Stian's Ministry Newsletter

 

Friends, Outreach & Resurrection This past month was an extra special month! Not only did we celebrate Easter, but we had some of our friends from Campus Christian Fellowship in Washington state come and visit us for a week. We did a lot of evangelism and outreach on campus during their visit and had so much fun getting to host them.  Spring Outreach Week Every year we have the pleasure of hosting a handful of students from the Campus Christian Fellowship up in Washington state. They come down here to Texas on their spring break and spend the whole week learning how to outreach to people on campus and have conversations with them about Jesus. It just so happened that their visit fell on the week leading up to Easter, and so we planned our outreach events around the Holy Week.  On Monday we focused on the story of Jesus washing the disciples feet and offered to clean people's shoes in the main courtyard of UTD. The students got to share about the story that inspired the shoe cle

  February Flies By Another month of ministry  has quickly gone past and it was filled with a lot of neat experiences. It is hard to believe that the Spring semester is already half done and that our year will begin to wind down into the summer. A Night of Black Church This semester the black students of UTD Focus put on an event they called A Night of Black Church in honor of Black History Month. We got to experience some traditional and modern gospel music as well as a sermon that echoed the style of black pastors in the 1960s. The event was packed full of our students from all over DFW campuses and people from our church families. Pizza Theology Another exciting event from this past month was our second Pizza Theology of the year. I believe I've mentioned this event before but it's an awesome experience for our students to come and learn more about the bible for a couple hours and eat pizza with students from other campuses. This year we talked about The Bible, shocking I kn

A NEW YEAR OF MINISTRY The new year has begun and I am very excited for another semester of ministry at UTD! Last year was full of fun memories and awesome conversations with students about life and faith. This year has already started with our annual Winter Retreat down in Glen Rose and UTDs Friday Night Fellowship meetings getting an exciting revamp! WINTER RETREAT This year we had the privilege of hosting Dr. Daniel Lee from Fuller Seminary at our Winter Retreat. The theme for all the talks revolved around God's radical grace. Dr. Lee gave some wonderful talks about God's love and grace for us that I think really spoke to many of our students and staff. I had wonderful conversations with students about the talks and heard so much awesome feedback. I think the topic of grace was a great one for our community to dive deep into this year and I can't wait to see the fruit of those conversations. Despite the cold weather and snowfall, our students had a wonderful time weekend

THE SEMESTERS END The first semester of the 2023-2024 year has come to an end, and what a fun semester it has been! As our students prepared themselves for finals and the end of their semester, I was delighted to get to spend another holiday season serving the students at UTD.  The Polar Express This year's Christmas party was such a blast! Our theme for our party this year was the iconic Polar Express. We had so much fun decorating the church to look like the train station and the train itself. I was given the honor of playing the role of the train conductor and dawned on my best impression of Tom Hanks. While these events are super fun, it is always a great reminder that these parties make memories for our students and really help them connect with each other. Deerfield Lights While this last month of ministry was short due to Christmas, was still a great opportunity to invite our students who stay in town to spend their holiday with their friends. I started taking students on a