Here are more pictures from CATALYST 2008!
Friday, May 30, 2008
Prayer Letter 12! - THE LAST ONE!
Yes, this July I'm finally leaving InterVarsity to explore music ministry elsewhere. Please read my prayer letter for more details!
Here are more pictures from CATALYST 2008!
Here are more pictures from CATALYST 2008!
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Early Year Updates!
So much has happened since the first of the year I haven't yet had a chance to update my blog and for that I apologize! Let me bring everyone up to speed fairly quickly:
MIZZOU
-we are stopping the AABS (Asian American Bible Study) as interest seems to have shifted and it seems more important to do one-on-one discipleship-style meetings with the students we are reaching out to vs. the large groups we had before
-WE HAD OUR FIRST NON-BELIEVER BECOME A CHRISTIAN!!! Please pray for Jay as he continues to grow closer to God and to learn more about what it means to be a believer and a follower of Christ.
-Asian Christian Fellowship is planning their first big outreach event geared for April 19th and we will be partnering with a local church on campus
-ACF Small Group has grown to 15 from it's small beginnings last year
CATALYST (leadership conference)
-much to do as we prepare and develop materials for the big seminars this May. Please pray for me as I have to put together a worship team for this event as well.
-website and invites launch and go out respectively soon -- please pray for me as I'm responsible for these and other design/art-based activities
-final review meetings are most of next week, please pray for those traveling from IA to MO with all the weird weather we've been having!
UNITED
-continuing to disciple Lloyd in Columbia who is growing quickly in his development as a worship leader
-pray for Leah as she had to step down from her mentee position in United due to a busy school-life and family stress
-please pray for the worship team at William Penn as I had a great meeting with their leaders and they begin trying out some new leadership techniques and direction
-pray also for MBC church in CA that is currently considering hiring UNITED to consult with for their worship ministry
Thank you all and please keep praying for me!
Monday, December 31, 2007
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!
New Girlfriend Liz and her xmas-holiday-sock-cookie
A picture from inside Daryl's studio where members of UNITED are rehearsing for the National Staff Conference in January
Happy holidays everyone! I hope that the end of the year is treating you well. If you haven't already please download and read my newest prayer letter for the most recent updates about my life and my ministry! Thank you for all your prayers! Ministry at MU has been growing in some unexpected ways and UNITED has been hired to do worship for the National Staff Conference in January! Thank you, thank you and thank you again for making this possible!
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
SLU Worship Team Explores Authenticity
Today we just had our second meeting in a series of songwriting workshops that I hope will help the students discover how they engage with music/art so that they can:
1. develop a more mature personal understanding of how God can minister to them through their gifts
2. help them lead people into worship through knowing how to communicate better
The meeting went exceptionally well (I like that word) and I was super excited to see them having a lot of fun doing the different creative writing exercises we did. Please continue to pray that things will go well as we continue to keep our little creative journals together.
1. develop a more mature personal understanding of how God can minister to them through their gifts
2. help them lead people into worship through knowing how to communicate better
The meeting went exceptionally well (I like that word) and I was super excited to see them having a lot of fun doing the different creative writing exercises we did. Please continue to pray that things will go well as we continue to keep our little creative journals together.
What's been going on lately?
It's been a while since my last post so I wanted to just quickly share with you some things about the last couple weeks.
CATALYST - ACCELERATING LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT!
I was asked to be on the planning committee for our leader development seminar that we put our leadership teams through. Last year over 100 students from Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas learned about Discipleship, Authority & Self-Management; this year we're focusing on Witness & Vision.
After our first planning meeting last week I'm genuinely excited about the potential of Catalyst this year. A lot of leaders, both young and old, struggle with the use of vision and knowing how to translate that practically into our daily lives. I'm confident that the new structure of our seminar heavily focuses on helping us to really understand and gain experience in practically being a witness and working towards vision! And it sounds a little nerdy but I'm excited about that =).
NEW STAFF TRAINING: GOOD TO GREAT
Those of you MBAs may recognize the name "Jim Collins", the author of the book "Good to Great". We spent a week breaking down our paradigms of what ministry should look like and developing a healthy concept of what it would look like to have the "things we do" connect more to "who we are" in a way that is life-giving to the people involved. We also discussed how to apply some of Collin's learnings about operations and people in business to the ministry world.
What this means for Mizzou is for us to be creating a community of believers that aren't just there to be in Christian community but are together to learn what it is like to grow through being a witness for God to the people around them. Whatever we do, even at cost of size and growth, we are going to try and focus our efforts to both modeling and challenging Christians to be relevant witnesses in the community.
UNITED SEEKING MORE FOCUS
Please pray for an upcoming meeting between some of us in UNITED that are trying to establish a new focused direction for the new organization. We've had some loose dreams for the first half of this year but now it's time to crack down and gain a little more clarity on our mission as a worship leader development organization so we can more effectively work toward that goal.
CHURCH DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES
At InterVarsity we believe that by creating great leaders for our chapters today we fuel excellent leadership in the churches our students end up joining. Sometimes though we get the opportunity to partner in more direct ways. A couple worship leaders & directors have approached me for help concerning worship in their church - specifically working with their worship teams / leaders. Please pray that God guides me well as I start to talk to them about specifics.
CATALYST - ACCELERATING LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT!
I was asked to be on the planning committee for our leader development seminar that we put our leadership teams through. Last year over 100 students from Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas learned about Discipleship, Authority & Self-Management; this year we're focusing on Witness & Vision.
After our first planning meeting last week I'm genuinely excited about the potential of Catalyst this year. A lot of leaders, both young and old, struggle with the use of vision and knowing how to translate that practically into our daily lives. I'm confident that the new structure of our seminar heavily focuses on helping us to really understand and gain experience in practically being a witness and working towards vision! And it sounds a little nerdy but I'm excited about that =).
NEW STAFF TRAINING: GOOD TO GREAT
Those of you MBAs may recognize the name "Jim Collins", the author of the book "Good to Great". We spent a week breaking down our paradigms of what ministry should look like and developing a healthy concept of what it would look like to have the "things we do" connect more to "who we are" in a way that is life-giving to the people involved. We also discussed how to apply some of Collin's learnings about operations and people in business to the ministry world.
What this means for Mizzou is for us to be creating a community of believers that aren't just there to be in Christian community but are together to learn what it is like to grow through being a witness for God to the people around them. Whatever we do, even at cost of size and growth, we are going to try and focus our efforts to both modeling and challenging Christians to be relevant witnesses in the community.
UNITED SEEKING MORE FOCUS
Please pray for an upcoming meeting between some of us in UNITED that are trying to establish a new focused direction for the new organization. We've had some loose dreams for the first half of this year but now it's time to crack down and gain a little more clarity on our mission as a worship leader development organization so we can more effectively work toward that goal.
CHURCH DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES
At InterVarsity we believe that by creating great leaders for our chapters today we fuel excellent leadership in the churches our students end up joining. Sometimes though we get the opportunity to partner in more direct ways. A couple worship leaders & directors have approached me for help concerning worship in their church - specifically working with their worship teams / leaders. Please pray that God guides me well as I start to talk to them about specifics.
Monday, October 01, 2007
UNITED WEBSITE LAUNCH
After much work, re-work and a lot of "learning the hard way" the website for UNITED is finally up and running at www.untiedworship.com !
I'm hoping that the website will become sort of a connection hub for worship leaders to help each other, mentoring, encouraging, collaborating and otherwise just being in community with each other. Much of UNITED is geared around worship leaders helping worship leaders and building a growing knowledge of the art from there.
Most recently we are starting a discussion that came out of an experience at Fall Conference.
Click here to download the article.
I'm hoping that the website will become sort of a connection hub for worship leaders to help each other, mentoring, encouraging, collaborating and otherwise just being in community with each other. Much of UNITED is geared around worship leaders helping worship leaders and building a growing knowledge of the art from there.
Most recently we are starting a discussion that came out of an experience at Fall Conference.
Click here to download the article.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Some prayer requests
During your personal times with God this week if you think of me please be praying for a couple of things:
1) This is a busy week with Fall Conference at the end and I'm already very tired. We are taking 240 students to Kansas City and among those are also a number of "curious seekers" as one described herself that are interested in exploring Christianity.
2) I signed up to be a community group (small group) leader with my church to get to know more people there and to serve in a small way. However they wanted us to sign a paper saying we agree with a number of various issues that I could not sign primarily because of the inclusion of a statement about "Male Headship". Please be praying for me as I am in process with them about it.
3) Ray Deng, one of the worship leaders I disciple, is going through a rough patch in his faith and has been having a very pessimistic attitude for a while. Please pray that he will see God at work in his life and especially that his interactions with God continue to grow beyond the bounds of simple legal/systematic obedience. It is a good place of growth he is in but also pray that people around him would receive it well as it disturbs some of the younger people to see one of the senior leaders apparently shaken in his faith.
1) This is a busy week with Fall Conference at the end and I'm already very tired. We are taking 240 students to Kansas City and among those are also a number of "curious seekers" as one described herself that are interested in exploring Christianity.
2) I signed up to be a community group (small group) leader with my church to get to know more people there and to serve in a small way. However they wanted us to sign a paper saying we agree with a number of various issues that I could not sign primarily because of the inclusion of a statement about "Male Headship". Please be praying for me as I am in process with them about it.
3) Ray Deng, one of the worship leaders I disciple, is going through a rough patch in his faith and has been having a very pessimistic attitude for a while. Please pray that he will see God at work in his life and especially that his interactions with God continue to grow beyond the bounds of simple legal/systematic obedience. It is a good place of growth he is in but also pray that people around him would receive it well as it disturbs some of the younger people to see one of the senior leaders apparently shaken in his faith.
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