Being Adaptable

 September proved to be a month of a lot of learning. For starters, I have begun learning a lot about advertising. Namely how to take things I learned from my design classes, and make them communicate in a professional way. I also started taking a class with Sarah Williams from Regent College in Vancouver about Christian History. It has been so interesting to learn about our faith as a story from after the lives of the 12 apostles. Namely learning about the shift in perspective of Rome, people like St. Augustine, and places like Ireland and Clooney. Lastly of course I have been learning how to continue to improve the ministry experience for people while being predominately online. Fundraising for me has also extended into the year some, so I would appreciate prayers a lot as I continue to figure out how to reach my goal. I am just under $200 a month away from this. 

Though it started last month, our weekly Deep Dive service has gotten into full swing this last month. What has been exciting to see about this, is just how much people are watching it. Our viewership of the live stream has stayed below what a normal service is for us, but we also know that many people are watching together with roommates on one device. The more encouraging number is just how many people are returning to the VOD to watch. One of our services has been watched over 400 times which is just crazy to think about. I really never would have imagined I would be apart of making a video that has a reach like that. While 400 doesn't seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, it is way more people than normally see our service. It is so cool that God has used us to send a message to people even in times like this. If you would like to check it out you can find our stream and recordings at twitch.tv/utdfocus. Here is one of the ads we have been posting on campus so that students can see it as they go to class. 

Speaking of services, one thing we spent all month announcing and leading up to was our bi-yearly Pizza Theology service. The idea traditionally is that we have 4 hours of teaching on a subject, with an hour break in the middle for a pizza dinner with our whole community. Obviously, this year we couldn't do this normally, so here is what we did. Like everything else, we streamed it, but we noticed last semester that the attendance was not very comparable to a normal event. To attack this issue, we held a sign-up. People who signed up would of course be notified that we were streaming, but they also had a chance to win up to $40 worth of pizza for them and whoever they were watching with. This did end up having a pretty good effect. We averaged better numbers for the first part than we did last year. Speaking of, our topic for this semester was "In It, Not of It, How to Think Like a Christian in Society" where we tackled issues like the election, police brutality, immigration, and other stick subjects that our students are being faced with. Our focus was on how would Christ think about these things, and how should we in turn try to think about them. We didn't give any hard and fast answers but rather gave them the questions they should be seriously considering for themselves.  All in all, I think this went very well, and all of the speakers who spoke did a great job of leading our students to a more thoughtful place. 

(our primary ad for the event)

(me behind the scenes working the stream and camera)