Merry Christmas

Well this Christmas break has been a much needed refresher for me. Although the traveling and buying gifts tends to wear us down, there is something about the day itself that is refreshing.

I hope you all had a wonderful day celebrating with your family, and you all remember the real reason for the season. I will leave this video from our last synergy, our Christmas gathering, for your enjoyment:

Graduation!

Well it has been an amazing ride, but my sixteen years of schooling has come to an end. This December I graduated with a degree in Political Science from the University of Kentucky.

While the degree is impressive and I spent thousands of dollars to get it in this world where a college degree is essentially necessary. However, I can confidently say my education in political science is not the most valuable thing I've learned.

While I had heard it said many times before I got to college that I would learn as much outside of the classroom as inside. I definitely found that to be true. There and while being at CSF, I have developed a special passion for Jesus, and that's far more valuable than any degree.

Now that I have graduated, I will be going back to campus to be a missionary on campus by working at CSF and pouring into the lives of students. Thank you all for your support during this and even before throughout my entire life. It has meant a lot.

Christmas Synergy

Last night we had our special Christmas Synergy--the last Synergy of the semester. It also happened to be the largest Synergy as 615 college students packed into the CSF building. It was a very different synergy, as we were joined by our Community Leaders--the older community people who come to CSF to help disciple leaders in our "Core Groups"--and showed them our appreciation. We also heard from the "Black Voices", a campus gospel choir that has become a mainstay in the CSF Christmas synergy.

Along with the wonderful Christmas music we heard, we were pleased to have Mike Breaux deliver a powerful message and sang by candlelight, as shown above. And I will leave you with this wonderful little clip (which we showed last night as well) from one of my favorite theologians about the true meaning of Christmas.

Gospel of Luke CSF Group

Today was the final meeting that my CSF group met to study the gospel of Luke. A CSF group (formally named growth groups) are basically small groups designed to learn more about God while getting students more plugged into the ministry. These are certainly the best way to meet people and get to known CSF'ers in a personal way.

This particular study was an in-depth look at the Gospel of Luke, led by myself and CSF leader Aaron Northcutt. We generally had about ten or so students who would come to discuss the two or three chapters we were studying for the week.

Luke is also the author of the sequel to his gospel, "Acts". The book is a very historical look at the "man" part of Jesus, while certainly not erasing his deity. It follows Jesus' teachings and focuses on the difficulty of following Christ. Reading Luke 9 was especially convicting for our group as we read the costs of following Christ. I encourage you all to study the gospel of Luke and follow the man who was also God.

Synergy

Every Thursday at about 8 PM, CSF hosts Synergy--its weekly worship service. On a normal week we will have nearly 500 college students join us as we worship and hear a sermon from one of the many teaching pastors we have at our disposal. CSF is blessed to hear from some of the top teaching pastors around including CSF campus pastors Brian Marshall, Jeremy Buchanon and Matt Dampier, along with others such as Southland Pastors Dan Hamel and Jon Weece, and Heartland Community (Chicago, IL) pastor Mike Breaux.

Normally, we begin the night with a time of worship (as seen in the video above), then the teaching, then more worship. Our most recent sermon series was called "The Elephant in the Church", in which we focused on major topics that can often be ignored by the church: Sex (Matt Dampier), Money (Dan Hamel), Doubt (Brian Marshall) and Suffering (Jeremy Buchanon). This was an amazing series and you can listen to the audio of these talks here or find "UK CSF Synergy Podcasts" on the iTunes store.