Staff Training with COM

So, Brandon (the other Equip staff) and myself are up in Minneapolis from Wednesday until Saturday evening. We are joining Campus Outreach Minneapolis (COM) for their staff training. I spent the month of June with COM in South Carolina for their Summer Training Project, along with 6 Equippers. It was an amazing experience, and I learned a lot hanging around the COM staff guys and asking them questions, learning how they do things and why and whatnot.

Anyways, Paul offered to me to come join them for their staff training during this time now, and they were of course open for Brandon to come too, which is super great. We got here yesterday at 9:30am, and the day was great, talking through all the various stuff, and introducing Brando to all the guys, getting to know them and getting a good feel and understanding for how they do ministry.

Pray that our time would be beneficial, although the Lord has already blessed that to be the case, and pray that our relationships with the CO guys would grow.

Headed off for a weekend of leadership training, pray it would be prductive and refreshing, & the gospel would be centered in our ministry!

Student Leadership Training Weekend

This weekend, we have our leadership training weekend. It consists of a bunch of things, from going over Equip vision, teaching more about discipleship, Bible study training, evangelism training and a bunch more.

This is perhaps the most excited I've been for one of these weekend training times. I think part of the reason is because of the time we are planning to spend on reflecting on our vision and whether or not the events and activities we do actually fulfill the purposes God has placed before us.

For instance, we do several social events throughout the year. One common tendency of social events is for them to turn into nothing but fun and entertaining times with friends. Now, there is certainly nothing wrong with having fun with friends or being entertained in and of
themselves. However, it becomes so very easy for these events to become ends in themselves. The student have fun, and everybody has a little bit of social fellowship, all the while true outreach and mission mindedness is lost.

I could apply this to virtually anything, including large group meetings if we are not careful and intentional about how we do what we do. Therefore, we have a list of everything we do, and this weekend we are going to spend a couple of hours reflecting on each and every one of them, asking what purposes they have served, what purposes we think they should serve, and how we plan on going about making that happen.
As an encouragement, I was looking at our annual "Soiree" event, and noticed that about half of the girls that came were not involved in Equip, nor did I (personally) know them at all. That was exciting to me, seeing the outreach that the girls intentionally did. Pray that this would increase and the gospel would be spread through events like these. If not, pray the Lord would convict us to 'cut the fat', get rid of whatever we need to get rid of, and use the time differently.

We are doing a bunch more, including listening to a gospel message together from STP this summer, having the STP students share and reflect on their expereince this summer, serving us in what they learned and wanting to apply it to Equip ministry this year.

So, I'm excited for this weekend, we will be in Madison, SD, in a big house that Central Baptist let us use last year for a retreat...it worked super well.

Headed to aberdeen for about 18 hours...going to lake day with FBC tomorrow!

Last Bethel Intensive Week Ever

Most of you know, but I have been working my through seminary for the past three years, and I am now about 24 days from being totally and completely done...except for the next few years of loans I have to pay back, of course.

It is a bitter sweet feeling. I greatly look forward to having an extra 15-20 hours every week, and not having papers, projects and tests constantly hanging over my head. On the other hand, as I ended my last week, I realized just how much I have enjoyed and benefited from my Bethel education. There has been time where what I mainly concern myself with is the criticism and negative things that I have seen and experienced (such as not enough Church History classes, for instances). However, I was reminded by this last class by just how much I have indeed learned and benefited. I’ve gained incredibly valuable relationships with classmates and professors. I’ve grown a ton in the past three years of being stretched and challenged in my convictions, whether weak or strong. My last class was indeed very challenging, and not like how I expected it to be.

So, thanks to all who have prayed for me and to everyone that supports me, since seminary has been a large part of my life these past three years.

I don’t plan on moving or doing anything different than what I am currently doing, Equip! I get asked “what are you going to do now” quite often, which has been unexpected. I went into seminary with the intention of learning and growing myself, being better equipped to equip others, and by God’s grace, that is exactly the same plan today. This isn’t to say the Lord might not draw me elsewhere in the future potentially, but I love Equip and have a large conviction about what we are doing. It has been great, and now I’ll be even more time to devote to serving and equipping college students.

ps...the video has virtually nothing to do with this post, except that the school year IS indeed coming soon, something like 29 days left! We have a little timer on the website right now, which has been updated and renovated...I rebuilt it, made it stronger, faster than it was before (ala ‘The 60-million dollar Man’).