Stian's Ministry Newsletter

  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

  A Thankful Month November was another great month of getting to do ministry at UTD! As we get closer to the end of this semester, it has been so neat to get to look back to just a couple months ago and see how far our ministry has come. We have gotten to welcome in so many new students and had the chance to watch them create new relationships with each other and see their relationship with Jesus grow.  Pizza Theology Every semester we host an event called Pizza Theology. For two, two-hour sessions, our students get to engage with college-level theology topics. This past month we invited a world-renowned seminary professor, Ian Proven, to speak on his book "Cuckoos in Our Nest". The book talks about important topics surrounding what it means to be human and made in the image of God. It was so awesome to have such an intelligent man share his words of wisdom with all of our students across our campuses. Thank You I continue to reflect every month as I write these blogs on jus

  Flying Through October This month of ministry has already gone by so quickly. I can hardly believe that we only have a few weeks left until the end of the Fall 2023 semester. It continues to be extremely encouraging to see how God has been working through our ministry and through our students. Outreach You may be aware that this year we have been placing greater importance on our outreach events and evangelism. As part of the outreach team, I've gotten the chance to participate in some really neat opportunities to share the gospel with students at UTD. One of the most impactful events was one in which we cleaned student's shoes for free. We took our inspiration from the story of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples. We explained the story to students while washing their shoes and had really good conversations about what they thought about the story. Another event we put on was using AI to capture an image of heaven based on the descriptions of what students thought heaven

  THINGS COOL DOWN September was a really fun month of ministry and still very packed with lots of things to do! From yard signs to Fall Retreat and an exciting core, there was a lot to love about September.  The Sayings of Jesus This year we started a sermon series called, "Listening Carefully to Jesus". In this series, we would be taking the teachings of Jesus and talking about them with our students. One of the promotions behind this series was our Jesus saying yard signs. We selected 66 sayings from the Gospel of Matthew from Jesus and I designed and created 33 yard signs to post around campus. Our goal was to get the words of Jesus in front of people, and boy did we! They got a lot of attention, so much so that a large majority of them went missing a week after they were put out. Thankfully they were recovered! Fall Retreat Every year we host a 22-hour retreat for our students to take time to be with God and the larger community. This year we had over 120 students come a