Austin's FOCUS Ministry Blog

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas everyone, This past month of November I have been given a lot to be thankful for. Two of those reasons just happen to be events that you personally helped to make happen! 72 Hours of Prayer. And Pizza Theology. Both of these event are reasons why November ranks among my favorite months in college ministry. Because in both of these events students are given opportunities to encounter God and Scripture in ways that go beyond the common practices and routines of every day life. The first event that I want to share with all of you is 72 Hours of Prayer. This event is a joint ministry partnership of all the college ministries on campus at UT Arlington. The goal is to create a space for students who are in need of prayer to come and make those requests known. And then, facilitated during every hour for the entirety of 3 days and nights there are students inside the tent praying over those requests. For many students, these three days are a time...

 Dear Friends, Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. I pray that the stories inside will serve as an encouragement to your spirit and you will be reminded of the goodness of our Lord. Things at UTA have really been encouraging to me recently. It seems each week we have at least one new person coming to check out the community that God has blessed us with and as a result, most often those students are sticking around, joining a core group, and desiring to study scripture 1 on 1. Which can cause problems as we are reaching a point where we don't have enough student leaders to study the bible with all of the new incoming students! But I consider that a great problem to have. I'm reminded of a passage from Matthew Chapter 9 " 35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.  36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were har...

 Hello everybody! I just wanted to write and wish all of you a very happy fall season. I for one am grateful for the cooler weather. I wanted to take this time and just share with all of you some of the really neat and encouraging things that are happening here at UT Arlington and how I see God using those things to bring about his Glory. Let's start with Thursday Night Fellowship. Every Thursday we invite the entirety of our larger community to come together for worship, and singing, and praise, and a sermon, and fellowship. And I am always so grateful to look around the room and see all of the ears of the young men and women who want to hear more about God and his plan for the world. This semester we have been focusing on the theme of "Send Me" based out of a number of different passages of scripture in the bible, but perhaps most notably in the book of Isaiah Chapter 6 starting in verse 8. " Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I se...

Hello everyone! The first two weeks of classes, otherwise known as the Maverick Stampede, are behind us here at UT Arlington. It is odd to think that just two weeks ago the students who are now a part of our community and involved in our small groups, we had yet to meet. But we spent those first two weeks meeting as many students as possible. We were on campus every day attending every event at the university that we could and greeting countless students to UT Arlington for the first time. For many we had an opportunity to be their first group of friends in college. For some we were the first Christians they had ever interacted with. For nearly all we got to be a source of joy, and a welcoming face to an environment that can otherwise be pretty intimidating. On Monday I hosted my first bible study with a group of guys, all new to UTA, and we discussed what it means to love others the way that Jesus has loved us.  John 13 34  “A new command  I give you: Love one ...

I want to start this month's blog by expressing my gratitude and appreciation for each one of you. We only have about a week and a half left before the incoming freshman will move into the dorms at UTA. The season of summer is quickly coming to a close and it won't be long until I will once again be on campus full time meeting with students.  I just want to say thank you to both those of you who have been my ministry partners for 2 years now, as well a s to those who may have just joined in the last week or so. I don't think that any one of us are designed to do ministry alone. Each one of us, in one way or another, need the other. Whether that is prayer or encouragement or the funding of missions. It is together that we are the body of Christ, and it is together that I believe God will really use us to bring about His kingdom here on this earth. So I just want to once again say thank you. Thank you for being my partner in this mission of college ministry. I have no delusio...

I have personally been reading through Proverbs again over this summer as a way to perhaps give myself a little refresher on wisdom and what it means to be wise. While reading I recently came across this well known passage. Proverbs 6:6-8 "Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander or overseer, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gather its food at harvest." Similar to the ant, we as a staff are working hard this summer to make sure that when the fall comes there will be a great harvest  of students excited to hear about and live for Jesus! One way that we are doing this is by working every orientation that is available! There are over 30,000 students at UT Arlington. If you divide that by class it's safe to say that there are around 6,000 freshman coming in every year if not more! These orientations are the first opportunity that we have to meet these incoming freshman and invite them into Christ centered communi...

Just about a month ago I got to attend, along with our students, a ministry training opportunity in Bellingham, Washington. That week of ministry training is called Student Institute of Campus Ministry or SICM for short. This was my third time having been able to attend SICM. Once 5 years ago as a student, once last year as an intern, and once this year after having completed my first year on staff. I would say that each time I've gone I've come away with something different, each lesson important in its own right. When I was a student my biggest takeaway was that I was no longer going to be a passive Christian. I wanted to take part in bringing God's kingdom to earth. I was going to bring Christ to my peers and be a visible light to the world around me. That really was such a trans-formative time in my faith, and I hope and pray that the same was true for some of the students that we got to send this year. My year as an intern one of my biggest takeaways was just the sheer...