Soil, Roots, and Such

Matt doing a short devotional at our Christmas party while dressed up as the conductor from Polar Express (obviously)

"So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow."
1 Corinthians 3:7 

"This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how."
Mark 4:26-27

What's Happened in the Last Month

Perhaps the two most unique events that took place in the last month were our worship night and our Christmas party. These two nights, followed by our last get together for our student leaders this Monday, all showed the way this community is growing. On Friday, a lecture hall full of students worshipped Jesus for an hour and a half, dwelling on Him and expressing their awe of Him and love for Him through singing, journaling, reflecting, and encouraging one another. On Sunday,  I got to watch our community just have a blast together at our Christmas party. If there's anything you see about Jesus' relationship with the disciples and Paul's suggestions to the churches he wrote to, it's that as Christians we ought to genuinely be friends with one another and actively find life in one another's company. That's definitely what I saw on Sunday. 

In addition to this, I've gotten to have a lot of challenging, stimulating, and beautiful conversations with students, staff, and strangers alike in the last 30 days. Seeing the eagerness and joy of students in our ministry has reminded me of how wonderful it is to find newness in Christ, seeing the humble boldness of my mentors has encouraged me to get out of my comfort zone in ministry, and seeing the difficulty and hardship of people from many walks of life has grown me in compassion and reminded me of why Christ's healing is so needed in this world. 

Our staff at the FOCUS Christmas party. You may recognize me as the one with the worst costume. 

What God's Been Teaching Me About Ministry

God has been reminding me a lot that He is the one who is working in ministry, and I am privileged to join Him in this work. I've spent a lot of time this semester learning to be a better minister, which is something that is necessary and a blessing (trust me, I need it), but I've come face to face more than ever with the fact that no amount of skill, hard work, or "faithfulness" on my part can change someone's heart. My job is to call people to Christ, and He changes people. 

Some Thank Yous and a Reminder

As always, thank you so much to everyone who supports me directly and who gives to FOCUS. 

Also, thank you so much to everyone who has chosen to give to KFG. For those who have managed to avoid the 2,284,858 Facebook posts about KFG, it is an annual fundraiser FOCUS does to keep FOCUS growing called Keep FOCUS Growing. Makes sense, right? Establishing FOCUS on a new campus can take quite a bit of money, so in order to allow our communities to continue to grow and to allow FOCUS to reach new campuses (i.e. SMU,  UTA, etc.), we need help from people who believe in our vision to make and mature disciples on college campuses in the DFW Metroplex! 

So far, KFG this year has been hugely successful! We decided to take advantage of Giving Tuesday on Facebook, and our donors came through and gave $30,000 of our overall $50,000 goal in this one day! The fundraiser will be going through the end of this year, so please consider joining in and putting some of your December generosity towards FOCUS :)

Read more at https://anyfocus.org/kfg/

Prayer

• Pray for the seeds planted in our students' lives to continue to mature as they spend time away from the community over the break.
• Pray for God to watch over our students as many of them go away from their new friendships to their hometowns where they may have had fewer Christian friendships. 

I love you all!

- Rhett