Trying New Things

This month has been one of experimentation - both for our ministry as a whole and for me as a minister - and I'm so excited to tell you guys all about it!

Torah & Tea

If there's one startling trend in our incoming students who grew up in the church, it's that year after year they seem to be less and less biblically literate. If we're not careful, we can rely on popular psychology and worldy wisdom to minister to one another instead of the words of life that God has given us to speak to one another! So what started out as the crazy idea to improve this by having our students read through the whole Bible in their four years at UTA became a very exciting development known as Torah & Tea, where every Friday, our students gather for two hours to read and discuss the first five books of the Old Testament. It's been so cool to see a substantial group of students consistently show up eager to learn and ask questions each week, which gives me hope that next semester we can tackle another section of Scripture alongside another food item - Prophets & Pastries, maybe?

Yes, I did make this super cute graphic. Yes, I was assisted heavily by the internet.

Exploring Exodus (Pizza Theology)

So Pizza Theology is probably old news to you at this point. As we do each semester, students from all of our campuses gathered at UTD this month for four hours of top-notch teaching and one hour of community-building over the highest quality of pizza dinners. This semester, however, was a little different, in that rather than having a guest speaker teach our students, we had our younger staff do the teaching, myself included! It was a sweet experience for me to teach alongside my co-ministers who I have gotten to see God shape over the years as he has shaped me, but beyond that, I was elated to see over 450 students from across our campuses come together to learn from the book of Exodus, a book often thought to have little value for us who are under a new covenant, but that has a lot to say about the kind of God we serve (one who pursues all peoples relentlessly) and the tremendous value he places on us!

This is the largest room available to be reserved at UTD and we packed it out!

Spring Showcase!

As we get ready to send our students to SICM to learn how to effectively lead their peers in their walks with Christ, we are also getting ready to raise money to make the trip possible! I would like to invite you to our annual Spring Showcase, where our largest collection of talent yet (I promise these people are actually incredibly talented and I'm not just saying this because I'm a nice Christian man) is ready to blow you away! All proceeds will go straight to helping equip our students to bring the Kingdom to their campuses, so please please consider coming!

Thank you all so much for your support of me and our ministry! I thank God continually that I get to be a part of his work in these students' lives because of you guys.

With love and gratitude,

Jalen