Thursday, April 13, 2023

He is Risen!

When your church has a petting zoo at its Easter potluck, you pet the baby goats.
This is not optional.

Spring Outreach Week

Every year, we have the pleasure of hosting a group of students from a ministry in Washington State called Campus Christian Fellowship. They spend their spring break (which is the week after ours) reaching out to and serving students on OUR campuses!  
This year, our outreach during this week was focused on how God is a relational, healing God who moves to restore our relationships with Him, others, and ourselves.


For one of the days of outreach, we created a life-sized (or bigger!) cut out of a person who we
affectionately named Frederick. We invited students to write down what it feels like to be them
on a mirror square and place it on Frederick. We then got to talk to them about how God can change
our self-perception and purpose.

Wisdom for Dummies

Every semester, we host an event called Pizza Theology, in which we dive into a topic related to Scripture and faith for four hours (!) with a one-hour pizza break in the middle. This semester, the topic was the wisdom literature (Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes). 



Rez Fair

For the past few years, we've had the pleasure of hosting a giant Easter celebration right by the student union at UTD! The celebration includes tables with interactive Gospel presentations, free food, raffles, live music, inflatable slides, and more. We get to partner with several other Christian organizations on campus for this, so it's a blast to get to do!



UTA, Here I Come!

While this has been in the works as a possibility for years, it's not official: I will be moving (with my wife of course) to Arlington to join FOCUS at the University of Texas at Arlington as their assistant director and lead men's pastor! This is an exciting (and terrifying) opportunity, and will move us closer to the accompanying goal of planting a chapter of FOCUS at Texas Christian University in Ft. Worth next year. Outside of one year at UNT (and TWU), I've been at UTD for a decade now, so it's a bittersweet time for me. I preached my last sermon as a pastor at UTD this past Friday.


Prayer

  • Please be praying for the transition to UTA- that God would give me and everyone involved wisdom, peace, and strength.
  • Be praying for our upcoming trip to Washington with our student leaders for the Student Institute of Campus Ministry- the annual week-long leadership conference.