Austin's FOCUS Ministry Blog

  Last month I got to write about how excited I was to get to go with our students to the Student Institute of Campus Ministry. Pictured above are 200 college students learning about why their peers need Jesus and how they can partner with God to reach their campus. SICM was such a neat experience and I loved getting to hear what our students were taking away from the week. But much of what we do during SICM is to prepare our students for the real ministry they will be taking part in during welcome week or as its lovingly called at UTA, Maverick Stampede. During Maverick Stampede our campus missionaries and our student leaders go on to campus with the goal of inviting others into Christ centered community. We help with move in, we attend all of the universities events and we even host some of our own. You can see in the second picture, one of our UTA apprentices, Graham, exchanging phones with a new student. Those shared contacts often lead to these students joining cores, and studying

 Hello friends and partners in ministry, The summer is over! We are back into the full swing of things, and I got to tell you. God is good and I am so excited for what is to come in just the next few weeks of campus ministry. This last week we got to have our staff retreat in Bridgeport, Texas. The goal of staff retreat is to collectively as a team of ministers recenter ourselves on Jesus and his work in the world, reflect on why we do what we do, and spend time together relationally. Pictured below is our UTA Campus Missionary Team for 2021-2022.  From left to right we have Jalen, Graham, Myself, Bailey, Emily, Sophie, Taylor, Emily, and Sarah. Myself, Jalen, Taylor, Emily, and Sarah are our returning campus ministers, while Sophie, Graham, Emily, and Bailey are our apprentices for this school year. If you don't know what an apprentice is, these are recent graduates from the ministry who are either interested in vocational ministry long term or just want to spend a year learning a