Desiring God Conference was GREAT!

I'll keep it brief...so in brief, the conference was amazing!

We had about 35 people there, all of them experiencing several hours of Rock solid, challenging teaching on mission and missions.

There are several stories that can be told, but since I committed to writing a blog entry today, I must make it quick so that I can actually get it done.

Therefore, I'll be done.

More soon!

Back in Brookings after a long and awesome conference weekend!

Just listened to Jeff Vandersilt on "missional communities"...wow, a must listen!

Almost on our Way!

We are less than 24-hours away from the Desiring God Conference Trip 2011!

This is our biggest year ever in terms of number of students going, with almost 35 people who will be rockin out in Minneapolis this weekend at the conference!

It has been way over due for me to post on my blog, so I hope this excites those of you who follow me and what is happening at Equip. There is SO MUCH to say about this year already, many new students, lots of fruit and exciting stories to share from events and various small groups, Bible studies and things happening in the lives of students being challenged by the gospel. I will have to wait, however, for I have alot to complete today for the trip tomorrow!

Pray for:

1) Our two caravan times, 7:30am and 1:00pm, that they would be good and safe, and the conversations would be edifying

2) that we would all grow closer, learn a lot, and grow hearts for missions!

Thanks so much, I hope to write some follow up blog posts soon!

ps. the picture is from our last year's trip....I'll upload the new one after the conference.

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.