Archive for June, 2009

Integration vs. Mission | Exploring College Ministry

Benson Hines has a great discussion about integration of college ministry relative to mission here.

This has been a consistent struggle for us in the College Ministry at The Austin Stone, but definitely one that has yielded great fruit in ministry.  To summarize where we have landed, we:

  1. Deliberately integrate our weekly worship service, and will NOT begin a separate service just for college students.
  2. Provide specific environments and a few events aimed at assimilating college students, including a worship service on campus once per semester (Austin Stone on Campus audio and review).
  3. Deliberately integrate students into ministry opportunities that serve the church and serve our city.  Any opportunity that exists in open for any college student to participate, and we encourage students in that direction.
  4. We contextualize our missional community structure to mobilize students onto campus, and therefore have a separate ministry that is under the leadership of our overall missional community structure, but operates relatively independently.
  5. We have both integration and separation in our equipping ministry and global missions ministry.  There are specific opportunities just for students that equip and mobilize based on their schedule and life stage, but also students are welcome to engage in any of our other course/seminar/training environments and global mission opportunities.

There is never a perfect answer, but this has been an effective solution that affords opportunities for students to connect with people outside their lifestage, but also keep them invested in their mission field.

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Discipleship | Wrap Up

Below is a link summary of the series I just finished on discipleship:

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing through my discipleship philosophy, and hope it has been beneficial to you as a reader.  It has certainly provoked a number of good thoughts and given me ideas for organizing and implementing discipleship relationships into the future.  If you have any questions or would like access to any resources I have, just shoot me an email.

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Subscribe to Ethereal Thought Train

I wanted to take a quick timeout and say thanks for reading this blog!

I’d encourage you, if you haven’t already, to subscribe to my RSS feed or subscribe by email.

If you have no idea what an RSS feed is, you can find more here.  If you’re looking for a good feed reader, I recommend Google Reader.

We will now return to your regularly scheduled program…

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Advocating for Justice | Jeff McWhorter's Documentary

I have a friend in need, and you can help!  Below is a call for action from my friend Jeff McWhorter:

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Here is the deal.  For my senior thesis at UT, I made a 10-minute documentary about young men growing up with incarcerated fathers in East Austin.  One of the young men (14 yrs old), with whom I spent a lot of time, was incarcerated himself last week for house burglaries.  (He was caught on webcam, maybe you heard about it).  Anyhow, some of the crimes were unjustly pinned on his older sister because he used her car.  She went to jail, and has gotten out, but she and her mother are really struggling to come up with money to pay an attorney to get the charges off.

Also, there is a risk that they could get evicted because Booker T, where they live, does not like trouble in the neighborhood.  This would really, really put her in a bad spot.

His mother works hard at her job as a waitress to provide for the family (4 kids in the house) and show a good example of honest labor.  She loves the Lord and is trusting him through all of this but is understandably pretty distraught.

I really want to help them out, and I am having a benefit showing of my documentary tonight at 9 p.m. at my house to raise some money.

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Please help Jeff out by showing up!

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Aaron Ivey – Between the Beauty and Chaos


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You for sure need to download this album if you haven’t already (click the image above or here).  Aaron has been leading our church in worship through these songs, and they speak powerfully to the greatness of God and call us to His mission in the world.

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