Kevin Pike Ministry Blog #20

 The Start of the New Year 

    Hello everyone! Hope all of you are following your New Year resolutions because I have already quit mine. This month has already been a blast and I can't wait to update y'all on what's been going on! 

Winter Retreat 

    Every year FOCUS hosts a Winter Retreat where we invite all of our students from our 11 campuses to spend three days seeking out the Lord. This year we had an amazing speaker, Dr. Lee from Regent School of Theology, come and talk to us about the gospel and what it truly is. Dr. Lee was so impactful, many of our students and myself included learned so much from him. If you are interested in hearing what a doctorate-level examination of the gospel sounds like, we have the recordings from Winter Retreat on our FOCUS Spotify page at this link: https://open.spotify.com/show/5yrx4jslg0f9tmNO7S0eVX?si=c4b10c59fb8e4429

    I had a blast spending time with my small group, meeting new students, and spending some time in the wilderness away from the city. One of the many highlights from Winter Retreat was getting to see the small group that I help lead interact and create friendships with other students at different campuses. It showed me that the common experience of knowing Jesus and being Christian allows friendships to form fast with anyone you meet. Another highlight was one night we had a multi-lingual reading of scripture where twelve students read out loud the verse in their native language. We had Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Swahili, Portuguese, etc. It was such a powerful moment seeing the students read the same scripture and showing how God can transcend barriers of culture and language. It reminded me of this verse, Revelation 7:9, "After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands." 

    Winter Retreat was a great way to start off the New Year and get spiritually and physically ready for where God is going to lead me. Here are some pictures from the trip:

Small Group Update:

    Core has been a lot of fun recently! We have started our plan of going through all the major "plot" points of the Bible with the intention of getting the guys more familiar with the Bible as a whole and with God himself. Going through Genesis has brought up a lot of interesting and fun questions to discuss. We want our fellas to get used to asking more questions and making sure they really follow what is going on in the story since it is easy to read over a story without really understanding it. 

    We have also made it a goal to hang out with our group more often on the weekends which has developed and enriched our friendship with everyone. One of our favorite things to do is going to the movies together. We watched Argyle recently and it was alright, nothing too special. 

Outreach Update:

    Outreach at the Wylie Collin campus has been reimagined and revamped. This semester we have made it a goal to do more contact evangelism which is going up to people and inviting them to learn more about Jesus. During the first week of school, we did a demonstration called the four circles on pieces of paper that did a quick summary of where we as Christians believe the world is at now. That there is sin and that the only solution is belief in Jesus. We got a good number of students who were interested in hearing what we had to say and had some great conversations with them. This week we plan on doing cookie for a question, where we go up to students and ask them if they would like a cookie in exchange that they answer our question. We will ask them, "How can we find purpose and meaning in life?" I am excited to see what kind of conversations that we have with them! 

TNF Update:

    With TNF (Thursday Night Fellowship) we have started a series in Mark, each week one of our pastors will go over a chapter of it and apply the message of the sermon to our students. So far we have gone through four chapters of Mark and it has been wonderful! I am thankful for the staff that we have at Collin and the students seem to love the messages so far! Here is a picture of our most recent TNF:

    Prayer Requests:

   Please pray for the students in our ministry to seek out God instead of the world and for us as ministers to remember that our goal is to send these students to seek out God. Also, pray for the students as they start this new semester that they can keep good grades, and have direction for what they want to do in their careers. Also, for my church in Wylie to find a new building, our current building has given us two months to find a new place. 

    Thank You:

    I am writing with gratitude to express our heartfelt appreciation for your unwavering support of our campus ministry. Your generous contributions have played an instrumental role in creating an environment where students not only learn about Jesus but also embark on a transformative journey to know Him more intimately. Your financial backing has enabled us to organize impactful events, provide essential resources, and extend warm invitations to students, inviting them into a community that fosters spiritual growth and genuine connections. Your commitment to our mission has been the driving force behind the positive changes we see in the lives of these students. Thank you for being the pillars of support that allow our campus ministry to flourish, guiding students towards a deeper understanding of faith and the warmth of a welcoming community.

P.S. Here is a testimony from a young man at UTA who has been blessed by God through FOCUS. Your donations help the next generation build a foundation in Jesus.