Exciting start for Richland Focus!

    Hey! I hope you're doing well! 

    Here's a look into what I've been up to and all the exciting things going on in our Focus community at Richland.

    But before that I just want to say thank you so much for investing in the lives of college students and partnering with me in ministry for the next year! You are such a blessing to me as I literally couldn't be on campus without you backing me. I'm very grateful for you and for your investment into our little community. Thank you!

    Here's what we have going on!

       This is our CORE as of the first week! I'm super excited to get to know all of these guys more. In our first core everyone got to share our life stories, at least in as much time as we had. I found out that all of us are from a different country, which is super exciting. Also, just in our first meeting everyone expressed their excitement about and need for friendships. I can't wait to get to know these guys throughout the year and see them build spiritual friendships and grow in their relationship with God!

    

    Every Tuesday night we have a ministry hangout where we just kick back and have fun together. I'm really thankful for this time because we all have a lot of fun with each other and also I think it represents that we're building a community that isn't just about spiritual development or scriptural knowledge, but really about living life together and learning to love God and other people together. I'm thinking of Acts 2: 46-47 "Everyday the believers continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those were being saved." I love that our community genuinely cares about each other and we want to spend time together!

    Here's a picture from Thursday Night Thunder (TNT). At TNT we spend time in worship together, hear a sermon given by one of our campus pastors (I'll preach next week), and then go eat together afterward. Every week so far we've had more people come than the week before, which is really encouraging. The theme for our ministry this year is "Life to the full" a reference to John 10:10 where Jesus says "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." Each week so far we've been talking about what life to the full might look in different areas for a believer and I'm fascinated by this question "what does it mean to life to the full?" because I think at some levels everyone has an answer already and that answer motivates much of what we do with our lives. A lot of our students, before the pandemic started, would have said that life to the full means not going to class, spending tons of time on Netflix, and not having to answer to anyone. They got to see just how empty that life is though, and so the question is on their minds in a new way: "What does it mean to have life to the full?".

    One of the other things we are focusing on as a ministry is building one-on-one relationships. These relationships might involve getting coffee together and talking about how your week is going or setting aside time to sit down to study the bible and help each other reflect what you are reading in your lives, but either way we believe God really works through people and these one-on-one relationships is where a lot of discipleship and a lot of real life-change happens. 

    I included this picture of my new friend Ricky because he's someone that I've started to build an intentional friendship with and I'm super excited to get to know him this year. He expressed interest in "learning what the Bible actually says" in order to grow in his faith, so he and I are planning to start studying the Bible together soon! Fun fact: under his mask Ricky is sucking on a lollipop in this picture - I just thought it was really funny.

    Thank you so much for reading! 

    I'm going to try things a little differently this time and see how it goes, so instead of listing pray requests I want to ask that you would reach out to me and ask about them, and then I can ask you about yours!

So call or text me at 713-397-4184 or email me at joey@anyfocus.org

Much love,

Joey Thurston