A Window into weird

Just fyi, this is the kind of thing that happens when you work with college students.

I was talking the other day about ordering pizza for our debate viewing we did this past Monday night.  I was also thinking about eating popcorn, and said "we could eat popcorn...pizza [something, something]...".  Obviously, it was just a confused sentence, and I moved on.  But these two ladies (Hannah and Mary) took me literally, and brought some "popcorn pizza".

Masculinity is not* about guns

However...they are fun...

ManZilla, our fall Men's event, was the other weekend, the day after the relationships panel.  We went to my uncles and shot some guns for a couple hours, then spent a couple hours on other various competitions.  I spent and hour and a half teaching about pornography and related issues for men.  It is never a terribly comfortable topic, but it's a massively important and urgent one for men to talk about.

A couple of the guys spend some extra time smoking meat throughout the afternoon, then the guys all prepared the place and served all the ladies supper in the evening.   We played games until late into the night together.  It was a great (and full) day!

Relationships

We just finished our first annual"Relationships Panel", in which we had three married couples briefly share their dating-married experience, then do Q&A for nearly two hours. 

It went off with a bang, we packed the parlor (in the church) with 30-40 students, and the time was very clearly a helpful time.   We split off into guy/gal groups separately, the husbands sharing with one and the wives with the other, then switching the husband/wife location, speaking to the opposite gender.  It went really well, and has caused some continued serious discussion and exploration of what it means to "date", how marriage works, etc.

There are always* relationship questions in college aged' minds.   They have a perennial need for wisdom, for they don't start with very much in this area, no thanks for our cultural confusion surrounding man/woman and what God calls us to.

Best pictures I have:

The Christian & a Used Battering Ram

Would you consider becoming an Equip "Prayer Warrior"?  Battle axes sold separately, but you will be part of a "team" of ours that...

• receive short, irregular "prayer-flash" emails and/or texts (additional to regular newsletters and updates). 
• won't receive several of them a week or anything, but more often than current updates, and they'll come at urgent & opportune times!

The idea is to increase the size of our heavenly battering ram (Matt 11:12; Lk 18:1-8).  Would you considering grabbing hold & standing by to swing?

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If so, just move your "cursor" over these words here!

Thank you for considering!

One Year, 100 photos, 2 Minutes

I stumbled upon this little app that you can take a quick snapshot of a video/photo of every day and smash it together.  It's kinda cool, cause I thought "Why can't I use it for just ministry stuff and give people a super-fast snapshot of what we did this past year?"  Then I answered myself out-loud, "there's no reason why not." 

So, enjoy!

ps. The only catch is that this video doesn't* have everything, since I don't always take pictures of our Large Group meetings, for instance, among other things.  But, it's got lots (plus my kids).

The Beginning of Summer

Is "S".

There is a newsletter in the works and all sorts of other goodies in the pipeline in the coming weeks.  The spring semester was great in lots of ways.  Ministry seemed to be blessed by God these past few months.

But this post is merely a request for prayer for summer.  Summer is great in lots of ways, but one thing it is not* is as structured.  I could burn the calendar and still be able to cope if I wanted to...which isn't good.  It's not that there isn't lots to do (there is), but the urgency of lots of the normal things is less, and it's simply such a hard turn from school-year ministry where there's always students around to just a handful of students and everything else is done for a few weeks. 

So, please pray for me?  Pray that God would really grant discipline in investing in what I ought and pouring into what I ought. 

Thanks

Leadership Weekend

Starting tonight at 6:00, we have our annual 24-hour leadership recruitment weekend.   We spend some hours going over important theological and biblical distinctives, team building, mission/vision and the vehicle and means by which we mostly do ministry in Equip, both at SDSU and USD.

It's packed, and we hope that several new students decide to commit themselves to prioritizing being an Equip leader for 2018/19. 

Would you pray for us?  Ask for :

1. wisdom and clarity in teaching
2. that the Holy Spirit would make the gospel message first and foremost, and that He'd grant great conviction and urgency about it
3. that relationships would form and deepen between students
4. and that God would grant us the right leaders for this next school year.  

I'm eager for this time, it goes fast but it is pretty darn significant in forming the shape of our next year of ministry.

Thanks!

White-Hot Zeal, Lukewarm Laziness & the Urgency of Leadership

Happy new year!

We (Ratio Christi) had an event on Monday night called "Three Myths of the University: Truth, Tolerance and Diversity", and it went well.  ~50 students (and others) showed up, we had a good time of Q&A and a long conversation with some ladies that weren't on the same page.  (You can actually watch the event here, we live-streamed it.  The quality isn't great, but doable if you're interested, the event doesn't start until 10min in).

Tonight I'm preaching at Equip on Zeal for the Lord, titling the message "White-Hot Zeal, Lukewarm Laziness & the Urgency of Leadership".  Please pray for the Lord to move in powerful ways.  The* application of the message is inviting students to participate in our leadership recruitment weekend on February 2-3.  The leadership team each year is a pretty huge deal, determining a good amount of what we do and how it's done, so I would really appreciate prayer for tonight and for our leadership weekend.

Thanks!