Wrapping Up

Our semester is wrapidly ;) coming to a close; only two more weeks left! This week we have our last Thursday Night Fellowship until the new year and our Christmas party, and next week we hope our students will be studying and acing their finals!

We had a great month in November.

I saw lots of steady and consistent growth among our leaders as well as those they are studying the bible with and helping bring along in their faith.

We spent three weeks talking about dating with our community. Dating is such a big deal in college ministries. It can either make you or break you in a lot of ways. College kids want to and should be dating at this stage in their life. Unfortunately the world they live in gives them a terrible example of what that is and should look like, and sadly, the Christian culture hasn't given them much worth imitating either. What we tried to do in those three weeks is to first, get them to think and question their thoughts and ideas about dating and marriage; second to get them to see how we can pull principles for dating out of scripture and what those might look like applied; and lastly, to give some practical advice and wisdom on the topic. I think we were able to accomplish those things and to open the door for more discussion and accountability in that area. Hopefully we'll see lots of healthy dating happening the rest of this semester and next!

Brandon and I visited Colorado State University. We have a ministry contact up there who has been a dear friend to our family and now to our church. He recently started a church in Ft. Collins, Colorado, and reallyyyy wants to start a campus ministry up there. We went to see his church and the campus to look for how we can help. Unfortunately we don't have anyone we can just send up there yet, although we would love to! But we are going to help in any way we can. I think the college students they currently have are going to attend our Winter Camp, and then accompany us to our leadership training in Washington over the summer. We are hoping to help and support them in starting something! So be praying for CSU!

That's it for my November Update. God is good and is working! Please pray for our students going into their finals, pray for more leaders to step up and be developed, and pray for a healthy and safe break! And most importantly, praise God for how good he's been to us this year and for the spiritual growth going on at our campus!

Much love and thanks to all of you! God Bless

Bri

I'll try to remember to post some pictures from our Christmas party this coming Friday :)

One-On-One is How it's Done!

Doing God's work just never gets old. He is so good, and continues to blow me away with his good gifts, and amazing power. I have lots of great things to share with you from this past month.

The first thing is at the beginning of this month we added two new leaders on our girls' leader team. Ally and Esther. I told them at the beginning of the year that I would like to add them to our team at the semester point and gave them each a couple of challenges for this semester. Well, they both played a super key role in our beginning of the year outreach and I saw both of them really doing all of the things that I expect out of my leader team, so I didn't want to wait any longer! The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, and we have no time to waste! I am very excited about these two new workers joining us in the harvest at Collin College. You may remember me talking about Ally in my blogs throughout last year. I got the privileged of studying the bible with her, and it has been such a joy and blessing to me to see her grow so much in the Lord, and really become a woman of God. Same with Esther. Although I didn't get to study with her, I got to hear first-hand about her study with one of our student leaders from last year. Esther has been transformed, and taken on the mission of Christ. Here they are!

Esther is on the left, and Ally on the right

In thinking about them, and about this month, I really felt like the axiom we use, "One-on-one is how it's done" is fitting. We have been continually pushing to set up as many one-on-one bible studies as we can, and our girls and guys are doing great! We do that because we've found that's how lives are most changed. That's how these girls are where they are, that's how I am where I am...someone personally investing in our lives, and teaching us the good news of Jesus! It is so exciting to think that more disciples and leaders in the Kingdom are in the making right now! We have over 20 studies going on on our girls' side of the ministry, not to mention over 200 across all of our ministries. And there are still more in the making, we just had to order another shipment of studies!

Ally and I are studying with a girl who is new to our ministry this year, and who Ally went to high school with. She is loving it! She told me on Sunday she loves going to church and knowing what they're talking about because she has been studying them and reading them in the Word now. Hannah is studying with a girl who admittedly knows nothing about the bible, but is so excited to learn. Nicole got asked by an old friend back home to study the bible with her, just from seeing Nicole's life be changed. Sarah is studying with two girls from her work. I could go on with these cool studies and the good things God is doing in our midst.

That's our main focus right now, and I hope that you will join us in our excitement and in prayer over these.
God is truly truly good!

Much love,
Bri

Good Things Are Happening!

Wow! I am glad to report we had an awesome September!

Last weekend we had our annual Fall Camp. It was great! Our goal for that mini retreat is primarily to build relationships with new people and get them to feel a part of our ministry, and I feel we were very successful at this. This was a post on our Collin Focus Facebook page from a new guy who went to camp:

"To all the guys and gals at the fall camp I just want to say thank you! Ya'll really showed me a good time and inspired me to get more into the word and be a better person and a better Christian, I'm so thankful for ya'll being so inviting, I had a great time getting to know everyone, I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone better and growing together! Again I just want to thank ya'll so much!"

That is our goal for Fall Camp summed up, and I'm so proud of our student leaders and returners for doing a great job at including people and building those connections. Here are a few pics from the weekend:

Waiting to start worship

Playing a silly game

Taylor, Austin, and Gabe

Janell and Ally

There's more good news! Normally, we seem to have a huge amount of visitors our first two weeks, and then it slows down quite a bit after that. Not this year! Every week we have had a whole new slew of people coming in, checking out what this FOCUS deal is all about. Another norm that has been broken is the amount of people asking to study the bible with us. Our goal is to give everyone who walks in our doors the opportunity to study the bible one-on-one, and with that being our goal, we do most of the asking. This year, however, we have had quite a few new students asking for someone to study with them. That tells me God is really working in these people's hearts and minds!

God is so good! Keep praying for us, and for God's continued work on this campus. He is the ultimate determining factor. If He's involved, big things happen. If He's not, we can do all the same things, and nothing will happen. God changes hearts. What a blessing it is that he allows us to be a part of that!

Thanks for all your support, much love!
Brianna

The Craziest Time of Year!

August is by far our craziest time of the year. There's so much to get started, figure out, plan, make sure is done...the list is literally endless. But we are at the tail end of that, school is underway, and things are going great!

We had our Thursday Night Fellowship Kickoff this last Thursday night! It went so well. We had tons of visitors and new people interested in becoming a part of our ministries; I'd say probably around 80 people were there. Our leaders did a great job of meeting all of them and inviting them to come to Braums with us afterwards. It's always so neat to see who God brings our way, and to think that this person I just met could be helping lead our ministry next year! I'm excited to see what God does in these new peoples' lives. 

Thursday Night Fellowship Kickoff

Cores will also begin this week. Those are our small groups that meet during the week. We are proud to have three guys cores and three girl cores this year. Please, please keep these in your prayers this week and in the following weeks. These are the heart of our ministry; these are where lives are changed and hearts are turned to God. Pray God will bring people to us, pray that we will go out and meet the people who need him the most, and pray that God will work powerfully in people's lives for his kingdom!

I am so excited for what God is going to do this year, I hope you will join me in that excitement and pray pray pray! Thanks for your love and support; more updates to come! :)

Bri

A New School Year!

The time has come. We have had a great, fired up summer, and now it's time to get back to our campuses to do God's work. I should probably update you all that I am now officially on Focus staff. The internship was such a life-changing experience for me and I feel so blessed that I got that opportunity. More than ever I feel called to do campus ministry, and I am honored to get to do that along side such an incredible team. Thank you for all your love and support!

Anyway, t's coming up quick! We are going full throttle getting prepped for another school year. I am so excited!

We had our staff retreat a couple weekends ago and our Collin leader retreat last weekend. They both were so awesome. My favorite thing at our staff retreat was the last night. All 14 of us sat in a living room together and talked about what Jesus making everything new (Rev. 21:5) means for our ministry (as well as the rest of the last two chapter of Revelation). We named off a lot of things, but to give you a quick overview: it means we have SUCH good news to offer people, it means we have to have our hope set on our future in Christ, not this world, it means there is so much sadness ahead of people who don't know Christ, and we should be eager to reveal him to them, it means there will be no more sadness, no more pain, it means everything EVERYTHING is going to made new. We get to be made new, and I believe God is in the process of doing that already, and that we get to play a small role in bringing that newness to other people. After that we all stood together and sang "Shout Unto God" by Hillsong. We belted it out together, "The enemy has been defeated and death couldn't hold you down, we're gonna lift our voice in victory, we're gonna make your praises loud" over and over, and then, "Shout unto God with a voice of triumph, shout unto God with a voice of praise. Shout unto God with a voice of triumph, we lift your name up, we lift your name up!"

That's the encouragement, hope, and excitement I have going into this school year. The enemy HAS been defeated, we can lift our voice in VICTORY, he deserves that we make his praises LOUD.

We did that same activity with our Collin leader team. And we literally just started shouted during that song. I hope you are so encouraged by this. We are going to claim Christ's victory on our campus this year, we are going to claim Christ's victory in people's lives. We're going to make his praises loud. Christ is making everything new! Be excited, and pray for his work on our campus!

Here's picture from our Collin leader retreat. We've got 12 guys and 12 girls!

Much love!
Brianna

May Update!

Well school came to a close a few weeks ago, and summer is well underway. In closing out the school year we always do a banquet to celebrate and wrap everything up. This is a time for us to have a meal together, recap the things we did during the year, and honor our student leaders. Our banquet went awesome, here are a few pictures:

Also in May, our ministries sent over 50 students to Bellingham, Washington for SICM (Student Institute of Campus Ministry). I was privileged to get to go this after my freshman year of college and it is an amazing experience. Our students spend a week learning more about campus ministry, gaining ministry skills and tools to come back and use on their campus. It is also a great time of growth spiritually for the individual. Here are some pictures for SICM this year:

These are the girls we sent from Collin, maybe not so promising :)

Just kidding, they're super neat, and spiritual girls!

The whole crew!

And perhaps the most exciting thing for me since I last posted, was getting to baptize Ally! I've been studying the bible with Ally for the last 6 or 7 months, and she recently decided to give her life to the Lord! Praise God!! She grew up in the church, somewhat. She went to a Vietnamese church with her family but didn't understand the language so never really knew what they were talking about. Since she began coming to Focus last summer, she started to seek Jesus for the first time in her life. She's decided there's no other way worth living than for Jesus, and she's become a disciple!

God is so good! What a joy to get to be a part of what he's doing!!

Continue to keep us in your prayers! We have our School of Ministry going on throughout the whole summer, as we will be listening to a graduate level course on the New Testament through Regent College in Canada. Many of our students are participating in this, and it is proving to be really beneficial already. We are also combining all of our four campuses for our weekly Focus meetings over the summer. Our theme is "Fired Up," and it has been so fun and refreshing getting to worship God with everyone together.

Much love and thanks to you all!!
Brianna

April Update

As I look back over this month I am very encouraged. Our school year is coming to a close, as next week is exam week for our students, but it has been neat to reflect over the last nine months and see the growth that has occurred. On the girl's side of the ministry seven out of our eight student leaders were brand new to this role. As an eighteen or nineteen year old, and really your first time regardless of your age, trying to lead people to Jesus is intimidating and scary to say the least. All of those girls, despite their fears, have jumped in and let God use them this year. They've reached out and befriended new students, they've studied scripture with people one on one, and they've planned and lead a small group! I am super proud of them. They've taken all my challenges for them very well, while challenging me at the same time. I'm most proud of how they've chosen to make their lives about other people. They work hard, they put in a lot of hours, and a lot of emotional as well as physical energy; and it has not gone without impact. They have risen up new leaders for next year, and continue to teach and move others along. Four of our girls are going to be sticking around for next year, and we're taking four more to leadership training this summer, so it's looking like we'll have another awesome set of leaders, and another great year of growth!

We had another girl get baptized this month! It was soooo neat. Nicole, a girl new to our ministry this year was baptized by Cierra, one of our student leaders who has spent time a lot of time studying the bible with her and really teaching her the cost of discipleship. Cierra cried through most of it, and it was so touching to me. It was clear that she had a deep love for this girl, and that she was overflowing with joy that she was making Jesus Lord of her life. That's what it's all about! Nicole recently started studying with her mom, teaching her the same things Cierra has taught her. That's our vision, that those who have been taught go back out to teach! I hope you're as encouraged by that as I am.

Nicole's Baptism

Another thing from this month was our annual event Help Us Help the Homeless. Every year we build a box house and man it for 24 hours, trying to raise money and supplies for the Samaritan Inn. We also do this to have a presence on campus and give us an opportunity to meet new students and possibly strike meaningful conversation. I thought it was our best year yet!

Our box house this year, and the famous Ally :) I'm studying the bible with her right now.

Intern class has been great this last month as well. One of my assignments was to write a sermon over the book of Philippians. I was supposed to pick out three important points that encompass most of the book. It was really cool to me to see what I've learned thus far in class come into practice. It was clear to me that not only have I learned a lot of scripture and its meaning but I've also learned a lot about how to read scripture and connect it with other scriptures to find the real meaning. I've always loved Philippians, and read the book and pieces of the book a lot through the years; but I have never understood it as much as I do now, and I love it even more! The Word is so neat, guys. It is truly amazing and something to be loved and cherished. I pray that you will grow in your love and desire for it, and in turn, your understanding and love for Jesus. The pursuit of scriptural knowledge should always be to understand Jesus better. If it doesn't lead you to Jesus then you've missed it. Jesus says in John 5:39-40, "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life." As we've heard over and over in our class, "Continue to exact your view of Jesus." For out of Jesus should all of our beliefs flow; beliefs about life, ourselves, others, God, scripture, all should be constructed out of our understanding of Jesus.

Please continue to pray for our ministry. Pray for the studies that are still going on and that will continue through the summer. I have two that I am doing right now, one that I am close to finishing and one I am just beginning. Pray for those, pray that summer will be a time of great growth for our students and not a time of regression, and pray for our summer Focus meetings. All of our campuses will be meeting together over the summer rather than separately like during the school year; it's gonna be awesome!

God bless, much thanks, and much love!

Bri

March Update

Another month of God being good! This whole semester our ministry has been going through a simple sermon series on what it takes to follow Jesus. Specifically this month we've talked a lot about vision, and taking on the vision of Christ, both in view of the future and just in how we see things day to day. I feel our students have had a good response to these lessons and are striving to take on Christ's vision more and more.

Last week we had a baptism within our ministry! One of our student leaders had been studying scripture with this girl from the beginning of the year. At one point during their study, the girl ended up walking away from the study because she wasn't ready or willing to give up some of the things she would have to in order to follow Christ. Through a lot of prayer and continuing to speak truth into the girl's life, she came back to the ministry, finished the study, and decided to give her life to the Lord! How exciting! She is now seeking to study with other people and point them to the new hope and truth she has found! Good things are happening and students are making powerful decisions for the Lord. Keep praying for His work in our ministry.

Now I'll leave you with an encouragement, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians, we no longer regard anyone from a worldly point of view. In order to follow Christ our view point must change. Seek to see the world as Christ does! Seek to see your future as Christ does. Christ shouldn't fit into your vision, you're vision should be His vision.

God bless, thanks for all your support, and love you all!!

-Bri

February Update

Sorry I never have a really clever title. Our staff was making fun of each other the other day because we realized that we all always start our blogs talking about how fast time has gone by and that it's a new month already, and so on and so forth. You'll notice they all managed to not do that this time.

Anyway, my oh my how time does fly! I can't believe it's March already. :) February went great. It was a significant month in our ministry because this is when we spend a lot of time thinking about leadership for next year, as crazy as that may seem. One of our main forms of training for our leaders is sending them to a conference in Washington State called SICM (Student Institute of Campus Ministry). It's a week long training on how to do campus ministry. This isn't just fun and games either, you're in class for about 8 hours a day. It's intense, but it's awesome, and extremely helpful. I remember going after my freshman year at Collin and how impactful it was on my life and ministry. As God continues to bless us, we have taken more and more students this year. I heard we invited over 60 students! And these are students that are serious about God and who we see as being able to lead in our ministries next year. That's a lot of people and so exciting to think about how many lives can be effected through that many people, and the people we took last year, and the year before, and so on. Catch the vision guys, God is working on college campuses to change the world. I've seen so many people's world radically changed already.

The new potential interns have also turned in their applications, as of yesterday. Interviews will be going on this week to decide who those people will be. I'm excited for them. I know I've said this before, and I'm sure I will say it again on this blog, but the internship has changed my life. I have learned so much, I have grown in  my abilities, and capacities, and my love for God and people. I have had changes in my perspective, attitude, and heart. It hasn't been easy, and when some things get easier, there are new challenges around the corner, but I can honestly say it has been one of the greatest blessings of my life. I am honored and privileged to get to work alongside such Godly people. I want you guys to know that the people I work with are the most committed, most faithful, most in love with God, and most eager to do His will people you'll find. And they love college students, and have a passion for them to know the Lord. That's who I've been learning from all year.

Great things are happening, keep praying. A lot of our one on one studies are starting to get to the last few lessons. That's where the rubber meets the road, people decide to be a disciple of Jesus or not. PRAY, PRAY, PRAY for these. Pray for us and our student leaders that we can do a good job teaching these lessons, and pray that God will work on these people's hearts and in their lives, and that more and more will be added to His kingdom to join us in reaching others! This is a very exciting time in our ministry and where we see a lot of the fruit of our years work. God is good and He is faithful. I love you guys and am blessed to get to work alongside you for the Lord.

Thank you and God bless,
Bri

January Update

Well the semester is well underway and going great! We have had lots of visitors at FOCUS as well as our small groups. God is bringing people our way, and raising more people up from among us! As I talked about in my last blog, spring is a time for change and the emergence of new leaders. How exciting! We have a number of girls stepping up and trying to do more for the kingdom than they’ve ever done before. Pray for them, that they will continue on and that we can be a great support and encouragement in helping them continue to grow.

One of the girls I get to study the bible with told me this week that she was explaining our study to her dad and why she does it. I think the idea was pretty foreign to him. She said that she told him, “You don’t understand, I get to do this with someone else when I’m done.” That was what she was most excited about. An eighteen year old is investing heavily in her own walk with God, so that she can then invest heavily in others. She also said she is excited to move out and closer to the school so that she will have a place to bring people in who maybe don’t have a good home situation and help them, and give them a place where they feel loved and cared about. That doesn’t really sound like a typical eighteen year old to me.

This is a picture from winter camp, that's her in the middle :)

I would like to finish with some things we've been discussing in our intern class that will hopefully be an encouragement to you. This is an excerpt from the last paper I had to write for class. We've been talking about what it means to be saved by faith. 

"What is it that we are to have faith in though? Faith in God: faith that He’s the deal and that He’s got everything taken care of. This means we don’t try to earn our salvation. When we start thinking we can attain our salvation by what we do, we are no longer living by faith. We have shifted faith in God to faith in ourselves, and about this Paul says “You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.” We are to have faith that Christ can and has atoned for our sin for the sake of our salvation, and that we could never attain such a thing by our own efforts. Faith like this, if it is true faith, will inevitably produce complete devotion to Christ, which is ultimately what God really wants from us; not a list of laws kept, but a life surrendered to Him brought about by our faith."

It's pretty simple. Be devoted to God. God's not looking for people who do everything perfect, who keep all the "laws," and do what "good" people do. God wants to look at you and see that you are crazy for Him and that you trust Him completely. And this isn't a cop out for not being obedient, this gives us reason to be even more obedient!"What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?" (Romans 6:1-2).

Be crazy about God, He's so crazy about you!

Much love and thanks,

Bri

A New Year and a New Semester!

Well are winter break is coming to a close. This weekend we go to our annual winter camp and the students will start school on Tuesday. I think the break has been good for our ministry. I know for me, getting to spend more time with friends and family was very refreshing and rejuvenating. Having had that time, and just getting back from our FOCUS staff retreat, I am geared up and super excited to start another semester.

Fall semester is always a neat time in ministry: lots of new people come in, it's exciting to see people start to change their lives and begin to live for Jesus, and we get to watch our cores go from strangers to a close knit group of people encouraging each other in their walk and close, deep relationships. Those things don't only happen in Fall semester but those, to me, characterize the first half of our year.

Spring semester, I think, is even more exciting. This is where a lot of people turn a corner in their lives. You see people on the fringe become core members, you see people who have been in our ministry start to think as leaders rather than members, they begin to look for ways to serve others rather than look out for themselves, those who have been so heavily invested in begin to invest in others. People start to step up, people make big decisions, and people get more focused on the Kingdom. I think this probably happens for a number of reasons but the two that stand out to me are, one, winter camp, and two, we begin to challenge people on some of these things.

Winter camp is truly a turning point for a lot of people. It was turning point for myself. My first semester at Collin in 2007 was kinda difficult for me. It was hard leaving high school and everything I knew there and start over basically. But at winter camp that year I deepened so many friendships, and began a friendship with the girl who was my maid of honor. Winter camp is designed to facilitate relationships, and to encourage and create a spring board for people in their walk, and God comes through every year. I hear all the time people saying things like, winter camp is why they stuck around, winter camp changed their life, etc.

And spring semester is a time of challenging. People have usually been around awhile and have become comfortable, and that means it's time to become uncomfortable :). We don't ever want to be a group of comfortable people. Comfortable people don't grow. We have a vision for the future, for having a campus ministry on every campus in the metroplex, of having a church near every campus in the metroplex, and ultimately of making and maturing as many disciples as possible. That's disciples, not mediocre, comfortable "Christians." Maybe that sounds harsh, but we've been put here for a mission, and we owe it to our awesome Lord to give it all we got. If we are going to do these things, then we have to raise up leaders. And spring semester is time to look for and develop the people who will lead our ministry next year and the people who will be able to step up and take on the vision as their own.

So those are our thoughts going into this weekend and into the Spring semester. Gosh, God has been so good to us, over and over again. We have had such a smooth and fruitful first semester, now it's time for the rubber to meet the road. This is the time for some big decisions in these students' lives. So please be in prayer for them. Pray for winter camp, that God would do big things in people's lives, that He would work through our leaders, and that His Spirit would be with us. Pray for the semester, that students will step up and rise to the challenge of really living for God and doing His work.

Thank you for your support in this work. I pray that you will be encouraged in your own faith, that this year will be a time of growth in your commitment and love for our great God, and that you will be blessed richly by Him and the great gifts that only He can give.

Much love,
Bri