Building a Team

One of the passages I've spent a lot of time reflecting on over the years is in Mark 3: "Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out..." Such a simple message, but how did he do it? How did he pick the right 12 guys, 11 of whom would take his message to the world and lay a solid foundation for thousands of years of Christian outreach? Luke adds that he prayed all night before, but he doesn't tell us what he was praying. Paul also gathered a team. Just from the letters we have, we see a group of 40+ talented and Spirit-filled men and women who were his coworkers in the gospel mission. Their impact together was expansive.

This time of year, I'm always thinking and praying about the team of pastors with whom we undertake the mission to make and mature disciples on DFW campuses. Some of our pastors are contemplating whether to commit another one or three or even five years to serving in FOCUS, we're talking with our apprentices to discern whether staying on our staff is the right fit for them and for us, and we will soon have to prayerfully consider another group of applicants to our apprenticeship for the 2021-22 school year. 

In 2002, I was one half-time pastor for FOCUS; now we have over 40 if you include our administrators! Each one brings new strengths and shapes our team in new directions. Each of us also brings our own sin and weaknesses and slightly different values. There's both risk and reward.

For our student leaders, we use a FAITH acronym: Faithful, Available, Initiating, Teachable, Heart for God & People. On top of that, I have long used the "Three C's" for selecting new staff members: Character, Competence, and Chemistry. These are so helpful, but they are very broad, especially for a jack-of-all-trades campus pastor job! Competent at what? Chemistry with whom?

To help answer that, we've added three F's for our pastors: Fire, Fruit, and Fun. Here are some of the questions we're asking right now about potential FOCUS pastors:

Fire

• Are they on fire for the Lord?
• Do they have a fire in their belly, work hard, do whatever it takes? Are they a self-starter? Do they have momentum?
• Do they evidence a desire to learn and grow?

Fruit

• Can they reach new students and bring them to Jesus?
• Are they a catalyst for growth, maturity, and decision making in the lives of students? Do they make the people they are around better?
• Can they make things happen? Do things happen in our community because they are on the team that otherwise wouldn't? 
• Can they take whatever they are given and go beyond basic expectations?

Fun

• Are they fun to work with? Do we really enjoy having them on the team? Are they net positive in terms of team dynamics?
• Do students want to be around them?
• Are they positive and lighthearted? Can they laugh at life and at themselves?

I say all this to say that we have a fantastic team of pastors. It has grown fast, but not because we will just take anyone and throw them out on campus. The Lord is doing powerful work in the lives of young people and raising up a team of pastors I could never afford to hire. They are talented men and women who could do so many other things but choose to serve in FOCUS because they love college students and are deeply committed to the Lord's mission. 

Please pray for me and my team of campus directors, that the Spirit would give us great wisdom and help us to discern who should be on this team for next year. I don't think there's a more important set of decisions we make!

I want to say a big THANK YOU in the Lord's name for all you do for me. Your steadfast love and care, your prayers, and your generosity do not go unnoticed and they are very appreciated!

We Surpassed Our $100,000 KFG Goal!

Thank you so much for your prayers and gifts! So many people have been extra generous during this tough season. God is doing great things on our campuses this year, and I'm praying next year is a big growth year for us!

Various and Sundry Pictures

At the end of the apprentice's Old Testament class, Dr. Iain Provan (Marshall Sheppard Professor of Biblical Studies at Regent College & former FOCUS Winter Camp speaker) joined the class on Zoom for nearly 2 hours of open Questions and Answers about the Old Testament. It was such a blessing! 

During our Deep Dive session on Mark 15, Amy read the crucifixion narrative while Rhett compared Mark's telling with the coronation proceedings for Roman emperors. You should check it out!

Some students gather outdoors on the lawn on Friday nights to watch Deep Dive together.

Our testimony this month comes from an alumna who is near and dear to my heart. Maloa was an international student from Cameroon and a student leader at UTD. She has remained a friend through med school, moves, and having triplets!

I'm Excited to Share this Song With You

Many of you may be aware that most colleges in the US are sending students home before Thanksgiving this year due to COVID. Ours are no different. Many students have already left and others will depart in the coming days. And then they won't be back until January 19! So we've been working to connect with them before they go and preparing to move even more of our ministry online for the next 2 months. 

At UTD, we've been studying through Mark's gospel in our weekly Deep Dive meetings this semester, and we're almost done. This past Friday night, Rhett led us through the crucifixion narrative. It was excellent! He shared a number of things I don't think I've ever heard or thought about. You can find it at twitch.tv/utdfocus if you'd like to hear the sermon. But to go with the message, Rhett wrote the lyrics to a song, which Pico Dickinson then put to music and sang for us. It was very touching to me, and I want to share it with you here.

4 Holidays in One Day

Since we missed Fall Camp this year and with the students leaving so early, we came up with a new outdoor event to wrap up the semester: Holidays in the Park! We were outdoors all afternoon and evening. We played Halloween games, had a catered Thanksgiving dinner together complete with a thankfulness reflection time, were led through a Christmas devotional, and ended with sparklers and singing All Glory Be To Christ (set to the tune of Auld Lang Syne) to celebrate the New Year. It was a fun way to cram all the holidays in since we won't get to be together for most of them.

Thanksgiving Dinner. It was a windy day to eat outside, but the wind was good for safety!

Christmas Devotional. It's hard to tell, but everyone is spaced 6 feet apart.

New Years. It was so fun so worship together with sparklers going.

Keep FOCUS Growing!

Our annual fundraiser is upon us! On Giving Tuesday, December 1, we have $42,000 of matching funds up for grabs! (The students already had their KFG offering and more than matched the $8000 in matching funds we had for them!)

Please prayerfully consider giving an extra gift during this time to help cover all of our extra expenses beyond staff salaries. Depending on how things go with the virus, we are considering pioneering FOCUS ministries on some new campuses in 2021, and you can help us Prepare the Way. Thanks for all of the ways you've already helped us do just that!

What are YOU passionate about?

For my seminary class this quarter, I've been reading a lot of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s writings, speeches, and sermons.  He was passionate about justice, passionate about injustice, passionate about people both young and old, passionate about the poor and the rich. He was truly passionate about creative nonviolent resistance as the only good alternative to either acquiescence or violence in the face of blatant evil and injustice. And his passion made him repetitive. Very repetitive! 

This is the book I've been reading from. So much good stuff!

This has me thinking: what am I passionate about? We live in a culture of neophiles. If you don't know that word, a neophile is "someone who loves and embraces new things and experiences, regardless of whether they are any good." We LOVE new stuff, the newest model, the latest upgrade, the newest trend. Then we get tired of our new stuff so quickly and go looking for something new. We replace our phones and gadgets, our hobbies and entertainment, sometimes our relationships or our convictions. We're bombarded with new needs and new problems in the world.

In the face of all that, it's up to each of us to, with the Lord's help, examine our hearts. Do I love what is good? Or do I just love what is new? Am I passionate about the same things the Lord is passionate about? His heart is unchanging, and while ours aren't, are they changing to be more like his, or are they just changing? Many of you have been serving and giving and investing and praying in the same places for many years now. Is your passion dwindling? Has it become stale? Do you need to rekindle something, reconnect with why those things are important to you and the Lord?

My passions play out in repetitive words and deeds. Those become habits, and our habits shape our hearts. But they can also stand to be refreshed from time to time. Perhaps it's time to remember why I do some of the things I do for the Lord, and let him renew my heart for the things he loves.

If you haven't ever listened to MLK's speeches or sermons, or read any of his writings, I highly recommend them. Many are readily available on the internet, and I'd be happy to give recommendations. I'm struck over and over again how very relevant to today his message is, as well as how deeply Christian it is. That's the part I never learned in school.

Thank you for caring about the Lord's work on college campuses. Thank you for your prayers and financial support. I pray the Lord multiplies all you do for his kingdom and renews your heart to look like his!

Student Testimony

How to Think Like a Christian - Politics Edition!

With the upcoming election, all the challenges of living together in society are on many minds. We are all sensitive to the constant barrage of media and entertainment that we experience every day. It's hard for the God's messages to us through the Bible to keep up! 

One of the themes we return to again and again as we try to mature young disciples of Jesus is "How to think like a Christian." That's easier said than done! Faithful, Jesus-loving individuals fall on nearly every side of nearly every issue--but that doesn't mean they're all thinking like Jesus would want them to! Paul's first letter to the Corinthian church showed how much their thinking had been shaped by the world instead of by the cross. In terms of their thinking, they were "mere infants in Christ" (1 Cor 3:1). This is the challenge I see all around me in the church, not just with young people. Our recent Pizza Theology was an attempt to give students tools for understanding laws and politics that will hopefully point their thinking in a better direction. It was designed to be a base hit, not a home run (as if that would be possible in a few hours!), but the feedback has been exactly what we hoped to hear--it's making students think differently and deeply. Please join me in praying that these young followers of Jesus would have wisdom in how they participate as citizens of our country. If you want to check out the Pizza Theology, you can find the videos on our new YouTube Channel. 

Garrett (our director at Collin College), also shared this article that is well worth reading and thinking through.

Good News

We continue to hear lots of good news when we talk to the student leaders. A couple of our guys sat down to have lunch with a new student on campus. They found out he was an atheist, but invited him to core and he came that night! He's continued coming weekly and is now in a one on one Bible study as well. This past week he shared that he was realizing that he had rejected a certain way of reading the Bible, but had never really investigated if there was a better way. He said something along the lines of "I guess I shouldn't call myself an atheist until I've done that." So cool!

One of the guys I mentored last year shared this story: "I just met a Muslim girl on campus that was really interested in talking. I shared the story of when I visited prison to forgive the guy that killed my dad, and when I shared that I forgave him only because Jesus would she looked off and said “Jesus would do that.” I gave her a connection card and her eyes seemed to light up at making new friends and having discussion with other girls."

Halfway through the semester, our cores are still growing because students are longing for connection, and the Christian ministries are the only people offering it! I'm praising God for this opportunity and praying that we steward it well. Thank you for helping make these stories, and so many others, possible!

Student Testimony

Lots of Good News!

Even though it's a strange year, we are off to a great start! I thought I'd share a handful of stories from our different campuses to give you a sense of what God is doing.

From Amber at TWU Dallas (the nursing campus) 

• I have some good news! I’ve already had two girls from Twu Dallas find me by email and reach out to me about getting involved!! It was encouraging because, so far, I’m not allowed on campus at all and they are not allowing orgs to meet in person. So those two girls were a total God deal!

From Rhett at UT Dallas

• I overheard a freshman talking to one of our corefas . Here's what they said:
• New Guy- So what is this group?
• Corefa- tells him who we are
• New Guy- Ohhhh man. I've done some messed up s***. I think Jesus probably hates me (he's laughing at this point, and sounds pretty dismissive)
• Corefa- I don't think he does at all.
• New Guy- ...........Dang man. I wasn't going to tell anyone this, but I feel like God told me that I need to seek him out when I came on campus, and I don't really know what to do with that, but it's crazy that I met y'all. 
• He and a friend have been showing up to everything they've been invited to.

From Sarah at UT Arlington 

• I had a really neat convo with a girl last night who sort of happened upon one of our “informal hangs.” She was very candid with me about wanting girlfriends and struggling with mental health. She said she planned on joining a sorority because that’s the only way she knew she could make girlfriends. But then she asked what I was a part of and said it never occurred to her to join anything religious to make friends. She said that she didn’t grow up in church but in light of depression and anxiety she experienced for the first time a few months ago, she has been contemplating spirituality and her purpose.

From Elaine, one of our corefas at UTD 

• I was in my first day of my Life Science class and I had just hopped onto the MicrosoftStream call and everybody except the professor had their mic and camera off. And as I was sitting there I remembered something one of the staff had said: “Set the tone for the year”, so I turned on my camera and mic and started talking with the professor. One by one people started turning their cameras and mics on and by the end of the class everyone had their cameras on and mics on and we ended up making our own group chat and we’re now getting to know each other.

From Laurence at SMU 

• We had like 30 people show up to our first TNF of the year; that's about double our normal numbers! We DID get rained on a bit and have to cut the sermon early, but it went about as well as it could have.

There are many more! It sounds like all of our cores at UTD have a full group (many are meeting outside and we are trying to cap them at 10, but they are ready to split up if more than 10 come). Some of the Zoom cores are even bigger. With very few other options on campus this year, a lot of people who don't know Jesus are in cores and exploring faith for the first time. Pray that they fall in love with Jesus this year!

Friday Night Deep Dive

Since we can't have our normal Friday Night Fellowship meetings on campus, we decided to forgo the musical worship portion and do an extended teaching time online. Students are watching together in small groups either on Zoom or in backyards and such. Rhett is leading us through a deep dive into the Gospel of Mark all semester long. They are excellent! He started with chapter 1 back on August 21, and you can find his lectures here if you're interested! (eventually, these will drop off and you should be able to find just the audio on our website)

Student Testimony

Please Pray!

Please pray for the administrators and the policies that they are setting for each of our schools, and especially UTD. Pray for wisdom for them, and that we would as a result be able to safely pursue God's mission on campus.

Thank you for all your support!

A Welcome Week Like No Other

We're a few days into reaching out to a new UTD freshmen class in the middle of a pandemic! As a mission to the campus, we're blessed that we actually have students on campus; a number of other schools with a FOCUS ministry have gone fully online for the fall, and our pastors are having to get extremely creative. 

With that said, reaching out at UTD is tough. All of the move-ins are staggered so students aren't meeting their peers as they move in. Students are living on campus, but there are literally no events for them. The Student Union and most buildings are closed. The dining hall is take-out only. And it's very hot outside! Where and how are these students supposed to make friends?!?!

Enter FOCUS. I don't know of any other group that has hosted an event this week, but we've had multiple events daily! In the afternoons, we're hosting live Q&A "Get To Know FOCUS" sessions online as well as group online games on Zoom. These are the events we've advertised on campus, and we've had a handful of new students each day. 

In the evenings, we've been informally hanging out outside (yes, we're wearing our masks for hours in this summer heat!) with various games and such. I think Monday night we had only 3 new students, which was a pretty discouraging start. (We're used to playing board games in the residence hall common areas on the first night of move-in and connecting with 40 to 60 new students!) But as the week has gone on, more and more freshmen are hearing about what we're doing and coming out. They are eager to make friends. 

I've been asking some of these guys what they did that day, and they all say some form of "Nothing. I've just been waiting all day for this event to start." Another guy shared that he'd been thinking this week that he needed to do some thinking about his spiritual life, and coming to our event made that even clearer.

Our student leaders are being faithful and creative with reaching out. Some have invited new students outside the dining hall at both lunch and dinner in the heat of the day. One of our student leaders set up a UTD class of 2024 page on Instagram that now has over 1200 students following, and other students have been messaging them one by one to invite them to things! Some students have taken to throwing a frisbee outside the residence halls so that students will see something going on from their windows and come out. 

And then when freshmen show up, FOCUS members welcome them, introduce them to others, take an interest in their lives, invite them to play games, and get their numbers to invite them to more stuff later. And all of that is with the sole intention of blessing them, not to get something from them. That's a little piece of the Kingdom of God come to UTD; it's how things should be. I'm so proud of them! In a hard year, they have such positive attitudes and a shared commitment toward and love for these new students.

Even on these nights when our efforts don't seem as successful as past years, I've been reflecting on how it's in those times of serving without success and acclaim that we can know that we are doing it for God and not just for external rewards. Perhaps God is more proud of us when we do what is right and love others even when it isn't "working".

But as of tonight (Thursday), I can see momentum building. They were spread over a large area (even outside and with masks on, we're social distancing as much as possible), but I counted over 85 people at the event tonight, the vast majority new freshmen! (And every group of new people I saw had a couple of our corefas in it.) And there are still many more students moving in Friday and Saturday. Please pray that we will reach the ones we need to reach, that we will be bold in connecting with them and loving them even before we know them, and that we will be careful and keep one another safe from disease.

Students playing games in large circles outside a residence hall.

It's hard to see in the dark, but there were about 85 people doing many different activities tonight!

Mandy and Rhett leading a "Get to Know FOCUS" Q&A on Twitch.

Our Theme for the Year - A Voice in the Wilderness

From men and women in the Old Testament to the early church leaders and apostles, God has chosen to use his people as a vehicle for his message, whatever wilderness they found themselves in. As John the Baptist prepared the way for Christ as a voice in the wilderness, we too prepare the way for the Kingdom of God. This upcoming year will be its own type of wilderness with the unknown and unexpected before us. But there's a huge need for people who will be God's voice in the lives of the people around them!

Student Testimony

Thank you for giving and praying to make this mission possible. We need your prayers this year more than ever!