One of the best and potentially worst things about college, especially if you’re living away from home, is the freedom it gives you to make your own decisions about who you’ll hang out with and how you’ll spend your time. Even between classes and homework (and in my case a lot of napping) you’ll find yourself with a lot of free time on your hands. First semester I found myself feeling kind of lost as to what to do with it and where God wanted me to be. UGA has tons of ministry organizations and Athens has tons of churches. But even with all this, I found myself being lazy with my faith. Instead, I hung out and watched a lot of t.v. with friends. Not surprisingly, by the end of the semester I found myself feeling really distant from God and feeling a little lost and empty.

The advice I would want to give students who are about to graduate this year, and myself if I could go back in time to August would probably be to get over yourself. Don’t lose me here! I don’t mean that in a harsh way or to judge anyone but because that’s what God has been placing on my heart recently. College is a time where things are made a lot about yourself. What career you want, how much money you’ll make, whether you’ll be “successful” after you graduate. And then beyond that there are plenty of ways to make college all about pursuing self-satisfaction whether through drinking and partying, or for me, by simply seeking your own comfort before your pursuit of God. In college, you don’t have Tyler and Kevin or Leah and Lauren there to keep you accountable for reading your Bible, staying in community, or making disciples. Begin praying now that God would put a passion for Him your heart while your in college and away from doxa. Read your Bible! Spend time with God one on one, and spend time meditating on God and the reality of the cross.

Please don’t make college about yourself. The life that God has planned for you wherever you go is so much fuller and richer than anything we could ever create. This semester God has been so good to me and I wish that I had been pursuing Christ throughout my first semester instead of wasting it. I’m praying that God would show up in a big way for all the students that are preparing to graduate.

Nicole S.

We must get to know Him by studying His word, meditating and memorizing scripture.  The Bible teaches that our minds are transformed by the Holy Spirit to see and know the will and purpose of God.  The Holy Spirit works in us as we study our Bibles, pray for understanding, fellowship with other believers, disciple others and hold each other accountable.  That’s how we grow in our understanding of who God is and that glorifies Him.

When we pray to God, we are saying that He is powerful and wise because we are taking our needs to Him.  We need to study in order to know how to glorify God.  Most likely, if we are not studying, we aren’t living on mission and if we are not on mission, we are probably not studying His word.

Yes, we could study for academic reasons and not be on mission.  We can even study and not even be saved.  What I am talking about is studying our Bible in order to grow closer to God, which gives us a hunger to share what has been revealed to us.

It is as if we were a cup and God, by the Holy Spirit, fills us with knowledge and understanding of His grace and blessing until we overflow.  Living on mission comes from the overflow of God’s work in us.  This can’t happen if we are not studying His word- allowing the Holy Spirit to transform us- obeying the Spirits prompting and living a life of overflow.  There is a relationship between the study of God’s word and living on mission.

If we experience Christ personally and understand grace in our own relationship with Him, then the overflow from our spiritual cup affects everyone around us because this overflow reflects God’s character and His grace…. It is impossible to contain it and he uses us to do it—-  when we make Him our priority and ourselves available.

If God is our priority, we study His word.  If He is our priority and we are studying His word, we will experience the overflow of spiritual blessing, knowledge and wisdom.  As we grow in knowledge and understanding of God and understand our purpose in Him,  we become more usable representatives of Christ to the world.

Am I not being in the world because I am always around other believers? Jesus commanded me to go out on mission (Matthew 28:19) “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,..”, that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t have the time with fellow believers, but I shouldn’t let that be all I do.

Am I not on mission because it’s not on the top of my priorities? I have the most trouble with this one, it seems like I always put something else before I read my Bible, go on Mission etc., when in fact it should be my first priority “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received:..” (1 Corinthians 15:3).

In my Circle group, we were talking about how we were being missional. Our Circle leader (Tyler) asked about the things we could do to get on mission. I said that I could invite friends over, or go and see a move, but that is something that I said I would do since school started. Tyler asked why I haven’t done that yet, and I really didn’t have an answer.

I don’t understand why it’s so hard to ask a friend if they want to hang out. Jesus hung out with sinners throughout His entire public ministry, and then died for them and for me. The least I can do is obey Him and be a little more mission centered.

I know everyone has heard this almost every Wednesday night and even on some retreats and if you did read this you probably thought “Oh, great. This again”, but it is something that we all need to hear. I’m pretty sure that we will continue to hear it until something happens. When we don’t go out and live on mission, we are disobeying Jesus.

1. Event one: Heard account of a way a teenage girl was being treated that made me righteously angry.
2. Event two: Listened to this old sermon from Mark Driscoll wherein he touches on the difference between guys and girls, and how boys just have a natural bent towards fighting, war, and so on.
3. Event three: At Circle, 2 students found my boxing gloves in my garage (I have 2 different sized pairs), and rather than beating on my punching bag, they started lightly boxing each other in my backyard. Eventually one student got a solid hit to the guy of the other, who lost some of his breath, but took it like a warrior.

There’s this book that I look forward to purchasing and reading this summer from Douglas Wilson called Future Men. This paragraph from the book jacket really struck a cord with me:

“When Theodore Roosevelt taught Sunday school for a time, a boy showed up one Sunday with a black eye. He admitted he had been fighting and on a Sunday too. He told the future president that a bigger boy had been pinching his sister, and so he fought him. TR told him that he had done perfectly right and gave him a dollar. The stodgy vestrymen thought this was a bit much, and so they let their exuberant Sunday school teacher go. What a loss.”

Here’s the big idea: I think it’s important that we seek to direct the natural masculine bent of boys so that we see it redeemed by the Gospel. I think it’s a great travesty that the church has for many years sought to entirely demolish masculinity.

You pick up your Bible and you read stories about guys like Jesus, David, Paul, and so on, and then you flip through Christianity Today and there just seems to be a disconnect.

Dudes are wired for fighting. This is fine. The problem comes in when sin allows that fighting to be directed at their parents, their siblings, or peers, when it was meant for things like protecting, guarding, compassion, and so on.

Sin perverts everything. Sin takes a good thing like masculinity and gets dudes to use it to fight over girls, pride, and/or for their own glory. The thing that’s got me tossing and turning tonight is that dudes today seem to be exercising these qualities in every arena except the Church.

Our dudes want to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, they want to play paintball, they want to play sports (and try to turn everything into full-contact), they want to watch MMA. But the reality is that these are all artificial fights.

The real fights that students ought to be using their testosterone on are things like fighting their own flesh, fighting in Gospel-centered accountability, fighting to protect their mothers/sisters/spiritual sisters, fighting to advance the Gospel, and fighting to bring justice to the oppressed.

Why? Why do they gravitate towards artificial fights, and away from the real gruesome stuff? Where’s the brother/father/etc who ought to be fighting for the girl from event one?

I’m still working through all of this in my mind, but let me say this:  if Teddy Roosevelt were an adult leader at doxa, I wouldn’t have let him go.  I would have let him be.

The good news is that I think the Church is beginning to experience a welcomed resurgence of masculinity (“welcomed” provided the pendulum doesn’t swing too far).

Last year, we were able to give upwards of $600 to help send our folks to advance the Gospel in Ghana.

Additionally, we were able to give 1 full scholarship to Revive.  Furthermore, we were able to use some of this for Fixate scholarships.

Since then, we have saved money from Wednesday night meals in an amount over $500.  I have requested a check for that amount be written to Churches Helping Churches to aid the Church in Haiti as it seeks to recover from its loss and advance the Gospel to those around it.

Students, if you have racked up a bunch of IOUs, I would encourage you to make good on those.  Likewise, we will continue to designate all profits from Wednesday nights towards this organization throughout the month of February.  In addition to that, we have a Haiti benefit concert in the works to help raise funds for this organization.

Parents, thank you for your selfless donation of meals.

I would encourage you to take a moment to browse these videos (be warned, they are potentially graphic):

http://churcheshelpingchurches.com/index.php/media/

When I look back on my last five years, with everything I’ve gone through, I am thankful for a lot, but especially for the Cross. Since my mom was not able to take care of my sister and I, things had to change. I had to move to a new city, make new friends, and adjust to a new environment. I felt like it was going to be a hard period of my life. When Hannah first brought me to youth group, I honestly was just going for food and boys. It stayed like that for a couple of months. When I found out that there was a fall retreat coming up I thought it would be a good chance to hang out with my friends all weekend. Little did I know, Jesus has other plans in store for me. Saturday night Shannon Rhodes was preaching. During the sermon, I felt the Holy Spirit working in me and something changed. I accepted the Lord that night and asked him to become my Lord and Savior.

With all that has happened to me, I can really look back at the Cross and see what Jesus has done for me in my life. Now that I am a follower of Christ, I try to live everyday for him. With Jesus, I can look at the Cross and think “wow, what an amazing Savior to take my place and to die for my sins.” I am thankful for what he has done for me and my other fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

You know me. I am Tyler, the 8th grader that hangs out with your son. I feel like I need to confess a thing or two, as well as express my gratitude.

Your son is a very nice kid that befriended me when I moved to this neighborhood last summer. I had no friends in the area. I recall still unloading boxes when he came by inviting me to join he and his friends in going to the local swimming pool the next day . I was very excited about this because all of my old friends now lived far away.

You have gathered bits and pieces of my story over the time I’ve known your son…My father died a few years ago. You may not know that he took his own life. Before that, He was abusive and an alcoholic. Currently, I live with my mom, my little sister, and my step-dad. You probably don’t know that I struggle with depression and severe anger. You can probably figure out that I’m a little bit scared about this world. Very insecure. More than a little misguided.

Other bits and pieces I’m sure your son has tried to hide from you. I like the “f” word and any other word that I’m not “supposed” to say. Your son stood strong for awhile, but eventually he too let a few naughty words fly. (Maybe you could concede that that wasn’t entirely my fault? Perhaps some of it was his own sin?) Anyway, I brag hyperbolically about the 2 “fights” I got into in the past few years. I listen to very explicit rap music. My mom doesn’t know, because I have a friend who buys it for me. Also, when there was that whole fireworks in the middle of the night issue. That was my idea.  Oh, and we both remember the time I punched your younger son over a basketball game.

There’s no getting around the truth: If I influence your kid, it’s going to be negative.

In short, ma’am: I’m quite a mess.

But I wanted to take a moment to thank you for letting your son hang around me. I want to thank you for not totally forbidding his friendship with me because I was very obviously one of “those kids”.

Last December, when your son asked if I’d join him for an ice skating event at church, I said yes because I had nothing else to do. I went and realized the social opportunites that were there (in other words: there were girls there). So, you kept swingin’ by to pick me up every Wednesday, every Sunday morning, and every Sunday night. That’s a mighty nice thing to do for a kid as messed up as I am.

This past summer while attending the summer retreat, I heard a man named Tony Nolan share the gospel. I’m sure I’d heard it many times before, but at this particular time, something messed with me. The next night I gave in and admitted that, although I’d been in church for 9 months straight, had walked an aisle and prayed the prayer 3 times, I still hadn’t surrendered my life to Jesus. I went up again and afterwards, I talked with the youth pastor and he helped me understand it all.

When we got back, he gave me a Bible I could understand. It turns out Jesus has a heart for guys like me. I keep reading these stories where he hangs out with tax collectors and other messed up people, and he makes fun of the uptight, religious folks. I think maybe that is one of the reason that you let your son hang out with me. Because Jesus did that kind of thing.

I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate your son’s friendship. I’ve met enough of the other people at church to know that it’s not particularly popular to let your son hang out with a guy like me. Most of the moms are worried that I’ll rub off on their kid. It’s probably a semi-valid concern. You could have been like them, hiding your kid from messed up people like me, but I thank you that you let him continue that friendship. Through that friendship, I met Jesus.

I’m only in the 8th grade now. But one day I’ll be an adult, a husband, a father. There’s no way to know this now, but I think because of what Jesus did through my friendship with your son- that through the Gospel’s continued work in me, I will be saved from a family history of alcoholism, depression, abuse, and many other things. In the past few years, I’ve cried long nights without my father and the despair has seemed unbearable at times. Ma’am, I don’t want to exaggerate: but it may be that the Gospel I heard through this friendship has helped save my life.

I know that at times, I probably made you a little nervous. I know that you probably wondered if you were making the right decision. Or maybe you knew it was right, but you just thought it was a tiny gesture…

Either way, I just wanted to thank you for letting your son hang out with a sinner like me. Jesus used that to save me.

focused on the Kingdom,

tyler recker.

Those are all well and good, and we’ll do some of that, but I’m a little suspicious of this mindset.

1. I am suspicious because we’ve done these things before and the number of friends that came was very small.

Even still, the number of friends who weren’t already plugged into a church was very minimal. I don’t want to steal kids from another church. I want kids who don’t know Jesus to meet him and follow him.

2. I am suspicious because you have the opportunity on any given weekend to pull off these events on your own.

I know your parents. They’re nice people (most of them…I joke). They’d drive you to do things like this. They let you have friends over to stay the night.

So here’s my plea for decentralized, missional living:

For a long, long time we’ve depended on the Student Pastor to organize events for you to reach your friends.  (We will still do some of that.)  I want to ask you seriously though.  What will reach more people?  If I do one event, once a month or if all of the students band together into different groups and continuously pull off their own missional events?

Which event are your non-believing friends more likely to come to?  Come hang out with the church?  Or come hang out at my house?

I would like to propose to you guys a number of ideas for you to get together and pull of on your own with Gospel intentionality and Christian accountability (you may have seen them before):

That’s something that’s been on my mind a lot lately. Am I satisfied in the gospel? The hard answer is that most of the time I’m not. But the gospel is not something that we can look at, truly understand, and then move on from. God came to earth, died on the cross for our sins, freed us from them, and because of his death and resurrection our time on Earth is spent as strangers who are moving towards our home in Heaven with God forever. And yet we live our day to day lives like non believers, caught up in and chasing the things of the world. If you truly believe the gospel it can’t not change your whole life.

One of Kevin’s points was that the gospel changes everything about us. How can it not? But then Kevin asked another question, would your friends know that you’re obsessed with Jesus? Has everything in our lives been so radically changed by the joy and freedom of the gospel that we no longer care about what others think, or that we’re pursuing Jesus with our whole heart because He deserves it? Do we have a heart knowledge of the gospel that leads to life change because of the greatness of the  good news, or just a head knowledge that tricks us into believing everything is good between us and God?

Tyler talked Saturday night about the Holy Spirit. We know that we can’t conjour up our own feelings of longing for Jesus because we’re fallen sinners. But we do know that the Holy Spirit can move us to fall in love with Jesus and empower us to tell others about Jesus. Pray that God moves on our hearts until we live in the reality of the gospel.

Nicole S.

-John 6:40

-Jesus has called his people out from the world in love. Now it’s time for that love to reach it’s full extent at the Cross.

2. Jesus Knew His Status in the World (v.3)

-Colossians 1:15-20

3. …but He Serves (v.4)

-Even though He is the God of the universe He humbled himself to the point of serving his disciples. 

-Jesus is the only one with a legitimate status. After all, HE’S GOD. We have no status on our own yet we often promote ourselves above others (‘I’m cooler, smarter, better looking, holier, etc…’).


-Philippians 2:3-8



Jesus’ Act is Simultaneously…
1. a display of love (v.1)
2. a symbol of saving cleansing (v.6-9)
3. a model of Christian conduct (v.12-17)

NOTE: “If Jesus was not exempt from serving Judas- There is not a single person on this planet that we are exempt from serving”

-This is how it works in the Kingdom of God. We don’t treat people the way they deserve to be treated. We treat them in a Christ-like manner.

4. We Are to Follow His Example (v.12)

-The greatest way to serve those around us is to give them the Gospel; the greatest news one could ever receive.

Take Away Questions: 


1. How can I serve my spiritual brothers/sisters?

2. How do I make sure this change takes place from the inside out (Gospel) and not from the outside in (Religion)?