Meeting Jesus

Eric, a sophomore, showed up to the Bible study he leads for the start of a new semester. Just days before, he was praying that the Lord would allow him to share his faith and have a ministry. He ended up meeting a couple random guys on campus Ryan and Jack, and invited them and they showed up. Eric led the Bible study and afterwards they split into smaller groups, giving him time to get to know his 2 new friends. Right off the bat Ryan, who is an Asian student who has an atheistic back ground, questioned Eric as to why he would need Jesus to be a good person. Eric was able to explain that Christianity wasn’t about being good, but that’s it’s about broken people who need a Savior. After a few minutes discussion Ryan went quiet, so Eric turned to Jack and asked what he thought about the Gospel. Jack said he’d never been to church, and had never heard any of that before, and Eric continued on about faith in Christ.  Jack expressed at the end of the night that he was very interested in Jesus. He also shared that he was struggling with depression, his self imagine, and that this was the first time anyone had invited him to anything in his 2 semesters in college. Currently Eric is meeting with both of his new friends, continuing to lead them towards Christ. Please take a moment to pray for them.

You may remember that last semester Vince has had the opportunity to build relationships with a fraternity called TKE. In November Vince had lunch with 2 fraternity brothers who were roommates, Josh, and Clay. Josh is a believer who is struggling in his faith, and Clay admittedly wasn’t a believer. Vince had the opportunity to share with him the Clay that God loved him and wanted a relationship with him through Jesus, and that he didn’t have to earn this relationship, that it was freely given. Clay said he wanted to be a Christian one day when he was married and had kids, but for now he was enjoying sex, alcohol, and other things, and didn’t want to say he was Christian but be a hypocrite. After encouraging him not to wait, Clay left and Vince didn’t see him until a week ago.

After catching up for a second Clay told a story on how his life had changed. He said that for weeks after our appointment he thought about who Jesus was, the Gospel, and about his decision to not trust Christ. He said that one day of the Christmas break, that he woke up and decided he was wrong and didn’t want to wait. So he placed his faith in Christ! Next, he went and told his roommate Josh about his decision and said he wanted to be baptized. So Josh took Clay, and 2 other Christian fraternity brothers, out to Lake Nacogdoches, and baptized Clay. Praise the Lord for the work He has done and is doing.

Winter Conference

 

 

Hundreds of College Students Gather for Teaching, Worship, Training and Outreach

 All of us are drawn to a good story.

Over 850 college students from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana rang in the New Year in Fort Worth, at Cru’s annual Winter Conference. This year’s theme, True Story, examined the compelling picture of God’s story of rescue, redemption and restoration, while helping students to see how they fit into this story.

Who will you invite to be a part of God’s story?

On January 4, the students went to the Cotton Bowl and surrounding areas to share Christ with tailgaters. When Katherine and Brittany met Anthony, a Cotton Bowl parking attendant, he had never heard the message of grace before. The Lord used Katherine and Brittany to lead Anthony to Christ!

Another Cru student, Destinee, met three juniors, Jenna, Emily and Alayna, from A&M who were tailgating at Cowboy Stadium. Destinee took the initiative to share Christ and could hardly believe it when they said, “Yes!” to Jesus, and grabbed hands and prayed right there in front of all their friends!

 How will you respond to this incredible story? Students made significant choices during this first week of 2013. Some students chose to place their faith in Christ for the first time. Several made decisions to share Christ with their fraternity brothers, sorority sisters, or others back on campus. Others chose to surrender their futures. Many decided to give God their summer, serving Him in Russia, East Asia, Italy and Ethiopia. Some chose to give a year to intern with us, and a handful committed to serve internationally for a year-long STINT.

The harvest is plentiful and God is raising up laborers. Thank you for all you do to make this possible. Your partnership with us is having far-reaching effects.

Big news! The Lord has been gracious, and we are expecting our first child in July! Please pray for a healthy baby and pregnancy, and the Lord will prepare us to be parents!

Follow up experience

Thanks so much for praying for the first events we hosted to meet students. We were able to meet so many students, and have been following up with them over the past few weeks. Autumn met with one girl, who had many questions spiritually. She grew up attending church sometimes, but really had never read the Bible and was unsure where to even start. As Autumn talked with her, she got to share the overarching message of the Bible is the gospel, and how through faith we can experience a relationship with Christ. The girl’s heart is stirred, and she asked about reading the Bible, and wanting to learn more about the idea of a relationship with Christ. Autumn brought her a Bible, and explained where to start. Since then, she has been coming to Bible study, building relationships, and aksing questions. Please pray with us that the Lord helps her to fully understand the gospel, and that she will place her faith in Him!

Girl reading Bible

-          In our Large Group one week we studied the story of Mary  and Martha, teaching about the importance of spending time with Jesus in prayer and in the Bible. The following week we had a girl share with the group that she had decided to read the Bible for the first time ever! She said she started in Proverbs and read about the importance of reading God’s word. She went on to say she read 4 days that week! As she shared about her first experience in scripture we were reminded that significant moments like this is why we love staff with Cru.

Convo with Muslim

Every Friday we go out on campus and initiate spiritual conversations with random people with the purpose of sharing the Gospel. Vince had the opportunity to share with a guy this past month. He is a Muslim student with family roots from Pakistan, and he is involved with a Muslim organization on campus. Throughout a 2 hour conversation Vince was able to share with the guy about who Jesus is, and why He is the only way to a relationship with God. This was clearly the first time Jason has heard about the concept of God’s grace. He couldn’t understand why God would love us so much that He would die for us. It was a great opportunity to agree and to show him that this was how much God loved him. He did not place his faith in Christ but we pray that he pursue the Truth.

Large Group

Our Bible studies this year are called Large groups. They are co-ed Bible studies where college students can come and learn about who Jesus is, and how they can know Him more and more. The first half of Large Group we spend time studying scripture, and what it is teaching. Then we split up the guys and girls to have a time focused on how we can live our lives differently in light of the Bible study. Our first Large Group saw 28 students show up! It has settled now with a few less than that, but we are so excited about this group. As we’ve had the opportunity to sit down one on one with each of these students, we’ve discovered that they are anywhere from Christian walking with God, Christians struggling in their walk with God, and quite a few of them are just checking things out and are unsure about what they believe. We are so excited for this group, and look forward to seeing what the Lord will do in their lives this semester.

TKE's and Greeks

The population at SFA is largely people who don’t know Christ, but have some experience with Church. The toughest by far of that population to reach are the students in the Greek system. The Greek system at SFA is your stereotypical frat life that is portrayed in movies; lots of partying, sex, and full of people who are searching for meaning and acceptance in all the wrong places. In most cases it takes multiple years to build up enough trust for a fraternity or sorority to let us in, and for us to have an impact. We’ve seen in the past couple years a good relationship forming with one fraternity on campus, the Theta Chi’s, and now we have had another door open up for the TKE’s.

Our relationship with the TKE’s began a couple years ago after we had the opportunity to console a couple of fraternity brothers after the death of one of their members. We had been playing football with them for weeks, and they seemed to like us enough to share that with us. From there we slowly earned their trust, until this semester when we were able to grab lunch with their president. What we ask the fraternities to do is to let us have 10 minutes at their chapter meeting to do a short talk on the life of a man in college. We wrap it up by offering ourselves as spiritual resources for them, and offer to meet with each guy one on one. A week after pitching this idea to the TKE president, I was standing in front of 30 TKE’s in their meeting having a great conversation with them that would turn into an opportunity to follow up with, at this point, 10 of them.

At the follow up appointments I have had the chance to get to know them, field some spiritual questions, and share the Gospel. A few of them are believers in Christ, and a few of them are openly searching for the answer to who God is and how He relates to them. All of them have said how hard college is and how their lifestyle is likely displeasing to the Lord. They ask such great questions about the “point of life”, “why life is so hard”, and “why they do the things they do”.  I love having this opportunity to share with them about the love of God who seeks to forgive them, and who desires to know them personally through a relationship with Jesus. I pray that the Lord would continue to allow me to invest in their lives, and that Jesus would make an impact in the TKE house at SFA.

This past month we had Fall Retreat! We love Fall Retreat for two reasons. For one, it’s where we met each other for the first time 7 years ago, and for two, it’s always cool to see what the Lord does in the lives of students when they take just a few days to invest in Him. Our students learned a lot about how great Jesus is, and were challenged to what a life looks like that is dependent on the leading of the Holy Spirit. One girl who came who isn’t a Christian said at the end, “For the first time ever I am interested in opening a Bible and seeing what it has to say.” So we gave her, her first Bible.

Thanks for enabling us to be a part of what God is doing at SFA!

LARGE

This year we are moving our focus of ministry from a weekly meeting format where we attempt to begin as many Bible studies as possible, and emphasize a big weekly meeting, to a format where we emphasize less Bible studies in hope that they would be larger communities where students can come and find growth in Christ, and a large tight knit community.
Last night was our first night to see how this happens. Autumn and I are leading a group, which we call Large Groups, our other staff is leading a group, and we have 4 sophomore students taking on a group themselves. We spent the last week putting on events around campus where we can meet people, specifically freshmen. As we did these events we were getting phone numbers, and sitting down one on one with them to get to know them and to share the Gospel. We were hoping that all these people would come and check out a Large Group.
We are so thrilled this morning to see how God provided for us. Our Large Group had 28 people, which was a blast! We had a great time meeting some new people, and seeing alot that we had previously met. Our student lead Large Group had 32 people show up, and our other staff lead group, which meets off campus and targets Greeks and athletes had 12! Each group studied what a committment to Christ looks like from Luke 9:58=61.
We pray that each students felt welcome in involved, and that we would do a good job not only pursuing them spiritually but socially. We pray that they would come back next week, bring a friend, and dive in deep in the community on Large Group!

OLSP

We spent this summer serving the Lord in Branson, MO on Ozark Lake Summer Project. This is a classic staple for our region for Campus Crusade. We have been on this project once before two years ago and absolutely loved it. As staff it’s a great time to connect with other staff from our region, and also to get extensive time investing in the lives of college students.

Vince and Autumn with the SFA students on OLSP

There was however once major difference for us this time around. Over the past 2 years there have been only 2 men Project Directors and in the past decade there has been 1 woman who has been the Assistant Project Director. These people are staff that we look up to and tend to put on the Cru pedestal. This year signaled a change. There was a new PD whom we think highly of, and there is a new APD whom I (Vince) am married to. Autumn had a large task that she undertook this past 6 months and might I say, I think she nailed it. She did a great job balancing being on campus and planning summer project. She did an even better job this summer leading, teaching, and sheparding the staff and students of this project.

We love this project because it gives us a chance to train students  how to have a ministry in a simulated real life scenario. This summer we had 32 students from different schools such as LSU, Texas Tech, UT, OSU, SFA, UTA, Tx St. They all lived with the staff in the Honeysuckle Inn in Branson. We got each student a local job at places like Mcdonalds, Silver Dollar City, Branson Belle Showboat, and the YMCA. Their jobs weren’t just a place to work, but it was their ministry place. Our job as staff was to train and equip these students on how to share their faith, share their testimony, how to invest in the lives of people so that they would reach their fellow employee’s, and eventually their campus, and then the rest of their life.

It was amazing to see the Lord empower our students with the Holy Spirit as they shared their faith boldly not only with their co-workers, but the people of branson. The students stepped up into leadership positions as the staff left in early July, to lead the “Project” in various area’s of ministry. Some lead their small groups, men’s/womens times, outreach, and weekly meeting. The Lord used them in mighty ways, and we believe that not only were lives of people in Branson changed, but the lives of our students were as well.

When Students Get It

I have been meeting weekly to disciple an awesome freshman girl during the fall, and now the spring. Last fall we studied foundations of the faith, and she really took to knowing why she believes what she believes. Last Friday, she took a big faith step and came to our Friday outreach times. During this time, staff and students spread out over campus to get into spiritual conversations with students to share about who Christ is, and what He wants to do in their life. She was really nervous, because this is the first time she had ever gone to share her faith before. She and I and her friend sat and prayed for a few minutes. Then I took them through a brief training on how to use the Soularium survey, and the Gospel, and then we were off to find students to share with.


We came across a group of 3 girls sitting and having lunch, and began to have a conversation with them, and to do the survey. We realized that each of the 3 women we were talking to had different spiritual backgrounds, and they were interested in hearing more. Though they were short on time, we were able to share the gospel with them, and the two girls who had never shared their faith before were incredibly encouraged. They said over and over how cool the conversation was, and how they can't wait until next week to go again and talk with more students about Christ.
Fast forward the weekend, I met with the girl again yesterday, and I wanted to take her through a more thorough training for how to share the gospel. We sat and went through the Knowing God Personally booklet and talked about it together, and talked through possible topics that could come up when she would talk with people who don't know Christ. At the end of our conversation, I challenged her to practice with a friend and she was excited but nervous.
Her prayer request for the end of our time together was for boldness to proclaim Christ. And not because she is a Christian and it is something she is "supposed" to do, but because she truly deeply loves people, and wants them to know who Christ is. Her heart had been stirred for the same reason God wants people to know Christ- love. Please pray with me for her that she will grow in boldness to share Christ with others, and that her motivation would always remain love for God and love for those around her.
Thanks for your prayers.