Austin's FOCUS Ministry Blog

Hey friends, God is still at work at UTA leading college students to love him more fully and empowering them to love their campus and one another more as well. If you click this link, you'll get to hear our students at  One of our most recent worship nights!  declaring that they have decided to follow Jesus, the world behind them, the cross before them, and they won't turn back. It warms my heart to see so many gather each week to say these things to one another.  Here's some of our UTA students, Cade, Sonnie, Kamal, Hart, Juan, Oscar, Helen, and Garrett spending time together after attending a revival event at SMU. These students love God and are seeking opportunities to know him better every chance they get. Perhaps most encouraging of all has been our senior epistles. At the end of every year we ask our graduating seniors to share with the rest of our student body a word of encouragement, passing along the things they've learned about following Jesus with their whole...

 Hello again dear friends and ministry partners. I'm excited to share with you both what I see God doing and what I hear he's doing around the world. I got to do several core visits last month and that was such a blessing to my heart and faith. Two weeks in a row I watched young men, study the scriptures, share their lives, pray for one another, praise God, and even spend time memorizing scripture passages to write on their hearts. Thank you for making it possible for young guys like these to learn to love Jesus in a community of peers who are also set on growing as disciples! On the far right of this particular picture is Zui. Zui is from China and was an atheist when he came to UTA but since finding so many Christian friends who loved him so well and learning about Jesus, Zui now wants to follow Jesus and will be getting baptized very soon. Praise God! Another really neat thing that I'm so grateful for this last month is that our church members decided to treat all our co...

  Winter Retreat was such a gift! 700 College students from all around DFW getting together for a whole weekend to worship together, play together, and grow in their discipleship to Jesus. All of our talks were on the topic of following Jesus. Our students were impacted and going back into the semester we are seeing the effects. More bible studies are being started, more classmates are being reached out to, more personal life decisions are being made to line up with the heart of God.  When people worry that Christianity is declining in the younger generations I love having the opportunity to tell them that on college campuses in DFW we are seeing the exact opposite! Gen Z is embracing God with a hunger that surpasses anything I've seen in my last ten years of campus ministry. It was also Lucy's first winter retreat! I'm so thankful that she will grow up with the influence of college students who's hearts are set on God. The students love her so well and she will always ...

     We closed off last semester with a winter formal, but can you believe the new semester has already started??? We leave for winter retreat in 3 days! Below are some pictures of the formal. We invited all our students to dress up and attend a nice dinner for free. We watched skits made by all our small groups and handed out academy awards. But we also just spent time enjoying each others company, and rejoicing in all that God had done through our community this year. Watching the skits was so fun and I know the students will remember their time together in cores making those videos for a long time. Thank you for providing a place for students to feel special, and make sweet memories. In just 3 days we will take all our students across DFW to winter retreat! This is our biggest event of the year. Here's a video that gives a sense of what the experience is like.  Winter Retreat Video At winter retreat students will spend 4 days, learning about Jesus, worshiping God,...

  Pizza Theology was a hit! Every year, twice a year, several hundred college students from around DFW come to hear a 4 hour lecture on a biblical topic. This years topic was about helping scripture come alive and being able to make sense of biblical narrative. Our speaker, seminary professor Rikk Watts, walked us through the first 11 chapters of 1 Kings, not worrying about finishing the story per se, but rather helping our students engage with the depth of the story as they read along. Some of the things he helped bring to life for our students were the importance of listening to God rather than to ourselves, the dignity of a desperate cry to God, the role of the office of leader being honored by God even when the leader is of a corrupt character, and the importance of honesty and ownership of our mistakes. It was really such a neat experience and our students walked away with lots of questions and an excitement to read more of the old testament. They also ate lots of pizza. Thank...

  We just got back from our annual fall camp. We had 100 students (our largest turnout ever) join for a whole Saturday and half a Sunday. We spent the weekend worshiping Jesus, learning more about his word from some sermons, eating burgers, laughing, and having a great time making new friends. A couple of the guys after a round of ultimate frisbee. Fall camp is always a pivotal point in the school year. The tone we set there carries over to our wider community for the rest of the year. It was so encouraging to me to see this many students connecting with Jesus and loving their peers all weekend. Some of the fruit is probably yet to be seen but here's some encouraging photos of our core groups wrapping up their time at fall camp. Thank you for investing in campus ministry. These kinds of weekends can be catalysts for serious decisions about Jesus and the kinds of lives these students will lead. My first fall camp is when I knew I wanted to be seriously involved in this community. I...