August Update

 

School Starts this month! I am so excited for what this year will hold! I will be leading core(small group) this semester and I am looking forward to building community again on my own! I plan on having some of the girls who were in my core last year to help me with leading as well. 

This last month was mostly filled with moving into our new place but I also got to do some neat stuff! We had the Global Leadership Summit. It was a conference meant to encourage and strengthen leaders all across the US. It was a nice change of pace and stirred some thoughts in me that I think will be helpful for this Welcome Week and the start of the school year. There was a talk about question asking and it was the one that will stick with me the most. The speaker was talking about how a lot of the questions we typically ask shut down people's brain and don't get us anywhere. Questions like "How are you doing?" "Where are you from?" "What do you do?" Those questions are helpful but don't really get a lot of depth out of people. She recommended questions like: 'What was the highlight of your day? What is a personal project you are working on? What are you excited for?' as high connection questions. Here's some other questions that I think could be fun to ask people around you:

    What book, tv, or movie character are you most like?

    How do you feel most misunderstood?

    What’s something most people don’t know about you?

Questions like these create more meaningful and memorable interactions. Bob Tiede also has a lot of questions on his website- leadingwithquestions.com if you are looking to improve your question asking game.

Another neat thing we did recently was have our fall staff retreat. One of the meaningful things from those couple days was the idea of sacrifice for the gospel and denying ourselves in ministry. One of the things that someone said was that we do what we can do based on the sacrifice of our ministry partners. I want to thank all those who have sacrificed so I can meet with students and develop them and help them love Jesus! God has been so good to give me people to help carry out his mission on the college campuses. 

Things to be praying for this year:

Our corefa team and their growth so they can invest in others.

The freshman and transfer students who are new to the campuses, that they would interact with Jesus people and come to see him clearly. 

Our pastors as we invest in students and try and follow where God is leading us.