November!
Hello all!
I hope you are enjoying the beginning of the holiday season. This honestly is my favorite time of the year, as long as the high temperatures stay above 60 degrees. With Thanksgiving break around the corner for our college students, this is always a good time of the year to thoughtfully reflect on our lives and show gratitude towards God and those around us. In my devotional times, I have recently finished reading through the Gospel of John. One of my favorite stories is when Jesus rises Lazarus from the dead in John 11. We see that before Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, He gives thanks to God, saying "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me..". You cannot miss the parallel here to Luke 22 when Jesus is at the last supper, and gives thanks to God for his own body and blood as "He took the bread, gave thanks and broke it....saying 'This is my body...(and) this cup is the new covenant in my blood'". I am reflecting more on how gratitude is more than a cultural politeness we show around this time in November, but more, gratitude can realign our reality to the truth of God. Jesus knew God to be true, so showing thanks for Him was transformational. Who knows when God is going to move another stone in our life and bring about a miracle? In the meantime, all thanks to God.
Sunset at an SMU game this past week! Wow.
The past few weeks, Felipe (my co-leader) and I have started to reconsider how we are leading our small group of guys. There is irony to saying small group , because we have grown to about 23 consistent people, most still new to our ministry (and many to the faith) this year. With this, we have realized there is a lot of flexibility in how we lead as they are not familiar with a weekly small group setting before this semester. As my last update shared, we have been going through a "leveling up" series, where we approach topics like reading our Bible, prayer, friendship, being a servant to others, and consider how we can "level up" as Jesus calls up to love and mature "more and more". However, when planning a few of these small group topics, we realized that we did not resonate with just sitting around and talking about how to do these things. Rather, we wanted to do them together! Since then, we have had meetings were we just read the Bible and ask each other questions the whole time. Or we will pray spontaneously together for an hour. Or we will go to the dining hall and split off into pairs, and invite just one new student in to eat with us to model outreach. A very quoted verse that we have been coming back to each week is Acts 2:42-47. As a group, we decided we want our body of believers
to look like that example, so it has been fun to encourage these guys to come up with their own ideas on how we can do that "more and more".
to look like that example, so it has been fun to encourage these guys to come up with their own ideas on how we can do that "more and more".
Still meeting new people in the dining hall! No one wants to eat alone.
As students wrap up their classes, so am I for the semester! I have officially finished my Old Testament class, and will soon finish Evangelism, Holy Spirit, and Spiritual Leadership as well. As I go through my classes, I often find myself creating new questions. I am learning tons of cool and interesting information, but more importantly, it feels like I am learning how to think and ask questions about these topics. Going through college as a chemistry major, asking questions in class was almost discouraged because it communicated that you maybe did not do the assigned reading and were behind compared to the rest of the class. Now, our entire discussion in class will be based off of the questions asked. It was difficult at first to generate questions, but now I find it exciting. Outside of class, I have enjoyed learning about how FOCUS operates at different campuses in DFW. Each campus has a different culture, so to some extent, the approach we take must adapt as well. This past Saturday, I was invited to an SMU game by a campus pastor at SMU. We got to talk and ask questions about similarities and differences between FOCUS at UT Dallas and SMU.
Photo from our 'Pizza Theology' event.
After 'The Grove' on Fridays, groups of students keep the party going usually late into the night. Zalat's Pizza is open until the early AM hours and has become a fun place to go with students.
I am so encouraged by the students around me. A saying I had heard before and seems obvious at face value is that we should "see where God is moving, and join Him". As someone who is working full-time ministry right now, that has been my goal for months. I think this month, God showed me in a few different ways that I will never be able to out do God. Even if transformation seems slow from my perspective, someone moving from death to life is still a miracle. There have been a few students that I have seen move their life onto God's agenda recently. The first description Paul uses to describe love in 1 Corinthians 13 is patience. He goes on to say "love always hopes". Love is knowing that God can do something different tomorrow in someone's life than what we experience now, and I just have to keep showing up to where God is already working.
A need we recognized at UT Dallas is that we have seen a shift in biblical literacy amongst our students. We wanted to heat up students just reading the Bible. Many students in our ministry who came from Christian homes growing up had read very little of the Bible. To grow some excitement around this, we started a "scripture smackdown" competition between the men and women in our ministry. Different books of the Bible were valued at different points depending on the number of minutes it takes to read that book (with the Gospels being worth DOUBLE points). As a team, we are shocked at the number of responses we have gotten on this.
With points directly correlating to minutes, this is over 188 hours worth of reading the Bible among our UTD ministry in just two weeks!
In the next month, please join me in praying for our Winter Retreat! It is coming up in January, but it is such a large event that we start planning for it now with our other campuses across DFW. At UT Dallas, please pray for students as they enter finals and that they can continue growing with Jesus over the long break at home. There seems to be a lot of energy this semester, so I pray for wisdom in our community that it can continue to be led by Jesus. I also ask that you pray for me this month. I am giving my first "sermon-ette" in about a month, simply titled "This is my Gospel", reflecting how Paul shares his in Romans 16. I ask for clarity on what to share.
Typical car I have to unpack at the end of the day. It is my second living space.
Signs of a good time at my house.
Thank you never goes without saying, so thank you for being a part of my life during this journey. As the holidays approach and slow down some areas of our life while intensifying others, let me know if there is any way I can be praying for you as well! If you made it to the end, let me know what you think of the songs "Your way's better" by Forrest Frank and "Land of Revival" by Chroma Worship.
With love,
Paul
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