Good morning friends and family! I don't know about y'all, but I'm so excited that fall is officially here. Well, it's about as close as it's gonna get for Florida anyway. Less humidity, cooler mornings and a refreshing breeze throughout the day really does make life a little more comfortable. Speaking of comfort, that leads us into this week's blog post. So, if you didn't let the title deter you from reading it, great job! I promise I will make your time worth it.
Every once in a while, I receive emails from Campus Ministry Today which feature encouraging stories with helpful tips about how we as a collegiate ministry can improve our methods of outreach. There have even been some interesting topics about what other ministries are doing to reach students during the pandemic. However, there was one story that was written earlier in the month that really caught my attention. The story is titled "3 Reasons It Feels Hard To Be Bold About Jesus" and written by Beau Crosetto, the director of Greek, InterVarsity in Los Angeles, California. This piece was originally published on June 17 on his website, beyondawkward.com, which is based on the title of his book, Beyond Awkward. The general basis of Crosetto's story is how we as followers of Christ sometimes have to break at least one of the three social norms in today's Western culture in order to share our faith for the sake of furthering His gospel. These social norms are:
So, maybe you're asking yourself, "How can I do that without being disruptive or pushy?" Believe me, I'm always asking myself that question as well and Crosetto has a great answer. He refers to the story of Philip and the Ethiopian in Acts 8:26-38. The Ethiopian is sitting in his chariot, reading the book of Isaiah when Philip approaches him and asks if he understands what he's reading. Philip just broke the first social norm of not talking to strangers, but was his approach pushy? Not at all. He simply asked a question. But it was bold. Yes, it might be uncomfortable or awkward when we randomly ask someone a question or start a conversation, but how that person responds will help us determine if the ball is in play for further conversation. "Bold people move forward when the door opens, and close the conversation down when the door is closed. They don't force a conversation on someone. Pushy people, on the other hand, move forward even when the door seems to be closed." (Crosetto) If a person responds with openness and curiosity, seize the moment. But if he or she seems disinterested or skeptical, let it go. This story truly resonates with what our CoMission staff do on a regular basis because interacting with people we don't know is literally a huge part of many of our job descriptions. It's not exactly part of mine, but I'm working on that, slowly but surely. If one of my coworkers goes walking on campus, I will volunteer to join them every once in a while for the sole purpose of getting uncomfortable if the opportunity arises. I might not have had near my fair share of awkward encounters compared to the rest of them yet and the truth is I often avoid those situations if at all possible. The fact of the matter is, I absolutely hate getting myself into uncomfortable and awkward social situations. But don't we all? We're going to have to get used to it though because that's just the reality of following Christ and being His disciples. After all, sharing the gospel isn't something God asks us to do. It's something He commands us to do. My prayer for all of us is that God will empower and embolden us with His grace and Holy Spirit so we can follow through with task every chance we get until the end of our lives.
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Well friends, it's another week which means it's time for another blog! I'll try to make this one a little shorter than the last several posts (no promises though) but that doesn't mean it's going to be any less important. In fact, I would say it's the second most important decision a new believer can make after surrendering their lives to Christ; baptism. Yes, baptism is a ritual but we in CoMission believe it to be more than just that. We believe that it publicly symbolizes a new believer's decision to follow Christ; a decision to die to their old life of sin and be born to a new life that honors God through the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said it best when he answered Nicodemus's question, "How can a man be born when he is old?..." Jesus answered, 'Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which so born of the Spirit is spirit.'" (John 3:4-6) When a student is ready to consider baptism (this usually happens after they have gone through a 6-week Seeker Study), we go through a document with him/her that covers all the bases of the subject. It's vital to make sure the student understands why (s)he is getting baptized and it's also beneficial to ensure the student is willing to commit to this new way of life in following Jesus wholeheartedly. Naturally, this includes getting out of their comfort zones to make disciples and bring more students to Christ. The baptism document that we take our students through covers the following statements.
Finally, document answers all the necessary "why," "who" and "when" questions, such as who can be baptized, why one should be baptized and when one can be baptized (we prefer as soon as possible because why not?). It also covers basic questions such as what should be worn for a baptism and what takes place during a baptism. I could include every nitty, gritty detail but for the sake of time, I'll just share a button that's linked to our document so you can indulge your curiosity if you so desire. Also, for the sake of credibility, the information provided on the last two documents were referenced out of a book titled, Saturate written by Jeff Vanderstelt who is a teaching pastor in Washington. I haven't read the book myself but it's on the list. While I believe this week's discussion was appropriate for following last week's post about making disciples, the main reason I wanted to share about baptism is because we currently have a student who is considering the cost of following Jesus. He has been going through a Seeker Study with one of our staff and student leaders and will soon be taken through the baptism document. How did he come to this point in his life? By witnessing the baptism of another student four weeks before classes started! This student's name is Gabby (pictured in the middle) and she had been seeking God for some time, even before ReLynn (pictured right) and I took her through a Seeker Study. One evening, we went through the baptism document with her and she immediately expressed a genuine excitement for taking this next step. Hours later, at our weekly beach gathering, we baptized her. Now, she's getting connected into a DNA group where she will learn how to make disciples herself. Seeing students who express a desire, not only to just accept Jesus as their Savior but to devotedly follow him by sharing the gospel with even more students, is such a joy and worth every ounce of personal, relational investment. "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you..." Matthew 28:19-20 Good afternoon friends and family! It's another week into the fall semester which means another week for sharing about CoMission. Today, I want to share with you another one of CoMission's core values which is being sent to the far. Of course, this sounds rather broad because I think this term could be interpreted several ways. When we mean "sent to the far," do we simply mean those who are far from Christ? Well yes. But we like to take it a step further and say we're sent to those who are not only far from Christ, but who might have never heard a word of the gospel before in their lives. These are what we call unreached people groups and they are spread all across the globe.
David Platt defines unreached people groups as "a people group [that] does not contain an indigenous community of evangelical Christians with adequate numbers and resources to spread the gospel within the people group." (Radical, 158) At the time this book was written in 2011, Platt recorded that more than five thousand groups, totaling approximately 1.5 billion people, across the world were unreached. Today, according to global statistics provided by the Joshua Project, there are 7,408 people groups, totaling approximately 3.23 billion people, have most likely never heard the gospel of Jesus even once. That's a 115.33% increase in just nine years! Note: this number includes multiple communities of one group spread across several countries. For example, the Sayyid (SAH-yeed) people group of South Asia occupies regions of six different countries; Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Let this settle in your mind for a minute as I once again quote David Platt from a story he shared in Radical: "One of my good friends spent time recently among unreached and unengaged peoples in Southeast Asia....One man went into his small shop and reappeared moments later with a classic red Coke can....A soft-drink company in Atlanta has done a better job getting brown sugar water to these people than the church of Jesus Christ has done in getting the gospel to them." (158-159) Ouch. Kind of makes me wonder, what do we need to do about that? Well, for starters, we can obey God's command to go to these people, no matter how uncomfortable or unprepared we are; no matter what the consequences and sacrifices might be. This is definitely easier said than done but that's what it's going to take. So why is being sent to the far one of CoMission's core values? Because we want to be a part in changing the world for Christ by taking His gospel where it's never been heard. This is one of our hugest and most urgent responsibilities as the church body. Yes, we might be located on just a few small college campuses in St. Petersburg, Florida, but the Lord only knows what could become of a couple college students who decide to surrender their lives to Christ and become equipped with sharing the gospel. Especially if they're international students who might go back to their home countries one day. Something else CoMission has been strongly devoted to is partnering with friends who have been serving in East Asia. In fact, there have been several years when we sent groups of college students and CoMission leaders over there for a chunk of time during the summer where they would learn to share the gospel with their fellow college students in a different part of the world. Stories from some of their experiences have truly been eye-opening and most of our staff are even looking forward to going back in the near future, only this time for a year or two instead of just a summer. And these are just some examples of hearts that the Holy Spirit can transformed for his work. After all, how amazing would it be if just 1 individual from each people group could come to a saving faith in Christ each year for the next 10 years? There could be 74,080 new followers of Christ; 10 individuals from each people group! That's a significantly smaller number than that of Coke cans if consumed by each of those people every day for year (27 million, 39 thousand and 200 to be exact), but it would be a huge step toward eternal progress. But that can only be if God's people, the church are willing to obey His command: "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations...." - Matthew 28:19a Well everyone, USFSP is nearly halfway through its second week of classes while SPC is almost halfway through it's third week. Our staff and student leaders survived 14 hours of virtual tabling (spanning four days in two weeks) which connected us with one student. Thankfully, we have managed to connect with a good deal more students than that though. Although the virtual tabling wasn't very successful, we have managed to get about ten additional gospel appointments (some in person, some on Zoom) through personally reaching out to students on social media. Gotta thank the universities for having multiple group pages where we were able to round up these students! The number of gospel appointments that we've managed to acquire over these first two weeks is only about 2.1% the 456 students we reached out to altogether but the positive aspect is that most of the few students we have connected with are eagerly searching for a community to get plugged in with and/or have a willingness to learn about the gospel of Jesus. For my study time over the last two weeks, I've been reading David Platt's Radical to reset my heart toward the importance of missions and to remind myself that the American Dream is not what God has created us for. Yesterday, as I read through the fifth chapter, I was also reminded of the most effective disciple-making method, which just so happens to be the method our CoMission staff have been implementing the last two weeks. Mainly because we didn't have any other available outreach options available due to COVID restrictions from the schools. Platt distinctly points out, "Disciple making is not a call for others to come to us to hear the gospel but a command for us to go to others to share the gospel." (94) Wow. I don't know about you, but I don't think I have never been more convicted of anything in my life. Being a major introvert (not to mention sometimes socially awkward), I'm not one for bringing up random conversations with random people I don't know. So of course, this trait has led to me obtaining this default setting in my mind that I can just wait for the extroverted people (who enjoy striking up conversation with strangers) to ask me about my life, faith, etc., which could potentially lead to gospel conversations. This is probably one of the biggest lies I've ever believed which, Lord only knows, has prevented me from sharing the gospel with so many people already. Waiting for people to come to me has most definitely been one of the biggest mistakes I've made in my life and it's going to take an extensive amount of boldness and grace from the Holy Spirit to enable me to correct this bad habit. Meanwhile, the CoMission staff are doing everything we can to make the most of the limited resources God has given us to reach the college students at USFSP and SPC this semester. And although these outlets have not felt super productive or seem radically beneficial right now, we can only trust that the Lord knows what He's doing. Heck, if it wasn't for COVID, we would have normally been waiting for students to come to our information table rather than going to the students ourselves (even though the means of doing so through "spamming" on social media oftentimes appears shady). But again, the Lord knows what He's doing and whatever it is, I'm confident that He will bring more students into the fold than ever before. The fall semester is back in full swing as classes started back up at the University of South Florida St. Pete campus this week. For St. Petersburg College, classes have been back in full swing now for two weeks. However, this semester is looking significantly different than normal as college campuses across the globe are making adjustments to safely implement their education systems during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the USFSP campus, classes are being held both in-person and online. Masks must be worn inside at all times, resident students are back in the dorms at 50% capacity and the library has reduced hours. Only students and faculty will be allowed inside campus buildings so IDs must be kept handy. At the SPC campus, most classes are being held online with a portion of them being in-person and masks must be worn inside at all times. Student services will be limited and campus hours will be shortened. Of course, open campuses do not necessarily mean all social amenities will be as easily accessible. For USFSP, all clubs are currently not allowed to host any group events on campus, which especially creates some tricky obstacles for CoMission. While we are hosting virtual tabling events two days a week for these first two weeks of the semester through Microsoft Teams, connecting with students through this outlet hasn't been the most productive. However, our staff are doing everything else possible to reach out to students through social media and instead of waiting for them to come to us, we have implemented the method of going to them by directly contacting each student individually through private instant messages on Facebook and Instagram. How have we found them? By searching every campus's social media group page in existence. The results of this and one connection through the first week of tabling have resulted in a handful of gospel appointments so far. After all, Jesus didn't wait for his disciples to find him. He found them, invited them to join him and they "immediately left...and followed Him." (Matthew 4:20 & 22) Now, whether any students respond and express an interest, or better yet a desire, to join in Christ's mission with us is fully up to the power of the Holy Spirit but we're trusting that He's going to do a great work this semester, even if it's just through a few. Good morning friends and family and happy weekend!
We're going to wrap up this two-part series with a short discussion about the fifth point from Gulf Coast Community Church's Sunday morning sermon on August 16 and how it relates to CoMission's value for unity with the local church. This fifth point, titled "The Church is Self-Sacrificial (Not Self-Serving)" once again emphasizes the importance of community within the church body, as followers of Christ are expected to be selfless with each other. Verse 45 in Acts 2 says, "...and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need." People in the church, the body of Christ, are said to be willingly sacrificial of their goods, everything from food to finances. Pastor Peter even mentioned the necessity of sacrificing one's time for the sake of serving his/her fellow believers. If we are truly in God's family, his Spirit naturally fills us with a generosity and eagerness to serve His people however that may be and that is something CoMission focuses on, especially our staff team. All during the school year, our staff spend tireless hours, sacrificing their time by investing in the lives of students on the college campus, building relationships and equipping disciples for the kingdom. We're also quick to open up our homes for social gatherings and many of those who attend eagerly serve by helping provide food. Other times, some of us give of our time and money by offering car rides for those who don't have reliable transportation to church, school or work. Each of us have different gifts and resources that the Lord has blessed us with, therefore we are called to give back portions to Him by serving those within (and even outside of) the church body. Hello friends and family and welcome to Week 3 (Part 1) of CoMission’s blog! As I mentioned last week, I’d intended going into this series with three parts spanning three consecutive days. However, due to some time constraints and after reorganizing the plan, I decided to reduce the series to two parts and am super excited to share these with y’all. The sermon at Gulf Coast Community Church on Sunday, August 16, was about the church body, which just so happens to connect with my topic for this week: CoMission’s value for unity with the local church. Call it coincidence or whatever, but I believe it was the Lord’s way of helping me prepare for this blog post. Pastor Peter presented seven key points in his sermon, referencing Acts 2:40-47, about the characteristics a biblical church should have. The fourth and fifth points especially seemed to hit home for why CoMission values unity with the local church body. The fourth point in the sermon, titled “The Church is Communal (Not Individualistic)” emphasized the importance of community and how it is NOT an optional extra. In fact, Peter made the blunt and honest yet loving statement that just attending church once or twice a month is NOT ENOUGH. People within the church body need to be constantly spending time with each other outside of the physical building. The necessity of this is for the sake of holding each other accountable in our walk with Christ, as well as being able to support and care for each other when the trials of life strike. Personal life-on-life relationships between fellow believers is literally required of those within the church body to maintain a healthy status. Something that I personally found encouraging in this point was the scripture reference, verse 44 of Acts 2. “Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common...” I seriously doubt this is talking about hobbies, leisure activities and personalities. Because trust me, if that was the case, I probably wouldn’t be hanging around my fellow staff members. I wouldn’t even be employed with CoMission! If anything, most of our personalities clash and some of them even get under my skin at times. What we as believers should all have in common is the desire to build each other up in Christ. Stay tuned for Part 2 on Saturday! Welcome back to our second week of the new CoMission blog! As the fall semester quickly approaches, I'm going to share a little more about what CoMission does as a team on a regular basis (albeit some of our ways for connecting with students will have to be modified due to COVID-19 restrictions). As I mentioned in the first blog post last week, CoMission greatly values community in addition to sharing the gospel of Christ and providing opportunity to follow Him wholeheartedly. So how do we do this exactly? How do we share the gospel and how do we do community? What does a normal week look like? Again, our version of "normal" will probably look significantly different because of the pandemic this semester but whatever happens, may God get all the glory. For our team, the first several weeks of the semester are extremely vital as the staff work tireless hours reaching out to new students. Once basic information has been collected (voluntarily from the students of course), our staff reach out to the students who have expressed an interest for more information about CoMission and set up one-on-one meetings called gospel appointments. This time is spent getting to know more about the students' life stories plus sharing our own stories and a brief yet detailed description of the gospel story. Once a gospel appointment has been completed, the students then get invited into the CoMission community through multiple weekly events (club meetings, house group Bible studies and Sunday church services). The fall semester of course is special because of our annual fall retreat, which is when we hope to make the most of building relationships with new students. Most importantly, they will get invited into one of two study groups. Either a DNA group or a seeker study group. DNA groups, which consists of 3-6 individuals each and are tailored specifically for students who follow Christ, are used to equip students with the necessary tools for becoming disciples. It is also a time for accountability and spiritual challenges as our leaders find creative ways to encourage their group members to get out of their comfort zones by sharing the gospel. For students who are not believers, we bring them in to groups called seeker studies, which last for about six weeks and usually consist of only two to three people (a seeker student and one or two leaders). This time frame is used to teach students about the gospel, the character of God, and who we are in light of what He did for us. The material used for this simply includes reading through either the book of Luke or John and going through some discussion questions. At the end of the study, students are given the opportunity to discuss what they've learned, which often determines if they decide to come to a saving faith in Christ. Based on their final response, they could potentially be brought into a discussion about baptism, get baptized and begin sharing the gospel themselves with even more people. Obviously I could go on and on but out of courtesy for your time, I will end this blog post here and pick back up next week when I tell you more about some of CoMission's greatest values and strategies. But don't worry, the next post won't be as long because I intend to break it up into a series of three consecutive posts. So stay tuned! And most of all, stay safe and healthy! Hello friends and family! I hope this blog post finds you well and safe from everything that has been going on in this crazy world for the last four and a half months. I'm also trusting that if you have navigated your way to this page and are reading this post, you must have at least heard of CoMission in some way or another. If not, you're in for a treat! Perhaps a friend or a friend of a friend told you about us. Or maybe you came across us on a social media page. Or better yet, you might have direct connections with us whether through a local church or through one of our staff members whom you support financially. Regardless of how you came to this page, I hope you will find this new blog informative and encouraging. CoMission has been on the University of South Florida St. Petersburg campus now for about nine years. As an officially recognized club by the school's administration faculty and student government, we at CoMission have an utmost desire for reaching college students with the gospel of Jesus Christ and teaching them to become disciples. While we enjoy on-campus activities and connecting with as many students as possible through social events, our number one priority is to invest our lives as best as we can into the few students who desire to have one-on-one relationships with us. The ultimate hope is to equip them with the knowledge and understanding of what it means to follow Christ wholeheartedly so they can in turn go out and share the gospel with their friends, classmates and roommates. Something else we strongly value is community and being on mission together as a team. In fact, that value is in our name: CoMission ("Co" - "Mission") simply means "together on mission." Our staff are nearing the end of a book we've been reading called Spiritual Multiplication in the Real World by Bob McNabb and in the last paragraph of the final chapter, the author emphasizes the importance of doing evangelism and going on mission with a group of people, rather than trying to be a lone ranger. "The Godhead lives in glorious community and functions as a redemptive team. As we abide in him and live and minister in community with each other, he will be with us always. He enables us to multiply his children in all nations" (221). If we work together, hold each other accountable, pick each other up when we fall, not only will we be better off, but we'll surely be more effective and fruitful in our ministry. "Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!" - Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 |
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