so unbearably heavy
Just keep moving-please just a few more steps
But it's too hard-there's too much sacrifice and pain
That right nows becomes more important than all there is to gain
I can't breathe- it's choking me
I can't think-it's consuming me,
Why was I unable to conceive
How incredibly difficult this decision would be?
I should've realize when I first began considering the continual command
For us to pick up His cross
And give up everything else as loss
but instead I reduced this ,
Devaluing our part in the relationship
To some symbol on the wall
Until I thought only he had to be humbled and fall
For our soul to be saved
Completely missing the gift of his grace
See he didn't die to just cover our sins
But to start us on a journey of redemption
With a promise of us ending in completion
So I'll keep on walking- ignoring the worlds stares
As I continue struggling in my effort to bare
This wooden plank digging into my back
As the enemy watches closing in for the attack
 I've finally begun to count the incredible cost
To be among the found instead of the lost

This is all from two days of campus ministry--I could tell so many more stories from the past month.  It's all so encouraging, exciting, and inspiring.  I'm amazed that this is what I get to do with my life.  Thank YOU for making it possible, with your prayers and your financial investments and all the other ways you support me and God's mission to these campuses.  Our partnership is helping make the Kingdom vision a reality!

More Interns!

Back in October, our leaders heard a talk from Oscar Muriu that was given at the 2013 Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit.  Muriu leads a church planting church in Nairobi, Kenya, with a vision to plant churches on every inhabited continent.

He shared 5 key convictions:

Conviction #1 -- The size of the harvest depends on how many leaders you have. (Matt 9:37-38)
He said, "The impact of my life will depend, not on how hard I worked, but on how many leaders I raised up."
Conviction #2 -- Live for the next generation. (Psalm 71:18)
Conviction #3 -- Identify the budding leaders around you and take them to God in prayer. (Numbers 11:10-17)
Conviction #4 -- Instill the 5 loves into your budding leaders. (Mark 12:30-33--Loving God with heart, mind, soul, and strength, and loving your neighbor)
Conviction #5 -- Never do ministry alone. Always have budding leaders around you. (Acts 4:13)

I can't think of a better way to capture the drive behind the FOCUS Internship.  If we are going to plant vibrant Christian communities on every campus in the DFW area (not to mention that UTD alone could easily use 50 more full-time Christian missionaries), and also send out well-equipped, pastorally-minded men and women leaders into the church-at-large, it's imperative that we continually invest in young leaders, giving them extra time to study, think, experience, and minister.  Sometimes I'll have students ask if there is a cap on how many student leaders we need.  The answer is a loud "NO!"  There are over a hundred thousand students just on our few campuses, and we need as many qualified leaders as we can get.

It's out of that conviction that we have recently accepted 9 young disciples into our internship for the 2014-2015 school year.  They are an outstanding bunch, and I'll be introducing them further in the coming months.  We also have three of this year's interns returning for a second, more focused year of internship exploring campus ministry as a career, and two of this year's interns joining our longterm staff.

I know that sounds like a lot of people!  But we are confident that we can give each and every one a great experience, and that they will produce lasting fruit in the lives of college students on these campuses.  They have already proven themselves to be discerning, fruitful leaders.  I'd ask you to start asking God to provide the money to make it happen.  He always has, and I'm confident He will again!

I also wanted to share with you an anonymous letter that came in the UTD student offering last week.

My thanks to you, for helping make this possible for students like that one, through your friendship and prayers and financial support.  This is truly a team effort!

P.S.  I was invited to two UTD student baptisms this month.  I've included videos below if you'd like to watch them!

A Great Winter Camp and Saying Goodbye

We had an outstanding time at Winter Camp over the extended MLK weekend.  Brady Bobbink came down from Bellingham, WA, to share with our students about the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives and community.  You would have loved watching the students worshipping, playing, listening, and serving over the weekend.  The very first night they had a cheering competition for each of the 6 schools represented...except the competition was to see which school the other five could cheer for the loudest!  So our smallest groups, working hard to see God's kingdom take root in new places, got the loudest cheers.  It brought to mind Romans 12:10, "Honor one another above yourselves." Throughout the weekend, students boldly stepped in front of the community to minister, not from their strength and preparation, but from their weakness and fear, and the Spirit moved powerfully.

The UTD students whooshing.  Altogether around 430 people were at camp.

Brady shared so many powerful truths and challenging thoughts about the Spirit, what it means to be a Spirit-filled person, and what it looks like to love one another with Spirit-given gifts.  I can't even begin to capture all of those here, but if you're interested, you can find his talks here.  But on Saturday morning, he asked the question, "Why do revolutions fail?"

As someone committed to revival, renewal, reformation, and kingdom revolution, I leaned forward to hear what answer he would put forward.  He proposed two reasons:
1. "They fail to grasp how long it's going to take."  We all like the idea of quick, easy, cheap, painless change.  We balk at the reality of staying in the process, paying the price, and making the necessary sacrifices.  Even if Jesus' followers thought His mission was nearly done when He came back from the dead ("Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"- Acts 1:6), He knew that they would need His continued power and presence through the Holy Spirit to take the mission to "the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8).
2.  "They don't equip and train their followers effectively."  This is what Jesus spent all His time doing, and it's what we spend all our time doing in campus ministry.  Raising up leaders who can raise up leaders is the key to seeing this through.

I hope you'll reflect on these two pitfalls in your own life and ministry.  Change is hard, and sustained change is even harder.  My prayer is that our partnership would produce lasting change for good in you, in me, on these campuses, and in the lives of thousands of students in the years to come.

One last note: one of the hardest parts of campus ministry is consistently saying goodbye to students as they graduate and move away.  I got a letter from an Indian international student who graduated from UTD in December and is moving away for a job this week. I wanted to share a few encouraging lines with you. "It's amazing how God works with different people. I guess I had to learn a lot about faith in a foreign country. When I chose UTD I really didn't think it would have a significant impact on my spiritual growth. I guess I was wrong... I will always be grateful for this community and the friends I have here. It has been a great two and half years." Thanks for helping make this kind of impact possible--it's repeated over and over each semester on these campuses.

Saying goodbye at Ignateus' going away party.

Please Pray for Richland College!

Over the past few years, I've had the privilege of working with Travis Jones, a great friend an co-worker in the kingdom.  We led a small group together when he was a student.  He came through the FOCUS Internship and then stepped up to the most difficult ministry assignment we have--Richland College.  When we sent Travis over there, we didn't know any college students there.  He just walked on campus and started meeting people.  He's done an amazing job planting a ministry, leading people to Jesus, and building leaders there, but this year has been a little discouraging as some of his best leaders are moving on to lead in our university ministries (great for us, but sad for Travis).

Travis is one of my favorite people!

Richland is one of the Dallas Community Colleges, not out in the suburbs. Many of the students don't have cars and there's no on campus housing. Most of them need jobs on top of their classes to get by. But there are over 15,000 students on that campus, and God is seeking after each and every one of them. He has big plans for them, and we want to take part!

Richland has a beautiful campus with a brook running through the middle.

What could be more intimidating than a Thunderduck!?

So I want to ask you to pray for Richland. God has been faithful in answering our prayers so far, and we want to get a lot more people praying for the Spirit to move in power on this campus--that it will be a place where people come to know Jesus as Lord and are sent out on mission for Him in their families, careers, and further schooling.

I asked Travis to detail what kinds of prayers he'd like us to pray, and I've included his response below. I hope each of you can join me in prayer.

Dear Friends,

I live to see the hearts and minds of college students turned toward Christ. Having a Christian community in college really deepened and cemented my shallow faith in God and changed my life forever. I want nothing more than to do the same for others, especially to bring Christ to those who don’t know Him. Starting a campus ministry at Richland College has probably been the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life. We’ve been on campus for over three years now, and it is still an uphill battle. We’ve won many victories along the way, and they have all been very hard fought. This semester has really reminded me how strong a grip Satan still has on that campus--Richland is still very closed off to the good news of Jesus.

I want to look back and see this semester as a huge turning point for the Kingdom at Richland. To that end, I am renewing and redoubling my efforts in prayer, and I’m inviting you to join me!  If you have a heart for college students, please pray for God’s purposes to be accomplished at Richland College.

There are two key things I’d invite you to pray:

1.     For an end to student apathy.  Many students at Richland don’t care about much of anything. One of my student leaders asked a fellow student what accomplishments he was proud of. He couldn’t think of a single thing! When asked by my student leader “aren’t you proud of getting into college?,” he just answered “I guess so.” A lot of the students don’t have many goals; they just float through life. It’s very hard to reach out to a student body that just doesn’t care.  Pray for God to grow passion among the student body.

2.     For the administration and faculty.  The administration still proves to be a large barrier to building vibrant Christian community on campus. Rules, regulations, and red tape staunch the growth, not only of Christian community, but of any sort of student community.  Pray for wisdom for the administrators, openness to change, for the Christian ministries to gain favor among campus leaders, and for faculty and staff to come to know Jesus through our work.

Will you join me in praying for the Focus student ministry at Richland College?  I know He can do even more than we ask or imagine.

Yours in Christ,

Travis Jones