Time to Decide Event

This post is mostly going to be about giving kudos to a group of young men in our church who decided that it was time to have a conversation about one of our biggest taboos: sexual immorality among men in the church. Over our LT program last summer, they were involved in a workshop that covered the topic and closely followed the book, Every Man's Battle.

About a month ago, I was approached by John, the student who would lead the effort, to see if I would like to be part of a Friday night event that would bring sexual immorality to light. I said I would love to. Thus began a crafting of what became "Time to Decide", an event that we pulled off last Friday.

Here is a description of the purpose we crafted:

"The Rock will be hosting an event specifically for guys to encourage open conversation on the issue of lust, to become more unified as a church against the issue, and to give us hope in our fight for purity. We want to bring the issue into the light and create an atmosphere of vulnerability and give people other men to talk to about the subject in the church."

As we crowded into the Fellowship Hall at a local church building and finished pizza, there was a feeling of nervousness yet a sense of comfort that I think was a testimony to the safe place for honesty that we try to push in The Rock. The topic of the night was on lust as it relates to pornography and masturbation. We had a series of brief presentations covering: God's standard of sexual purity, motivations for pursuing purity, personal testimonies and practical strategies for fleeing from sexual immorality. We had a time to break into smaller groups and share our personal battles for purity. Finally, I lead a group discussion on placing concrete safeguards to avoid vulnerable situations. I loved it.

Joining these four guys in an effort to begin this conversation in the church was something pretty special to be a part of. Please pray that it does not end there. Lust is the unspoken epidemic among men in the church and it has taken out so many. Pray that our guys would step up and put this sin to death. Pray that they would flee sexual immortality and pursue righteousness.

November Prayer Letter

Check it out if you haven't yet!

Behind the Scenes

The past three weeks, we have been doing a series at The Rock called "Behind the Scenes". Pastor Ed Courtney has lead the series which has gone through the core doctrines of Justification, Sanctification and Glorification. Deacon Garrett Naufel will finish our series while speaking on Adoption this Saturday.

Each week we've had our own little "Behind the Scenes" video, highlighting a certain aspect of The Rock. Thought I would share a couple with you.

Note: These are not to be taken seriously!

Rock Fall Retreat 2010

Did I mention we had our annual Fall Retreat a couple weeks ago? I'm pretty sure I threw that in the last prayer letter. This tradition continues to be one of my favorites that The Rock does. Each year, we venture out to Cedar Crest Camp in Mexico, Missouri for an overnight retreat. We prayed for 130 students to come this year - and they did. We had 134 total, setting a record in attendance. That was reason enough to be thankful!

On Friday, we began the retreat with a giant Thanksgiving-style meal hosted all in the same room. I got to sit and visit with students I didn't know very well, which I always love. After the meal, we have our first session of three in an old chapel that we fill to capacity. Our speaker, Dave Megill, was excellent, speaking right to the heart of our identity in Christ.

After that, we had Canvas Group competitions which included bobbing for apples, a scavenger hunt and a pumpkin carving contest. Oh, I almost forgot, there was also a speed-eating contest involving an entire head of lettuce. Fun stuff.

From there, we spent the rest of the night playing Ultimate Frisbee, sitting by the campfire and playing games.

Saturday involved breakfast, our second session and an hour of personal reflection. Here, students were encouraged to seek the Lord, journal, pray, and read His Word. After having lunch together, we finished the retreat with a third session and baptisms at the pond. Eight people were baptized on Saturday!

The retreat finishes off our Fall Push. From here, we staff help spear-head the shift into building the foundation in relationships that we have initiated thus far. Evangelism continues to be a priority but we are now encouraging our leaders to invest in students who have been coming around, as we start to initiate small groups and individual discipleship. Our canvas group has had over 30 different people join us on any given Thursday Night. We push now to develop unity and deepen the roots of community within these groups. Please be praying for that!

Here are some pictures from the retreat!

Praying with the students who were baptized

Our guest speaker, Dave Megill

Yes, an entire head of lettuce.

Seven to Wheneven

When I pitched this name to the equippers at our meeting, it was mostly a joke. In the past, when canvas groups have began a regular dorm hang-out night, called it "Eight to Late", but "wheneven" isn't even a real word. Maybe they were only humoring me (probably) but they went for it. And, since I write the emails, we have officially begun a weekly night in the dorms that we affectionately call, "Seven to Wheneven."

As my generic picture of MU students will show you, studying is an essential to college life. Something I've learned since I've been a campus missionary is that ministering to students does not equal just inviting them to church but that you have to meet them where they are. As Aimee and I began the year we knew that getting into the dorms on a regular basis had to be something that our group made a priority. In the past, our canvas group has struggled with dorm outreach, so in an effort to change this, we encouraged following up with freshmen who filled out an interest survey and initiated a regular time of getting in the dorms.

Seven to Wheneven is a new thing and thus is still developing an identity. It's a strange mix of a study night and a hang out night. Some nights have been almost stuffy as a dozen people stare at laptops and feel the pressure of the first round of tests. Other nights have been super relaxed as we turn on Monday Night Football, pass out some day-old pastries that Aimee took home from her coffee shop job and enjoy each other's company. We're learning and trying to find the balance of what the night will look like each week. Our purpose is for it to be a common gathering that meets the needs of the students we are reaching out to in the dorms: a regular time for study and fellowship. We'll get there.

So pray for us. Pray that when the unexpected hall meeting shows up we are okay with moving to another close-by study lounge. Pray that we aren't so involved with our laptops and notebooks that we forget to build relationships. Pray that we make it something inevitable. Pray that we continue to get out of our comfort zones as we do our best to reach out to these students. I know God will show us the fruit of our efforts but we must always labor in prayer together.

God bless,

Chris

New Prayer Letter

Just posted the latest prayer letter: Check it out!

The Rock Gets a Shout Out

In GCM's most recent newsletter, Connect, they featured our ministry at Mizzou. We have an article written by our very own, Brandon Hoops, and a devotional by Pastor John Drage. Check it out here!

Recovery Ministry

Emotional health and spiritual health are often linked and dependent upon one another. Sometimes we have a tendency to pretend otherwise. This can happen especially when we find signs of compulsive behavior, lasting depression, unnatural fears or other emotional instability. It can be easy to think that whoever is experiencing these things really needs to improve their relationship with the Lord. And that is probably an accurate assumption. However, it can become dangerous and people can really begin thinking that something is fundamentally wrong with them if they believe that emotional problems have solely a spiritual cause.

I've begun the first class in a Recovery Ministry series with a couple other male staff from The Rock entitled Making Peace with Your Past. We are being lead by a leader in a local church who has lead and trained others to lead this course about a dozen times already. Here is a description of the course:

"This is a Life recovery study that offers practical, biblically based teaching to lead adults to identify, understand, and come to terms with the feelings and problems of growing up in a dysfunctional family. This course will help adults who grew up in a home in which one of the family members had emotional needs so strong that they disrupted the development of healthy relationships. Participants will understand problems from the past and identify and remove emotional, psychological, and spiritual barriers to fellowship with God."

I'm hoping that not only will it help me to take an honest look at my own past but that it will be a great tool of insight to help get started with a recovery ministry within The Rock. Many of our staff women (including Aimee) took this class last school year and they have been greatly blessed by it.

Again, emotional and spiritual health are closely linked I believe. Having unresolved emotional pain can be a hindrance to connecting with the Lord with freedom. I'm already learning a lot and am grateful to be taking this course.

Please be praying

- That I will make the time to thoroughly go through our daily homework

- That those of us in the class will be open to what God has to show us.

- That in the future this can be used as a tool to help other men in our church to make peace with their past.

Men's Study

This summer the men in our church are going through a study by Erwin McManus called "Chasing Daylight". Fellow missionary/ staffer Chad Clooten is leading the 10-week study with roughly 12-15 other men who are around Columbia this summer. The focus of the study seems to be on embracing each moment as we follow the life of Jonathan. It should be a great tool to help us embrace where we are and ruthlessly follow God's plan for us.

We had a really good first night as we adjusted to this new type of ministry for The Rock. To my knowledge, we've never had a men's study that includes a DVD teaching and workbook, so it's kind of an experiment for us as well. As I looked around the room I realized that I knew all of the men there but I wasn't so sure that they knew each other very well. I'm looking forward to seeing relationships begin and deepen as we open up our dreams that God has put on our hearts to one another.

Please be praying for our times on Monday nights. I have a deep passion for the men of the church to rise up and take their role as spiritual leaders. Pray that we would begin our stride in following more intimately with the Lord and this will happen naturally.

Andrew & Kirstin Schulz

Two of Aimee and my dear friends, Andrew and Kirstin Schulz, have begun the support-raising trail. They came back from Staff Training in Orlando just a couple of days ago and are raising up a ministry team for GCM of their own. The Schulzs' are very good friends of ours and it

is exciting to see them take off on their own journey. It will be a challenging year for them but we believe God will be faithful and that he will bring in the funds necessary.

Andrew has been in charge of the Music Team for some time and also has been very involved in doing the finances of The Rock. He recently graduated with a Masters in Accountancy from MU. He has a heart to continue his work in the music and finance aspects of our church and is a true instrument of encouragement to me and the men in our church.

Kirstin just graduated from nursing school at MU and was an equipper for our Canvas Group this year. It's been awesome to see her pour into discipling women at The Rock as well as just serving the church in multiple areas. She and Aimee are good friends and are great at encouraging one another.

Please be praying for them! They will spend the first part of their journey here in Columbia, where Kirstin is from. After some time they plan on moving to the St Louis area to connect with people in Andrew's circle. Pray that God does some great work in them and through them during this time.

Summer Discussion Group

This is my latest reading material: Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem. I've been thinking a lot for the past couple of months about how important it is for us to have a solid foundation in our beliefs as Christians. I've also been thinking a lot about how much baggage the term "theology" can have with people who don't normally delve into it. This summer, I want to challenge the notion that studying theology should be left up to the pastors to teach us. I want to challenge the notion that the congregation comes only to be fed what they should believe.

In the context of a university atmosphere, especially, this seems very fitting. Students come here to learn about a given field and then go and make an impact in that field as a career. How much more important is it, then, to study our very outlook on life? How much more important is it to see what Scripture clearly says about the nature of Christ, the purpose of atonement and the Trinity?

So, this summer, along with two grad students from The Rock, I will be leading a weekly discussion group covering basic biblical doctrine. Our topics will include:

Authority of Scripture, God the Father, Man, Sin, Jesus as Fully Man and Fully God, Salvation, Holy Spirit, Justification, Sanctification and the role of the Church.

Our purpose is to spend some time teaching on these topics and then to address relevant questions that can allow us to let the Holy Spirit change us.

Why is this important for us to understand?

How does this affect our world view?

What challenges does our culture present us in this area?

How does this affect our relationship with God?

How does this affect our witness?

We don't want to build up knowledge. Knowledge, after all, puffs up. Love builds up. We don't want to create scholars necessarily but we want to empower these students to own their faith. We want them to dig through the Scriptures for answers to questions they have. We want them to question and to wrestle with their faith. We want them to be beacons of light where God has placed them.

And this, I pray, is simply an opportunity for us to let a right understand of God and his works absolutely change our lives, our campus, our community and our world. Please join me in praying that this discussion group can be a humble tool for God to continue transforming the lives of these students for his glory.

Reaching the LOST

Pun intended.

The Canvas Group I inherited back in October is a great group of students who are striving to grow in their relationship with the Lord but did not have a very strong dorm presence. At the beginning of each year, we pass out spiritual interest surveys and follow up with people who shared that they would like to find a church home. We got a little bit of fruit from those, but for the most part, we knew very few people who lived in the area that we have been trying to reach.

After being about a month in as a campus missionary, Aimee and I discovered that several people within our Canvas Group really, and I mean really, enjoy the show LOST. I also knew that the final season of LOST would begin this semester. I also knew that the Plaza dorm area has a commons area on the third floor with a big screen TV.

A solution to our lack of dorm presence was laid right before me: LOST watch parties in the dorms.

I pitched the idea to our equippers at the beginning of this semester and they were all for it. Soon after, we had a season premiere watch party. The first week we had only people from Canvas Group show up. The second week we had three people we didn't know come by and watch with us. Since beginning this Tuesday night trend, we are now outnumbered regularly by "others". Our party now hovers around 15-20 people each week.

It's been a great way to get our group to be more intentional with where and with whom they spend their time. Something as simple as watching a TV show can be an outreach tool if we let the Lord use it. Where our group once had little interest in meeting the people in the dorms, we now are used to spending time there and we are learning to pursue those people.

Please be praying for us:

• That we would continue to use the dorms as a place for evangelism.
• That we would build relationships with the students who are coming and that we would get to a point where we can share the gospel with them.
• That God would reveal to us other ways in which we can be intentional with our time.

Messy Conversations with God

Our latest series at The Rock began a couple of weeks ago. "Messy Conversations" is a five-parter that takes a look at the lives of a different Old Testament figure and their difficult conversations they had with God before they could cooperate with him. Particularly, we look at a question that God asks each of them that would change their lives.

Week One

Sarah: "Why are you laughing?"

Brandon Hoops opened the series by taking a look at Abraham's wife, Sarah, and her response when God's messenger told the old couple that God was following through with his promise to give them a child. Sarah is busted when she laughs aloud at the ridiculous notion that she could become pregnant. Her encounter with God would change her perspective on his faithfulness forever.

Week Two

Jacob: "What is your name?"

Pastor Ed Courtney told the story of one of the great fathers of our faith - and how much he lived up to his name, which meant "deceiver". Ed walked us through this tricksters constant attempts at deceiving his way to get what God had already promised to him at his birth. Finally, after wrestling with God all night, Jacob is asked "What is your name?", causing him to face his true identity before God would give him a new one, before he would become Israel.

Week Three

Moses: "What is in your hand?"

We've all heard the burning bush experience that Moses had while living in Midian as a shepherd. Perhaps the most famous character in the Bible (next to Jesus of course), Brandon Hoops shared with us what he calls the worst job interview ever. Moses had fled from Egypt after murdering a man and being called out on it from a fellow Hebrew. As he is doing his best to convince God that he is not worthy to lead his people to the Promised Land, Moses is finally asked what is in his hand. He is holding his shepherd's staff - his identity and security - and God is telling him essentially to throw it on the ground for something greater: his true purpose.

In our series, we are connecting what could be "Heard it a million times" Sunday School stories to a relevance seeking crowd of college students. We are showing students that yes, even the founders of our faith wrestled with earning their own path to success, with wondering who they really were and what their purpose was. Their encounters with God were not smooth like butter, but were real and raw as these stubborn men and women had to have their own hearts changed before they could truly cooperate with God. Just like us.

If you're interested, you can find messages from The Rock at http://www.columbiarock.com/wordpress/rock-talks.

Equipper Mini-Retreat

Yesterday, on MLK Jr day, while most students were moving back into town and getting settled back in to campus life, the student leaders and staff at The Rock took half a day to focus, plan and get excited for the new semester as well as commit it to prayer. One of our pastors, John, has a long-time friend in town who was willing to open up his home so that we could host a mini-retreat with the canvas group leadership teams, or "equippers" as we call them.

Having around 35 leaders there, we went from 10am - 3pm. First, John lead a teaching and discussion time following the question Why do we do what we do? In light of all the Christian resources out there and the nine other evangelical ministries on campus and several churches in Columbia, why does The Rock do what it does?

Some great answers I heard and some John shared include:

- Because less than 5% of undergrads at Mizzou enjoy a relationship with Christ

- Because people do not just need information and explanation about God's love. They need a demonstration of God's love.

- Because we don't know how many lives we affect by simply sharing our faith with friends. We may be the only Christians they encounter who love genuinely.

It was a great time to energize us and get us thinking about the purpose and urgency of the gospel on this campus.

Secondly, Ed, our second pastor, shared with the group about some changes coming to our Canvas Groups that will allow equippers to spend more time evangelizing to their friends, spending time in the dorms and growing in their faith together. There will be a team that is forming that will soon help plan some content for our Thursday night meetings to help relieve this burden from the students.

After lunch, John shared with us about the Number One Responsibility of a Minister - to be filled with the Lord. He encouraged us to keep our "pipeline" from God to us clear so that we, in turn, can pour out God's love, grace and truth to the people around us.

Ed and staff member, Peggy, shared some tools for evangelizing after that. The purpose here was for us to "equip" these leaders with some practical ways of sharing Christ with their friends. It's not always easy to clearly lay out the gospel in conversation so hopefully this method will help.

Finally, we were lead in discussion over setting goals for the new year. John and student leader, Austin, led this talk and gave us a sheet for looking at goals, purpose and plans for this year. As John said, "If you aim for nothing, you'll hit it every time."

This time of leadership development I believe will be a good thing for our church, especially by having it on the very eve of a new semester and year. I'm praying for my equippers, as I get ready for a meeting with them tonight, that they are encouraged and passionate about growing in their faith and reaching out to their friends on Christ's behalf. We are bringing the kingdom to Mizzou!

Please be praying for us:

• Two of our leaders are going to be elsewhere this semester. Brooke, who will be studying abroad in Costa Rica and Cruz, who will be back at Missouri Western until the Fall.
• With a new semester, that we would become more focused on reaching out to other students in our area on campus.
• That our Canvas Group would become even tighter and that friendships within the group would be uplifting and God-honoring.

**By the way, Aimee has a blog as well that you might be interested in following. I've added a link on the right. She also shares a bit more about Brooke and Cruz leaving in her latest post. Also, she is really good at updating it!