Kevin Pike Ministry Blog

 December Blog      Hey everyone! Hope all of you had a great Christmas and New Year's! This past month was slower than most months due to the students being on break and our staff being on break as well. All that to say, this will be a shorter blog but God has still been moving during this slower period of time! TNF Christmas Party:     The last Thursday Night Fellowship before Christmas break is always a Christmas party. This year, we split the night into two parts, the first being community sharing with the question being, "How have you seen God work in your life this past semester?" Hearing the students share was special getting to hear about the amazing things God was doing in their lives for the past five months. Then we had a human Christmas tree contest, a dance party, and tons of board games. It was a lot of fun and a good way to send the students off.  We were also very fortunate to have Chiloso bless us by catering the entire party for free!...

  November Blog     Hey everyone! Hope y'all had a great Thanksgiving with tons of food, Christmas is right around the corner, what a great time of the year! Let's get into what's been going on in Collin this month!      Pizza Theology:     Every semester, FOCUS hosts an event called Pizza Theology. This is where we choose a specific topic, Theology related, and take a deep dive into it. This Fall semester we had Ian Proven, who is a retired Regent School of Theology professor, come and talk to us about what it means to be human. He wrote a book on the subject called  Cuckoos In Our Nest which was the outline for his talk. I highly recommend reading the book because the question, "What does it mean to be human?" is fundamentally crucial for churches and Christians to understand. If we do not have a strong, biblical foundation for that answer, then we are letting the world and modern society's morals influence our thinking which many of us are...

Opportune October      Hey everyone! The weather is cooling down, the rain is here, and it is time to put on some Halloween costumes; time flies when you are doing ministry! So much has happened and I'm excited to share it with y'all!      Fall Retreat:      Our annual Collin Fall Retreat happened this past weekend and man it was a great time! We spent 24 hours at a beautiful camp, far away from society to focus on God, community, and fellowship! We had two guys from our small group join us, it was great spending time with them and seeing them fellowship with other guys from our ministry.     The day we arrived, we had large group games for them as an icebreaker to prepare for the weekend. Then we listened to a fantastic sermon about Matthew 5-7 (Sermon on the Mount) taught by one of the FOCUS Collin pastors. We had a great worship service that night which was accompanied by worship stations. Some of the stations included a place to...

  September Update     Hello everyone! This is post-Welcome Week month, time flies by when you are having fun! Let's all pray that the weather gets cooler and actually Fall-like!      Small Group Update     Wednesday night's small group has been so fun and encouraging. We have a consistent group of young men who come to fellowship and learn about Jesus. A recurring theme that I have noticed among the guys is that they are curious and thirst for more information about who God and Jesus are. This is incredible! Compared to last year, this is a huge difference. I think God has been preparing many of these students' hearts for learning more about Him and we have been lucky enough to be the ones who can help them along their journey.      This week we have started a series called, "Understanding the Bible as a Whole". We realized that our guys in the small group have very broad and nonspecific knowledge about the Bible. They know who Jes...

 Welcome Week at Collin!     Hello everyone! I am so pumped to share about the amazing Welcome Week we had at Collin with y'all. For those who are unaware, Welcome Week is the first week of school which is the prime opportunity to welcome nervous and anxious freshmen and also invite the upperclassmen to know Jesus. There's a lot to cover so let's get it!     Corefa Prep Day:     The Saturday before Welcome Week, we had a Corefa prep day. Corefa's are short for Core facilitators and they are our student leaders that run our small groups which are called Core's. We like to have a day to mentally and spiritually prepare them for leading the small groups and give them outreach training for Welcome Week. During that day, I was so thankful to see them all there willing to give 10-15 hours of their week dedicated to bringing other students closer to God and cultivating a Jesus-first community on campus. It is just so awesome, it's hard to describe! I am very ...

  July Fun      Hello everyone! Hope y'all have been enjoying Barbie, Oppenheimer, and the new Mission Impossible movies! Not only has this month been great for films, but this past month with ministry has also been exciting!     Summer TNF (Thursday Night Fellowship):     Next week is the last Summer TNF of 2023, which is sad to see. It has been so great to meet students from other campuses and get to say hi to the familiar UNT student that I used to hang with back when I was there. But, it is also exciting to realize that the school year is about to start up again and that our staff team will come across hundreds of new students to meet and invite to know Jesus! Once August comes around, we'll host our own TNF which is for the Collin students only.     This picture below shows the night when we were lucky enough to have a large choir group sing for worship which was amazing! We even had a guest piano and guitar player who are professi...

Heat Waves in June      Hello everyone! Hope you all have been staying cool during this insane heat wave! Summer is here and the ministry is still going strong, I'm excited to share what has been going on this month!      Summer TNF (Thursday Night Fellowship):     Even in the summer, we keep the TNF rolling. This time instead of meeting up with only the students at Collin College, we now meet up with all the campuses that are associated with FOCUS for a large group worship/fellowship which is so amazing. It is great to see my old friends from UNT and also meet new students that I have not had the opportunity to see yet.      The schedule is the same as it was during the year, we start with a bang by singing along to worship music, then listen to a sermon from one of our fellow FOCUS staff members (all of them have been so great this year), next we sing some more worship music and then end it with some fun after events like playing...