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!

How the previous post turned out

We got the chance to sit down with our leadership students last night and debreif with them about last week (see last post). We are so proud of them and the things they accomplished through stepping out in faith. The two things they were working hard on were the basketball outreach and the weekly meeting.
The outreach went very well. They ended up chatting with alot of students, as they had a basketball goal out in the middle of campus to attract students for two days. There is now over 50 students who filled out a contact card indicating that they would like to be followed up with, for out students to engage in a conversation with the purpose to share the Gospel! We are pumped to see what God will do.
The weekly meeting went off very good as well. The students planned the announcement, an ice breaker game, worship, and the speaker. This plan is not too far off a regular meeting. A few minutes before we started our leadership students were having, what I'll call, learning moments, as they begin to figure out what all actually went into planning an event. After ironing out a few last minute details the night went great. I feel like the important things were a success. People felt welcomed, we were able to worship God, and people were given the opportunity to hearing the Gospel and grow in thier faith.
The was a great step for our leadership students, and I am looking forward to seeing them follow up with students, and to continue to grow from some things they've learned.

Exciting week for our students...

This week is an exciting week for not only our students, but for us as staff. As a part of running our ministry on campus, and a part of training students to lead a ministy in "the real world" we have a team of students we have hand picked called the "Leadership Team".
This is something we've had in the past, and have put it back into place at the begining of this semester. Therefore we have had alot of training and learning. They are doing great!
This week we have put these students completely in charge of stuff. Tomorrow and Thursday they are running an outreach that they planned, and are carrying out. They are putting a basketball goal in the middle of campus and inviting students to shoots hoops for some prizes, after they fill out a short survey. Very simple, very good idea. They then are taking these short surveys, we call contact cards, and are calling through the students who indicate interest in meeting, to set up a time to meet, and share the Gospel with them. We are so excited to see them do this.
Also, if that wasn't enough, we gave them complete control of the weekly meeting. So Thursday night will be completely student ran. They found a speaker, organized the band, and the whole thing.
We are praying for them that it goes well, that they are encouraged by the things that God will do, and that they will be encouraged to grow in their leadership skills for the sake of the Gospel.

Spring Break 2010

Hope you have been enjoying a restful Spring Break, whenever yours is!

We have been having a great time visiting our families and Autumn’s roommate, and getting refreshed for the rest of the school year!

We have students traveling all over the place! Many are enjoying time with family- but we have a number of students who are sharing Christ on the beaches in Panama City, FL.  Here is an update for you that was given to us compliments of our staff webpage and author Laura Viau:

“Big Break is always an blast-between the speakers, the worship, and the beautiful Panama City beaches, you’d think it was just a retreat. The truth is that lives are changed every year. Students become bold witnesses, bringing men and women out of the darkness into relationship with the true Light of the World. In the past week alone, over 3600 gospel conversations took place and we know of 421 new sisters and brothers in Christ.

In addition to the sun, fun and sharing this year, Big Breakers also have a chance to give some time to help those in need in Haiti. Our goal is to pack A Million Meals for A Million People, which will be distributed with partner ministries in Haiti. So far, the “packing parties” during the first two weeks of Big Break have packed around 300,000 meals! In addition to the food, the meal packets will provide a gospel message in Haitian Creole.

Many of you are wondering how you can involve students and faculty members in reaching out to Haiti. Plans are firming up for summer projects, as well as ongoing relief and rebuilding efforts.

Want to track what’s happening in PCB? Check out the Twitter stream then jump in by including #bigbreak in your updates.”

Hope you enjoyed seeing how God was at work in the lives of college students in their Spring Break!

Props to an encouraging ministry...

This is Vince writing. I had a very interesting experience on Tuesday night. As I think we've mentioned before, God is begining to open doors for us in the Greek system here at SFA. This is very exciting for us. We are now developing relationships with guys and girls in 4 different major houses.
Our campus director, Scott, and I have really connected with one particular guy, named John, from one of the houses. John is a really cool guys who has some difficult things he is struggling with while wrestling with what God may have for his life. He has been sharing with us about his experience with God while attending something called Celebrate Recovery. He was telling us how the program had helped him overcome some issues in his life, and how he has started to attend again. He invited us to go with him to Celebrate Recovery, so this past Tuesday we drove with him to his home town to check things out.
Celebrate Recovery is a Christ based recovery program that helps people over come, and recover from a wide range of addictions such as: sexual, drugs, alcohol, co-dependancy, anxiety, basically you name it. I have heard from a couple of good friends about how great this is, and after attending one meeting I can emphatically agree.
This main things that stood out to me about Celebrate Recovery was how open, accepting, inclusive, and welcoming they are to everyone. I think one failing of the church is that people don't feel they can reveal some of thier deep hurts, and sins because if they did then they would feel akward, or to some extent look at like they don't belong. At CR this is something that they do right every week. In my experience there, it just didn't matter what you are dealing with. It could be almost unimaginable struggle, and the people at CR will welcome you in, lock arms, and say we are in this together. It's an amazing picture of how I believe Jesus would want His church to operate.
I would hope that if someone walked into my church, and for that matter, every Christ believing church, or even our ministry with Cru, and opened up that they were dealing with drug addiction, homo sexuality, or some deep dark hurt, that we would react with open arms and acceptance. I believe that we are challenged to lock arms and do life with these people as Jesus pulls them through thier sins. I think we need to break out of feeling like we need to continually act like everything is OK while we are at church, and make a movement towards open sharing, and total acceptance. Not acceptance of the sin being OK, but acceptance that they are in the right place to trust in Christ, and to make their and our lives look more like His.
I just wanted to through our there some props for a really cool ministry who is doing the hard things really well. Celebrate Recovery is changing lives, and helping people follow Christ while, fighting addictions. I would recommend this program to anyone dealing with addiction. CR is legit.

Ethiopia Here They Come!

Late Sunday night, I got a phone call from an awesome girl who is involved in our ministry. She was so excited that she just couldn't wait to tell me her news. She had just found out that she was going to be part of the Summer Project to Ethiopia this summer! In the few months before, I had gotten a chance to get to know this amazing girl. She has been excited about getting involved with Crusade- coming to the weekly meetings, hosting a Bible study in her dorm, and inviting friends to come and hear about Christ who changed her life. From the first time I met her, she talked about wanting to go to Ethiopia, and to share with college students there about the love of the Savior. Over the next weeks, she filled out her application, prayed, and waited to hear if she was going to get to be part of the trip. You can only imagine the excitement from the phone call she got letting her know that she was part of the group!

She will be joined with another amazing girl from SFA. She has also been involved in Cru, and has been coming to the weekly meetings, sharing with her friends about Christ, has started a Bible study for girls in her major of study, and is very vocal about how God has changed her life. She attended our Winter Conference in January on a whim, not at all expecting that God would give her such a heart for Ethiopia while she was there. During the conference, she attended a break-out session about the Summer Project to Ethiopia and in those moments in the session, she realized that  she had been putting herself first in how she made decisions, and God wanted her to put Him first- and she knew that meant sacrificing her personal summer agenda and serving instead in Ethiopia. In a big step of faith, she filled out the application, was accepted, and is beginning a faith journey of raising funds and heading to Ethiopia.

Please be praying for these 2 wonderful SFA girls who are going to be spending a chunk of their summer sharing Christ with students in Bahadar, Ethiopia.

• Pray for the money they need to raise to do this mission trip
• Pray for the other 14 students from different campus's going to Ethiopia
• Pray that God will be preparing the students going, and the students they are going to be sharing Christ with while they are there.

We are so excited for them, and proud of their steps of faith in following Christ with their lives!