Semester close and summer beginnings

As a last hurrah to the semester, I hosted a D-group BBQ night.

Two of the students have joined with me to form an accountability fellowship for this summer.  We have each set a few goals for these three months and are actively encouraging one another in them each week.

I am leading the Navs’ Summer Fellowship (NSF) Bible study.  Our first meeting was last Tuesday.  We will have a different guest speaker each week.  The speakers will choose their own topic in answer to the question, “What is something that you believe God has taught you personally and that you passionately believe young adults should learn before leaving college?”  I look forward to hearing what they have to teach us!

Prayer:
- Good fellowship and teaching at NSF.
- Safety and impact for Alex, as he travels to Japan this summer with The Navigators.
- A smooth final six weeks of pregnancy for Lindsay and a health and happy birth for everyone.

2011 spring newsletters are in the mail!

For those of you on our emailing list, this isn’t news to you (unless you check our blog more often than your email, which is flattering but probably unhealthy).  For everyone else who receives our quarterly newsletter, be excited because it should arrive in your mail very soon!

Finishing the race

It’s hard to believe that we have only a little more than a month left in the school year.  Please be in prayer that we, the staff and student leaders, might stay focused on our goal to know Christ and to make Him known through to the very end.

2 Timothy 4:7  I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

According to your faith

Matthew 9:28-30a
When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?”
“Yes, Lord,” they replied.
Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith let it be done to you”; and their sight was restored.

Last Tuesday, I sent out the ten students from our Joshua Team to invite their friends to read the Bible, an assignment that would evoke profound trepidation but for the promises of God.  In the Bible, we find awesome promises from God for those who walk by faith.  And, in accordance with our faith, he provides.

Would you take a moment to pray with me for these students?  Pray that they would be enabled to overcome fear by trusting in Christ.  Pray that, as they step out in faith, God would produce changed hearts and minds among their friends.

This is the truest challenge of faith of which I know–not that God can do it, but that He can do it through me.

Joshua Team

This week we launch our inaugural Joshua Team training, for which I am the point-man.  Joshua Team (J-Team) is an 8-week experience aimed at establishing students in the gospel and stretching their vision and faith in outreach.  To this end, we will memorize Scripture, receive training, and read a book (The Gospel for Real Life by Jerry Bridges) on the gospel and on outreach.  Each week will also bring a new E-Challenge (E for Evangelism) meant to progressively push us out of our comfort zones.  This week’s challenge was to create a Top 5 Prayer List, a list of the top five non-believing student friends to commit to pray for this semester.  By the end of the 8-week experience, students will be inviting these same five friends to read the Bible with them!

God blessed us with an overwhelming turnout in our first meeting — Eighteen students, with both genders well-represented.  Nearly every one of them told me their interest in Joshua Team comes primarily from a desire to see their friends know Christ.  If anything would excite a full-time campus ministry leader, it’s hearing eighteen students share their heart to evangelize the campus!

We have an enemy who would love to starve these fast-growing believers.  Please pray that God would hold him at bay and protect these inspired young leaders.  Pray also that the other staff and I would have wisdom to lead and teach the gospel, that precious deposit entrusted to the believers of each generation.  Pray that J-Team would be united and that the students would make an eternal impact with their lives.

Funding update

We continue to be amazed at God’s provision in funding as we enter the home stretch of our time on staff.  As of today, because of a number of unexpected gifts in the last month, we are half-way to our funding goal of about $7,000.  Reaching that goal would mean a smooth transition off staff when our work is complete this fall.

I am thankful that in my four years on staff I have never needed an extended funding period off campus.  In a way it makes me look foolish for all my worrying about money during those years.

Matthew 5:25-33

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

²⁸ “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the Hills!  We hope you had a blessed celebration of the birth of our Savior, surrounded by those you love!

Our time with family has been so refreshing for us.  It is a wonderful grace to have this period of rest.

We hope you have a safe and happy New Years by God’s grace!