Camps, Fairs, and Halloween

Fall Camp

One of the events that we do every October is Fall Camp. We spend a weekend early in the semester devoted to God and one another. We have a speaker give a sermon, times of worship, and spend lots of time playing games and activities together. Fall Camp is often the event that brings people together and reflects what our community will be like for that school year. We have an incredibly fun, encouraging, thankful, and diverse community this year! At my first fall camp in 2010, I remember one of our speakers, Brianna Worsham, talking about befriending people. She said something to the effect of, "We want to be a community that goes out of their way to befriend other people. We should do anything we can to let other people know that we love them and that we want to be their friends." It's a simple idea, but she talked about it with such sincerity, and I knew that that was something I wanted to be a part of. I saw the same goal reflected at our Fall Camp this year. We had so many new student that I'd never seen before and I knew that was because of our students are going out of their way to befriend new people. I'm so thankful for all of our student leaders and the hard work that they do to spread the good news of Christ.

We talked about diversity in the body. We had several students share how they have seen God work in their own culture and upbringing. 

Leadership Conference

This past weekend we had a conference for all of our leaders within Focus and the churches that we are connected with. We had around 400 leaders come to discuss and reflect on the importance of scripture in ministry. We were reminded of some simple but challenging things, like memorizing scripture. For some of us who grew up in church, the last time we practiced memorizing scripture was in Sunday School. It's sad to say that we can often reference quotes from a movie or stats of a sports team faster than we can God's word. As disciples we should be ready to use God's word in our conversations with people.

Fun Things

I love my team so much! They are incredibly caring and the silliest and most fun group to work with. I'm so thankful for them and how much of blessing they are to me. 

Here's our team at the Texas State Fair. Also, the police, Big Tex's butt, and a photo-bomber.

For Halloween I decided to go as one of my team members, Ryan Reynolds (he's on the right). Ryan loves the Dallas Stars and Whataburger. So I dressed in what you find him wearing most days. 

Testimony

"I studied Music Ed at UNT with the dream of becoming a percussion instructor. I had been a Christian for as long as I could remember, but upon entering college I was closed-off to anything that would cost me time or energy apart from my career. I believed that putting up blinders and pursuing my degree was more important than serving a community.

I joined a Core and began studying the Bible with a close mentor.  Through these friendships my idols of success, control, and pride were laid bare. I was heartbroken to see that although I professed Jesus as LORD, my life as a Christian hardly reflected that same self-sacrificial love. I became a corefa in my 2nd year and learned that serving others isn’t something tacked onto our calling; it IS our calling.

This was revelatory for me.

Fast forward to 2016 as God led me into a career teaching elementary school. Every day I’m given the opportunity to die to myself and serve the emotional, relational, and academic needs of my students. God used my time spent in FOCUS to prepare me for a season I would have never seen coming. I’m so thankful for God bringing me closer to his heart through the ministry at UNT. I now volunteer as a 

bivocational minister at SMU. God is so good!"

Kurt Doty

FOCUS Alumnus

Music Education

Prayer

Please pray for Pizza Theology, a theological seminar that we invite students from every campus to attend. The theme this semester is "How to tell the big story of the Bible." please pray our students would get a vision of being lifelong students of the word and that they would grow in their ability to tell the story themselves.

There are several hundred one-on-one Bible studies is going on! Please pray that God would work powerfully in each one of them to bring redemption, restoration, and new life to those students.