Why campus ministry?

CSF recently held its staff interest retreat. A retreat for those juniors and seniors who are interested in possibly coming on staff at CSF. We had around 50 who said they were interested, easily the biggest staff interest retreat in history.

While there, before we started with the questions: what do we do day to day at CSF? What is fundraising like? What are the hours life? Before those questions, we just wanted to tackle the question: "Why campus ministry?" What makes it so special.

Lexington is primarily a college town. And of the hundreds of churches in Lexington, only 3 have full time campus minister. Around 40,000 college students in the Lexington area and hardly anyone is reaching out to them full time. It is the most ministry-neglected people group, which is perhaps why it becomes the most in-need people group.

In addition to that, college students are at a rare time in their lives. A crossroads. Where they make decisions that will effect the rest of their lives. Working at CSF, we have usually 3-4 years with them then they are gone forever, having formed habits that will likely carry over for a lifetime. The question is, what kind of habits will they form?

At CSF, we have a saying, which is also the name of my blog: Change the Campus, Change the World. We have students at CSF from states all over the nation and from countries all over the world. If we make disciples here, those students go back to their homes in Lexington, or Western Kentucky, or Georgia, or New York, or Mexico, or China, or Thailand, or England or wherever they hail from, and begin to make disciples there.

If we radically invest in campus, we are investing in the world. That's why we want to invest in the students on campus.

Teaching Opportunity

I told you all that I have had some opportunities to begin teaching and preaching some. I want to share this with my supporters. Just click this link to watch one of my recent teaching jobs. This video was shown in our core groups to our 450 student leaders.

See video of my teaching here.

Dirty Laundry

Every two years, CSF hosts one of the coolest nights I have ever been a part of. It started two years ago, when a girl around CSF said she wanted to invite her friends, but they refused to come because they felt they didn't belong. Like they were too "bad". People in church had it all figured out. They didn't.

This began dirty laundry. We want to show everyone that Christians are not perfect. We are saved by a perfect God, but by no means perfect ourselves. And we all have our dirty laundry. So we just aired out our dirty laundry, and we had nearly 30 students share their stories of a stained past, brought together by God's redemption.

Before dirty laundry a couple weeks ago, CSF's largest Synergy ever was 615 people at the 2011 Christmas Synergy. Two weeks ago for dirty laundry, we had 771 people show up. It was incredible  During the night, we asked for people to anonymously air out their dirty laundry as well. Over 450 of them did, and each one got a personal video response from a staff member or community leader around CSF, leading to great stories and hopefully more of God redeeming a dirty past.

Core Group Update

My Core Group

Core group has always been one of my favorite parts of being a CSF Staff member. Being in a small discipleship group has been extremely instrumental in growing my own faith and I constantly see enormous changes in the lives of students, which is one reason why I have the greatest job in the world.

In this past year I have seen...

• a student being trapped in sexual sin only to be released. He now has aspirations of being a pastor. 
• a student decides this summer to really trust Jesus with his life and take this faith thing seriously. 
• a student joins core groups late and is already blown away at how much it has effected his faith to have true accountability. 

And this is in just my core group alone. There are many, many other stories that I could share, and of the 9 young men I have in my group, I have seen enormous changes in all of them, which is extremely encouraging. 

Core Group Curriculum 

One of my favorite "staff roles" is being able to help write the curriculum for core groups. This semester, we essentially wrote our own commentary on the first half of Acts and included accountability challenges, questions, text notes, bios, quotes and more. 

We have just begun to write the curriculum for the second half of Acts. We are ramping it up and want to even improve on what we did last year. This is very time consuming and stressful, as it is a ton of work and we are on a time schedule. 

Prayer Requests:

My core group, that the group will continue getting closer to each other so that they might be able to experience Christ. 

Core group curriculum team-- that the team will have wisdom and patience with each other and we will be Spirit led in the writing of curriculum. 

Water Balloon Fight

CSF has done it again. This past Friday, 11,622 people showed up on the Johnson Center field to to throw over 230,000 balloons to break a World Record for the World's Largest Water Balloon Fight. The fight is already being viewed around the nation, including on ABC's Good Morning America, ABC News.com, NBCnews.com, CNN iReport and many others. 

The fight is always one of the biggest things CSF does. We want to show people the joy of Christianity by simply having a good time as well as getting CSF's name out there. 

Please continue to pray for CSF by praying for those at the water balloon fight, that they will experience Jesus this year. 

2011-2012 Recap Video

This is a great video to give you an idea of what this past year was like at CSF. Enjoy!

K-Week

CSF Luau Party-2011 

It is already time to start planning for K-Week here around CSF. Many people ask me what exactly it is we do around the building during the summer--well, this is a big part of it. If you don't know what "K-Week" is, it is the first week of school for Freshman and a week where the University (as well as all of the Campus Organizations) throw huge events to attract Freshman. CSF has somewhat hijacked this week, normally being the main attraction.

In addition to throwing the World's Largest Water Balloon Fight (which will happen again this year, and we expect a much bigger turnout than last year), CSF will be throwing two huge parties (the Luau and The Rave). There is no doubt that thousands will come through CSF's doors this K-Week, so please begin to pray for CSF as we plan and prepare for this and for the students who will be impacted by this week.