Ending the year strong

This semester has been so great. We've seen students trust in Christ, students grow in thier faith, we've seen God raise up a great group of students and put them in our lives, and its been so great to see them grow. The semester is coming to an end, but its not over yet. Right now we are stressing to our students, and ourselves, the importance of finishing strong.
Autumn had wrote about our leadership retreat, which went great. At that retreat we had a mens time where the guys talked about our ministry, what we do well, and what we can do better to more effectively reach the guys on campus with the Gospel. God did some really cool things with that time as he stirred the hearts of our guys to begin praying for the Fall now!
Us as staff are so proud, and so excited for thier heart to reach the lost men at SFA. Our 4 leadership guys have now started meeting weekly, and have included a few others already, and have began praying for the men at SFA and how God can use them to reach the entire population. Lets keep this in mind and see what God does.
I was chatting with another staff guy this week about the semester. One of our big goals was to begin to reach the fraternity system with the Gospel. We've tried big events, treating them like regular students, and many other things which have failed in the past. The frat guys have to trust you. So we have been praying and set a goal to have good relationships developed within the Greek system so that in the Fall we would be able to pick back up. I considered this setting low standards but I never figured it would work so well that we have a growing relationship with 1 or more guys in 2 fraternities. It may seem like a small thing, but to me its not. I believe its the begining of something big in those two particular houses. They are really cool guys who I believe God will use to build His Kingdom in a tough place.
Thats all for now.

Leadership Retreat

Hey guys! We just got back from an amazing weekend pouring into our leadership students for the coming year. What an awesome group! The time was jamm-packed but it was great. We spent time evaluating the past year, brainstorming for the future, and training on ministry basics like leading a Bible Study and Discipleship. We are so encouraged to see this group of 10 students who really desire to see the campus changed by the gospel.
Quick cool story, to help prepare our hearts for the weekend, our staff team fast together leading up to the retreat. We asked our leadership students to fast with starting Wed. night and break the fast on Friday evening dinner together when our retreat started. It was cool to see how they responded. All of them fasted together with us. Many fasted from food, some from all media, one girl in addition to food fasted from her bed (and she said she really was up all night praying!)! We even had one student feel called to fast for things in his life, and then we asked him to also be fasting for the retreat, and so he decided to fast for 10 days! We had a group of devotionals to help encourage us to be intentional with our fast and spend time in prayer and in the word. As our students pulled up to our retreat, the first things out of their mind was- so we eat now? Mind you its 4:30! But it was really cool to see how God used the fast in the lives of us, and the students, and was an especially awesome way to begin our time together!
Thank you for your prayers, they mean more than you know.

Also, please pray tomorrow as the supreme court reviews a case about campus ministry on college campuses- to my best understanding they are in the process of deciding if the college has the right to refuse Christian ministries the right to have an on campus organization. Obviously this could one day have a huge potential impact on college ministry, and we ask you to pray that campus ministry is allowed to maintain full rights.

Take care!