Hi friends and family! Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you had a wonderful time with your loved ones. I feel so deeply thankful for each of you and your support to my ministry, and lately I've been so thankful for God's abundant grace for me. At our large group gathering, we did a four week series over God's grace, and the goal was to capture our theme for them this year, which is Grace upon Grace, but more importantly for our students to understand the depths of God's grace much more than what they have previously understood or been exposed to.
I'll share some takeaways from these grace sermons our ministry has done, and what stood out most to me. I'll also share the link in case you also want to give it a listen. (So far we only have one up, but more will be uploaded later): https://open.spotify.com/episode/57jEc1PqKOdY2oWDHTf0IL?si=3AoeUXPoTR-rI7nOvyoZyg
Here are some notes from the different sermons that really stuck with me:
"Grace means to delight in someone when they haven't been very delightful".
"God's grace is beyond just forgiveness, its gifting someone after they have wronged you, and in your heart you have complete delight for them."
"If everything is grace, you don't have to prove your worth. God has already displayed that in His demonstration of grace."
"People who are not deeply transformed are living like orphans (prodigal son)."
"We want to be gracious, yet we don't want to be the type of person others have to have grace for, but if we say "I don't need grace" its also a form of saying: "I don't need God".
As this sermon series went on, it became clear that God has been having me become more aware of how much I don't fully understand His grace for myself or others. God has been teaching me a lot about what it means to live in a deeper understanding of His grace for me. This has been hard for me to grow in for some time, but I feel like the spirit is freeing me to remember that its a gift to experience His transforming power at work in me little by little each day!
Thursday Night Fellowship! (TNF)
Its so easy to collect so many of these kinds of worship photos in my phone just because it makes me so full of joy! I wish I could share this in a video format, but just imagine in this photo that a majority of the students in this are jumping up and down and dancing with their friends and praising our Lord together!
I wanted to share with you just a few of the things that stand out to me of neat things that God has done in our ministry this semester:
-A group of our students creating "Mi Gente" which is a group within our denton FOCUS ministry for hispanic students to feel seen and to share their culture with our community through worship nights, dancing, bible studies etc.!
-One of our apprentices (interns) on our staff team, Casey has initiated a weekly prayer time at UNT for our student leaders to reconnect with God in the middle of their day to take a step back from their stress and give things over to God before moving on with their week.
-At TWU, a group of girls in our ministry lead a weekly reading of scripture outside in the middle of campus where others can join in on!
-Since I don't lead a small group this year, it has given me the opportunity to visit three different small groups frequently from girls that I mentor. This has given me the ability to know more students from our ministry and befriend them, but also to see our student leaders in action with leading their small groups, and seeing the thoughtful bible study plans they've made, as well as relational time to connect to the girls in their group. Every year I'm so amazed by the student leaders that God uses to bless many of our students. It's not necessarily easy to carve out so much time for many of them to commit to, but its so neat seeing their willingness to serve the kingdom in that way!
-I help lead a group specifically for those who aren't student leaders, called "returners" those who have been a part of our ministry for at least a year, who love God, but may not have the ability to lead for various reasons, but who still want to serve in some way. We have these challenges through prompts that we send out each week to encourage these students to open up conversations with those in their classes, with their professors, coworkers, or friends around them. We've gotten to hear some neat stories from them starting to be bold and become more intentional with people that they are around all the time, but not use to interacting with. This is the sort of ministry that is super encouraging because it will translate to their life long ministry as disciples in their future work places, with friends, families, etc when they are navigating adult life, and its exciting to me for them to already gain ministry tools to do this even before they graduate!
United worship night!
This was such a neat experience that occurred a few weeks ago. Our ministry was invited to join in on a multi-ministry worship night with 8 different campus ministries happening at UNT! Being united with so many other ministries was such an encouragement, and reminder that God is working powerfully in many areas outside of just our own ministry! What was most meaningful was that these ministries were all so diverse and filled roles that just one ministry couldn't possibly fill. There was a ministry specifically for nigerian students, and for Indian international students. The photo above is from the Indian international student ministry called: SWAGATH and the language of the song is Telugu from the southern region of India. The word Yesayya means "Jesus" and a majority of this song was getting to sing the word of Jesus in another language over and over in a public place on UNT campus, and it was so impactful to me!
What a beautiful picture of what a small slice of heaven will one day be like!
Hangout after the worship night!
A majority of these girls are from my small group last year. When a new school year starts, and when our students join new small groups with a new set of leaders, you never know how often you'll get to spend time with girls from the year before just because part of our ministry dynamic is getting to experience befriending several groups of people in our ministry, and not just the same people for four years. God has really blessed our group with getting more time to spend with one another more often than expected! I've been super grateful to have kept up with these girls and what God continues doing in their lives!
Soccer intramurals!
One our main ministry goals that I have probably mentioned many times is doing life together, not just showing up to weekly small group or large group, but spending time bringing others into your day to day life as well because thats where intentional friendship comes from. Various sports intramurals are a common thing among our students that they will do together, but what is more special to me is the amount of support that our students have for one another. A majority of this photo is not made up of the players, but those who came to support them from our ministry which is just so neat to me!
For their last playoff game, even more of us got to show up for them and cheer them on, and it was so sweet to be apart of! It's one thing for their peers to support them, but another for our entire staff team to be able to make it out to join our students in activities outside of our ministry norm events!
Pizza Theology!
This is an event we put on once a semester, with three hours of lecture material to grow our students in depth with their knowledge on God and his scriptures, and a one hour pizza break for fun and fellowship where we are combined with our entire focus ministry campuses, not just our Denton ministry. This time we got to ask Rikk Watts come back to share with our community over the book of John! Rikk is a theologian and professor at Regent college in Canada and he teaches a New Testament course that all of our staff members have taken when doing the apprenticeship our first year in ministry. It is deeply impactful getting to hear from someone who is not only knowledgeable but has a deep love for the words of God. Here are some things He shared with us that I wanted to share with each of you:
He gave background information as to the type of writing that the book of John is, John's life, and much about what greek people were like, what they believed, and how they would have received Jesus' words. Something that I love that Rikk does is share the original wording and what certain words mean in context.
Some quotes from him that stood out to me:
"Our job is to bring God's eternal life to others so that Christ shines through".
"The heart of the universe is not an idea, but a person. Theology is not ideas, but Jesus alone."
"Holiness is not about a set of rules, but is actually whether people feel like you've brought life to them after you've spent time with them."
"Do you have a big enough picture of who Jesus is?"
UNT fashion show!
Autumn (on the left) was a designer in a fashion show that UNT put on. Jenna (on the right) is one of our student leaders, and was her model for this show. I led small group with Jenna two years ago, and Autumn was in our small group, and were still good friends to this day. It's so neat getting to see the end result of the hard work that many of our students put into their majors, and UNT is especially neat because they have majors that you would least expect, but I've been able to meet so many students with such neat and creative interests that I get to ask about, and many of them want to use their skills for God's glory which is so neat!
Keep FOCUS growing!
We are still trying to fundraise for Keep Focus Growing! This fundraiser helps us continue our mission of making and maturing disciples to the glory of God on the college campuses of DFW! We have a handful of new campuses that we would like to plant on to reach new students that we have yet to, but that requires funding to do so! Please continue going to this link to read the testimonies, and consider donating if you are able!
Student Testimony!
Thank you all so very much for your generosity towards my ministry! I'm praying for a time of love and joy with your families, and loved ones on Thanksgiving!
Blessings & Peace,
Keanna
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