A Month of Many Things

October was a fantastic month, that I really feel like a sprinted through. October started with Family Night for UTD, which was primarily put on by the FNF Team, so was a lot my responsibility. I had a lot more help than I normally do, given that the whole staff was combined for this service, but it still initially felt overwhelming. All in all I thought the event went really well. Family Night is something we do every year that is basically a parent night, but we extend it to all family, due to a lot of students not necessarily having parents that can make it (for differing reasons).  We had a few parents share Focus's impact on their student, and its subsequent impact on their family, and all of those were very encouraging!

Moving forward from there, the apprentice group started our training in preaching. We all had two different labs we went two. One lead by the Dallas Campus Director Sirak, and one lead by a former minister at CCF up at Western Washington University (who put on the Student Institute of Campus Ministry). The one with Sirak was here in DFW, and we went over mostly what is good and bad in going into and through a sermon, how to think through writing a sermon, and what things to keep an eye out for. At the end of that, we were all assigned a random topic to do a 5 minute passage on, and we were given feedback to help us grow in looking forward to our next assignment. This next assignment had us go to Wichita Falls to see Kelly Cannedy, who formerly was in charge of teaching ministry interns how to preach back in Washington. The experience was very cool, and really taught me a lot about my mannerisms. I was assigned to give a 20 min sermon using Jeremiah 18 as my text. I primarily focused on the "potter's house" section, where God talks about molding Israel the was a potter molds clay. Given my history with ceramics (which I did all through High School) I was able to really dissect this image that God gave, and show a few ways it applies to our own repentance. Given clay's 3 main levels of hardness, I discussed what it would look like for God to do this with our hearts in these different stages, and also got to barely touch on why God had to crush Israel because of their hard hearts. I was very grateful for the experience, and to Kelly. She delivered critique in a very helpful and not at all hurtful way. All in all, I think this was my favorite part of the month, and I really feel like I learned a lot and have been well equipped to move forward toward giving an actual sermon.

My half of the apprentice group with Kelly(third from the right)

After these preaching labs, things slowed down for me for a couple of weeks. We finished our classes on Body Stewardship and the Old Testament, and we also had a cool visit to our campus. One thing you all need to know about UTD, is that 99% of the students are pretty nerdy. Myself included in this. So, given this, it is no surprise that Nintendo would visit our campus to host a gaming and giveaway event called "Nintendo on Campus". Nintendo may well be the most well known video game company in the world given that they are responsible for 4 of the 5 most recognizable characters in video games. This all adds up to what may be one of the best out reach opportunities I have had that was not put on by Focus. I went to this event with a few students, and we walked around, joined people in their games and made some new friends, invited a few people to come check out focus, and even won a few prizes. I personally met a student named Chris, who like me, he was an Arts and Technology major. We talked for a sort bit, played Mario Kart together, and have set up time to build out that relationship more. He himself is not a Christian, but by the grace of God was not turned away from relationship by the fact that I was a minister. Hopefully I have more story to tell about him in the future. All in all this was a very fun and still meaningful experience that I am so grateful to have had. I can't think of another job (other than running the event) that you get to play games and still have a meaningful impact on people's life. Ministry really may be the best job! 

 

The last major thing that went on was the Leadership Conference. This was an all day seminar (meaning 9-5) on a Saturday that we invited both student leaders, and students with potential to come to. We talked about innovation and creativity as part of ministry. We listened to many talkers take us through how to view these topics, as well as how to apply them to our own act of ministry. It was a very cool experience, and well worth giving up a Saturday for.