God has a way of surprising us. He certainly surprised me this semester at UTSA. It is my continual prayer that BSM will be a missional community, not merely a "Christian club." That contrast is continually shared with the students. Club or missional people? I have no interest in the former and pray fervently for the latter.
At the end of last year, the Spirit truly began to open the eyes of our students as to the difference between the two. We ended the year with a strong foundation to start a new year with great hopes of being used by Him to reach students.
This semester has been amazing. Weekly, we are encountering new students and our group is growing far beyond what I anticipated. Our new students are full of energy, enthusiasm and a desire to make a difference for the King and His Kingdom.
For most of this semester, we have been processing as a group this new, emerging community. Initially, some of our "old-timers" wondered what to do with all of these new kids. Community has been formed over the course of this semester. Now, we are focusing on developing "communitas" (for definition of communitas, see bottom of page). Pray for us. We are challenging our students to move out of the "safety" and "comfort" of community and into the sphere of liminality-going to the edge of lostness, to the 'unsafe' places on campus, in our city, and wherever God leads us as a group, to develop relationships with the lost for the sake of the Kingdom-to make Christ known.
We tend to prefer safety and comfort. We like our comfort zones. Jesus did not call us to comfort, but to follow. As this semester winds down, and a larger community has been formed, please pray for BSM. Pray that over the semester break, over our leadership retreat, that we will follow Him wherever He leads. A campus of 29,000 students is a wonderful mission field. He has called us to be far more than a club.
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