Tag Archives: college ministry

May 3, 2010 · 9:18 pm

Moving on from College Ministry

Last night was my last college ministry meeting at the Stone. College Ministry started for Amber and I by leading a community group bible study in our small Hyde Park house we rented after getting married. The summer of ’05, I met with Michael Powell to convince him I wasn’t a heretic and to let Amber and I lead a group. It started with 9 people that first night and ended 2 years later with some of the greatest memories and friends we’ve ever had.

A year after we started our group, Kevin Peck asked Todd Engstrom, Travis Wussow, & I to organize and lead the college ministry. I can never thank Kevin enough for investing in me and providing me with this opportunity to lead with my friends. It’s been an amazing experience.

We’ve known for a while that this was likely our last year in college ministry and it makes it easier knowing that the college ministry is going to better than before with Tyler David, Sarah Decker, Eric Klein, Tammie Beassie and a whole host of interns, coaches, and missional community leaders running it next year.

Last night I shared what I’ve learned over 5 years or at least tried to summarize it in 4 nice bullet points.

You never move on from the gospel, you only move deeper into it. As Christians, we believe what saves us is faith in Jesus Christ’s death for our sins and resurrection from the grave 3 days later. For much of church life, I thought there were deeper and more interesting things than that, but how do you move on from the new like that? It’s truly tremendous to think of God becoming man, living perfectly, dying in my place, and accomplishing victory though resurrection that I never could. All through the letters in the Bible, Paul and other writers are constantly reminding people that what saves them (the gospel) is also what will transform them and instruct them in life. It’s never something you move past, it’s only something you grow in understanding of.

Ministry success or failure does not define me. The past 5 years have involved failures, some success, and more failures. It resulted in some ups and downs in my life and the unfortunately reality at times is that I came to view myself in light of those successes or failures. What I’ve learned is my identity is not based on my success or failure, but based on the gospel, being saved by Christ’s work and being seen as a child of God. As a parent, I know I love my sons not because they do great things for me, but because they are my sons. For Christians, God views us as His children and He is constantly delighted in us thanks to Jesus. Do I disappoint Him at times? Surely, but He never stops loving me. I’m His son.

Ministry isn’t as complicated as we try to make it. You’ve probably seen churches everywhere use trendy and relevant gimmicks or programs to get people to listen to their message. I feel like it’s overcomplicating a simple reality. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, verse 8, Paul writes to Christians that “having so fond an affection for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us.” Over the last 5 years, Amber & I have seen people influenced and changed by this truth, that when we offered them our lives, carrying about them through prayer and teaching the bible, having them in our home, God used it to transform people.

Ministry comes down to evangelism (proclaiming the gospel in word and deed) and discipleship (sharing your life and doctrine with people by walking through life with them).  Breaking it down further, I’d say it simplifies to prayer, understanding the bible, gospel-centered community, and being on mission together.

Lastly, I shared that there is no greater joy than doing ministry with friends. At our church we talk about missional community which is a groups of Christians actively proclaiming the gospel through evangelism and serving their community. I’ve had the opportunity to live that out with people who care about me and my family more than my contributions to ministry. They’ve reminded me of the gospel by caring about us and reminding us of and teaching us the truth of the bible.

So thank you to everyone we had the opportunity to serve with in college ministry. The list of names is too long to type here.

What’s Next?

A lot of people have been asking what we are going to do next as far as ministry. The truth is we don’t really know. We have been praying that God would show us what to do next and we will continue to do so. We do know we have a great neighborhood and great neighbors that we want to spend more time with and share our lives with as well. So we will definitely start there.

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September 14, 2009 · 8:58 pm

TASCC College Ministry|Freshman @theAustinStone

college-blog-bannerThe College Ministry at The Austin Stone Community Church is starting something new for freshman ministry this year. We’re calling it Freshman @theAustinStone and it’s a 6-week transition process within a freshman missional community where we discuss the essentials of Christian faith and how it plays out in the context of Christian community and on their campus.

We’re starting this Wednesday, Sept. 16th @ 8PM on UT’s campus in Burdine 106. Freshman will be organized into their future missional community and the night will consist of worship, 15-20 minutes of teaching and then discussion within missional community regarding the topic of the night.

We’ll be dealing with 6 issues that focus on Gospel, Community, & Mission and answering the essential questions of what it means to believe in Christ and how we are supposed to live as Christians.

Week 1: The Gospel: What is the Gospel?

The very thing that make someone a Christian is often the most difficult for Christians to really understand. Often it is assumed that people know and understand the gospel, but this week will lay a foundation and establish a biblical understanding of the gospel as the power of God for salvation of all men.

Week 2: Gospel Repentance: What is sin & how do I deal with it?

The 1st of Martin Luther’s 95 thesis is “all of life is repentance” which comes from an understanding that the root of all sin is idolatry. This week will focus on identifying the roots of sin in our life and appropriately understanding the idea of repentance through the gospel.

Week 3: Gospel Living v. Religion: Parable of the Prodigal Son

The most famous parable, the parable of the prodigal son, actually reveals that you can be far from God both while living solely for the pleasures of this world and by living a religious life focused solely on morality.

Week 4: Gospel-Led Community: What is true Gospel-Centered Christian Community?

The gospel calls people individually, but calls them to be a part of a community of believers. This collection of individuals is then transformed to live sacrificially for each other and the context they have been placed. This week will examine what a true gospel-centered Christian community looks like.

Week 5: Gospel-Led Mission: What do you mean by mission?

Often the term mission can be accomplished out of a sense of duty or responsibility as opposed to it being a result of valuing the gospel above all else. This results in treating people at projects to be improved upon instead of simply caring for all people that they might know joy, peace, and truth. This week we’ll evaluate our motivations for social justice & evangelism & we will discuss how this is most effectively accomplished when do this together as a community.

Week 6: Gospel-Led Commissioning

Really it’s just a commissioning (Christianese for sending them out), but I wanted to see if I could put “Gospel-Led” in front of each week. It will be a night of prayer, worship, and sending them out as groups.

 

Our prayer and hope is that this unites the freshman with a passion for the gospel of Jesus Christ so that their community and this campus is changed as they are changed.

Please pray for us and these freshman.

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September 9, 2009 · 7:21 pm

Austin Stone on Campus

ASOC

Tonight kicks off the college ministry for the Austin Stone Community Church. Our kickoff is Austin Stone on Campus, where we take an Austin Stone worship service to campus and launch our Missional Communities (Christianese for small groups that love Jesus, each other, and their campus/city). This marks the beginning of the 5th year in college ministry for me at the Stone.

I’ve seen it change dramatically as God has changed our church to be a church that is for the city, a church that cares about the success of Austin, its universities and everyone who lives here.

If you’ve ever wondered what college ministry looks like at the Austin Stone and what it is exactly we do here, then let me outline our structure.

Missional Communities

This year we will launch around 35 missional communities at Austin Stone on Campus, with about 1/3 of them as freshman missional communities. These are all student-led groups with around 8-20 students in each group.

Some of them have a particular mission or service area in mind, like the UT Pom, St. John’s Neighborhood, Reagan High School, etc. while others will be working towards identifying their mission throughout the year.

Freshman at The Austin Stone

For 6 weeks after Austin Stone on Campus, we will be meeting with all the freshman together before they launch into gender-specific groups for the remainder of the year.

These 6 weeks will focus on assisting them in transitioning into college as they make faith decisions on their own and get acclimated into our church and college life.

Coaches

This is the name we give our leaders of leaders. They are typically graduates who express a desire to mentor, disciple, and equip college students to lead their missional communities on campus. I meet with them bi-weekly as we discuss together the vision of the Austin Stone and how that contextually applies to the campuses in Austin.

College Leadership Team

This year our leadership team changes as my good friend Todd Engstrom transitions into a new role on staff as Pastor of Missional Communities to utilize his gifts to implement the current & future vision of the church.

Tyler David has stepped up to handle all the day-to-day operations for the college ministry on staff while planning and strategizing for what the future holds for the college ministry. He spends the majority of his time working with our three interns, Scott Frazier, Jackie Markovich, & Tammie Beassie who are absolutely amazing and really gifted students at UT. They make college ministry happen and make it excellent.

My role is to focus on leadership development with our leaders and coaches, basically serving as an area pastor for the college ministry caring for the coaches so they can care for the leaders.

Tonight – Austin Stone on Campus – 7pm @ Hogg Auditorium

Tonight around 1,200 college students will fill Hogg Auditorium on UT’s campus to worship Jesus and be challenged to care for their campus.

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May 1, 2009 · 9:57 pm

Lessons in Evangelism – Community Evangelism

In my last post in this series, I dealt more with a personal evangelism method (Questioning Evangelism) which is where most of us find ourselves when we seek to declare the gospel at work, in our neighborhood or apartment. It’s also how we’ve come to view and teach evangelism. It has become a personal responsibility that you do by yourself so you better know all the answers and the best methods to explain the gospel to anyone you see. This is a half-truth that often overwhelms us because the burden rests solely on us for it to be carried out. It’s true that we must be ready to give an account for why we believe what we believe, but evangelism was never seen as solely an individual activity.

I’m talking about the idea of community evangelism, which is joining with other believers in Jesus Christ to express the gospel through word and deed to similar individuals, a neighborhood, or a group of people. Instead of doing it on your own, partner with other believers to accomplish the same task together.

This is something I’ve primarily learned by observing it carried out by others, but also through observing truth in the Book of Acts in the Bible. In Acts you never see anyone sent out to evangelize or establish a church or to be on mission all by themselves, it’s as if it didn’t make sense to them. The first missionary journey (Acts 13) sets apart Paul and Barnabas to go together, and even with they split in Acts 15, they find others to go with them as they separate and never go alone.

Christ sends out His disciples in pairs in Luke 10 and then sends them as a group when He ascends into heaven. It appears more biblical to seek to do this as a community rather than as individuals.

Maybe for us the independent American lifestyle has bled into our evangelism methods and theology to the point we refuse to share our burden and responsibility with those we love that also happen to be closest to us.

Two examples of community evangelism in our college ministry:

Kasey and Clay: Two of our college guy leaders began interacting with and caring for Korean international students on UT’s campus. Each of them would interact with them separately, but also together at times and each time would seek to engage them with the truth of the gospel. As a result, they’ve seen a Korean atheist become a believer in Christ and then join them in reaching his friends.

Madison and Megan: Freshman girls in our college ministry that decided to pray like crazy and share their faith as much as possible. Together they have seen a number of people come to faith in Christ, baptized girls in their dorm’s pool and seen those girls join with them in sharing their faith and baptizing others. Here’s the video.

How does this play out in our lives?

I have seen this begin to play itself out in my marriage most of all. Amber and I are a ministry team that lives in close community as part of our marriage. We spend our weekdays separate, but with a common focus of seeing the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed through our words and our lives to the people we see on a regular basis. When together, we encourage one another, keep each other accountable to staying committed to sharing our faith, we learn from one another and we pray for each other. Lately, we’ve also worked together in spending time with the people each of us has connected with individually. In those moments we get to show them Christ by our lives in community and then collectively declare the gospel. We’ve seen more opportunities to share our faith this way than ever before.

Community evangelism creates more opportunities for the gospel to be spread, provides a close training and support network for learning, encouragement, accountability, and prayer. There are small groups in churches everywhere, but many of them meet to serve just each other, what if their focus for gathering was centered on engaging communities with the gospel they encourage each other with? I think they’ll see and experience greater joy in Christ and see salvation in Christ more than ever before.

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January 1, 2009 · 6:32 pm

As the year ends…Part 2

Austin Stone Vision Series – For the City

forthecity

Starting back in September, our church went through a Vision Series focused on what it would look like for a church to seek the holistic peace and renewal of a city. It involved weekly prayer meetings, hundreds of small groups, a building campaign unlike any I have ever heard of and it truly led us to take more concern for our city and be more broken for the people we live near.

Check out more here:

Vision Series

The Building Project

 

Project 297

This is a cheesy name from a cheesy pastor that I love (Stew). 297 is for Jeremiah 29:7 which says “Seek the welfare(shalom) of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.” Welfare or shalom is the idea of holistic peace. This is a pilot missionary training program at our church, The Austin Stone Community Church, to train global, urban, and church planting missionaries.

 

We are blessed to be a part of the Church Planting track as we seek the Lord to see if that is where He is leading us in the future. We are 1 of 5 couples who have grown closer over the past 3 months. It’s been challenging, at times exhausting, but extremely beneficial for Amber and I. I’ll tell you more about it another time.

 

CCDA Conference – Christian Community Development Association

I attended this conference with about 10 other Austin Stone people in October and it was an amazing opportunity to learn about seeking the peace of the city through urban ministry from people who have given their lives to do it. I learned a ton, the top things were understanding redistribution (different than you may think), immigration, building a community to be self-sustaining, and the need for racial reconciliation. It was amazing.

 

The end of Group-K

This past September, we got booted…er, I mean “graduated” from the discipleship group that the Lord has blessed us with for the last 3 years with Kevin Peck. My life is forever changed by high bar of holiness, passion for God, and challenge that Kevin laid out for our lives. The community that developed among these guys and our families will never end, but our Thursdays in Manor did. We miss it.

 

College Ministry at ASCC

Amber and I continue to be involved with college ministry at the Stone and we love it. Our involvement continues to change, my role is Community Director for the college ministry, which means I lead our coaches, who lead our small group leaders. We’ve been going through Church Planting Movements and I am grateful for the leaders the Lord has provided for us. Amber and I also disciple a handful of college students and we love those times with them.

 

Sabbath

We guarded our Saturdays more these past 4 months than we ever have before and feel like we’ve reaped the benefits of not working or doing anything for the responsibilities that we have outside of family. It was really refreshing and we hope it continues.

 

These were the highlights of the year and they are likely incomplete, but hopefully it gives you more insight into our 2008.

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