Ministry Interview with Joe

This morning I had a ministry interview with Joe.  We did this over eggs, which is always a great way to start the day.  I was able to ask him three questions, so here are each question and his response:

Question 1: Tell me about your ministry?

Joe is the present of ICF, a leader in FOCUS and also participates in SEGWAY and NEC, so he wears quite a few hats.  The first thing he told me he does is pray for the staff and volunteers that are in the ministries he is involved with.  Right now he is training leaders in ICF and spends a lot of time with both Christian and Non-Christian international students.  The point he kept iterating in the interview was being a friend.  Right now he is working with a few Non-Christians, one is doing a study and the other just bought a Bible for the first time.  One of the things he stresses with his ministry is being flexible and trying to help others.  He told me that especially with international students, they are always so surprised that he is willing to help them and be their friend.  They tell him Christians are the people who help, even if they do not know you.  We must be willing to take every opportunity to spend time with people.  When someone invites you over to their apartment, take the offer to spend time building that relationship.  His advice is to always reevaluate yourself.  Ask the people around you what they see, and be willing to change.

Question 2: How do you balance between Grad School and ministry?

The first thing he mentioned is having a time planner.  This is very important for keeping track of your schedule and making sure you are not overcommitted.  He stressed not being over committed, so you can have quality time with what you need to do.  He also recommend having flexible time in large chunks, so you are able to do something if there is a need.  He talked about bringing people along with the things you do.  This could be used to do tasks in parallel, like doing grocery shopping while spending time with someone.  He also recommended getting out of the apartment when you need to talk to someone.  Being at home sitting makes you tired and sometimes more lazy.  When he is doing ministry, he will try to find a way to get out, by just driving, or finding a place to go.  This of course requires more planning, but can be very beneficial.  He also talked about planning your semester and work well.  He tries to keep his evening free, since this is a great time to spend with others, so he tries to do work and classes in the morning and during the day.  Finally, he cautioned about doing too much and explained how necessary it is to keep God first.

Question 3: Why ministry with international students?

In my finally question, I really wanted to know why he has chosen to spend most of his ministry time on international students.  He told me this started as a summer intern project last year.  He started going to ICF (International Christian Fellowship) to see the international student ministry opportunities on campus.  He said he just fell in love with the people and the different cultures.  He said it was difficult at first, being one of few Americans, but said the international students responded well to him and were easy to make friends with.  Eventually, the task became a passion and a love for the international people.  He enjoys getting the fresh perspective of the students, many of whom are not as accustom to Christianity unlike many American students.  He is motivated by their openness and passion to learn.  He says many international students are seeking American friends to spend time with.  They enjoy learning about the culture and having American friends.  They are lacking people who can care for them and provide their basic and spiritual needs.  

I really enjoyed getting to hear about Joe's ministry, and I learned a lot from him.  It is very encouraging to see people in FOCUS leading the way in ministry, and I know I can learn a lot from Joe about how to be a friend to someone and minster to them. 

Spring Break Update (Wednesday)

And on the third day of service projects this summer...we had 13 people again come out to work on two difference projects.  The first group went back and helped Network Ministries.  In the morning they helped an elderly lady remove family valuables from an old shed.  The lady was concerned animals would get into the shed since it has getting really old, and she had many family pictures, letters and her mother's wedding dress.  The dress was fine, but apparently some of the letters had been destroyed by animals and were covered in dead animal bodies and rat droppings.  Luckily, I went on the other project!  After lunch, this group went to do yard work for some elderly in the area.

The second group from UTD participated in the Dallas Ramps Project, which installs free ramps for elderly who cannot afford them.  Dallas Ramps builds and installs 250 ramps each year.  After meeting with our team lead Bill, we went to a house in Dallas, and removed an old ramp and replaced it with a brand new ramp.  This was a lot of fun, using power tools and getting to work with wood.  Bill taught us a lot about ramp design, and let us do quite a bit of work.  Since Bill knew we were college students, he frequently discussed the physics, geometry and engineering of advanced ramp design and deployment.  No one was hurt, which was amazing considering Brad was allowed to use a saw. :)  Just kidding Brad!

Spring Break Update (Tuesday)

On Tuesday of this Spring Break, we had a group of 12 go to NorthEast Church for a service project.  We had a lot of tasks, and were able to complete quite a few.  We had people clean the base boards, remove stains from the carpet, clean the grout on the tile floors and polish the wood on chairs, benches, and picture frames.  After lunch, we took every white chair and table(42) and cleaned them with comet.  This was a very long and tiring process, and resulted in some of us losing our fingerprints due to comet eating away at our skin. :)  We also cleaned all the trash cans and almost anything large and plastic.  It was really great getting to serve NorthEast, especially with everything they do for FOCUS!

Spring Break Update (Monday)

On Monday of this Spring Break, we took a group of 13 students from UTD to Network Ministries in Richardson.  Network works with a wide group of people in the area, from providing food to the homeless, offering healthcare to helping elderly with basic house care.  We worked with their food pantry most of the day, and had two groups doing different type of work.  The first group sorted the large food pantry and helped reorganize the pantry so it was more assessable to the volunteers who pass out the food to people in need.  This group removed food that had expired, and also moved very heavy crates of food from tall shelves so volunteers, which are primarily elderly, could get the food easier.

The second group went to a storage building near by, and move a large amount of food to the warehouse.  This involved a lot of manly lifting, so naturally I took charge of this task. :)  This was a great opportunity for me because I was able to spend sometime talking to the coordinator of the Senior's Net Ministry, the ministry which primary works with the elderly.  He is an electrical engineer/minister, so it was really great getting to see an engineer doing ministry and helping the community.  It was very encouraging to see his passion and excitement for serving the elderly.  

Overall, I thought the experience was great, and I felt we were able to provide a lot of help.  As we were working, people would drive up to the warehouse to pickup food for their families.  It was really sad to see people in need, but I feel gave me more motivation to serve.  There are tons of people living with so little, and I feel very thankful for what I have, and hope I can give back more.  I want to thank everyone who can and served, you guys did a great job!      

Experiencing God

I have been going through Experiencing God and really enjoyed a study which discussed the different names of God.   When God stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son Isaac, Abraham named God "the Lord will provide."  When the Israelites defeated the Amalekites because Moses was faithful and held his hands up to God, they called God "the Lord is my banner", since the Lord was going before His people to defeat the Amalekites.  Throughout the scriptures, peopled assigned names for God to help remind them of how He was faith, provided for them, saved them, delivered they from their enemies...the list continues.  

This was a very helpful lesson as it is difficult at times to remember all the things Christ has done for me.  I have been challenged to assign God names to help me remember what God has done.  He is my "Provider of godly friends", "God who comforts and encourages", "My instructor in truth", "My leader", "My friend"...  

Spring Break Service Project Updates

We have found two types of project to complete over the week of Spring Break.  The first will be projects helping elderly in Collin County through Network Ministries.  We will assist this ministry in helping paint homes, trim shrubs and other things that elder people would have trouble completing.  This will be an awesome opportunity to serve the people in Collin County!  

The second set of projects we have are helping repair and remodel Northeast Church.  Northeast sponsors FOCUS and has giving us so much, so I'm very excited we will have the opportunity to give back to the church which has given us so much.

Ministry Interviews

Right now I'm trying to figure out who to interview for my ministry interviews.  For the time being I'm planning on interviewing Casey Worsham.  Last semester he led my corefa small group and I got to spend sometime with him hearing about his ministry.  I would like to learn what challenges he has faced as he has started leading the CCCC ministry.  I would also like to interview my senior pastor from my church back home.  He has been in ministry for a long time and he has a lot of good insight and wisdom.  I'm also thinking about interviewing Joe.  He is on the leader team and leads the international student ministry.  As an new grad student, I would like to learn how he balances school and ministry and what he has learned from doing ministry to international students.  The final person I would like to interview is a lady in my home church name sister Rachel.  She spent a fair amount of time overseas as a missionary.  I would like to learn about the differences of ministry outside of America.  

Services Projects

It definitely took a lot of prayer and evaluating to come up with a Linkfa project.  This last semester Matt and I really tried to motivate our core into getting involved in our investigative group but found our group was really not ready for that commitment.  During our last Focus meeting, one of our core members mentioned that he really wanted to see Focus involved in more service projects.  This was something in the past that our ministry has been more consistent in, but with expanding into new areas of ministry by adding the Linkfas which would focus on outreach, it seems this was something we were not able to coordinate.  Last year Ricky and I tried to take our core on a couple service projects and we were always blessed and brought closer together in these experiences.  Nothing better than a couple of guys lifting heavy objects on a Saturday morning, and especially knowing we were helping great organizations such as Shoes for Orphans Souls helped motivate us to work hard.  After recalling these experiences, it really seemed like this was what our core really needed.

Matt G. and I both came to the conclusion that service is what our group and ministry really needed.  I felt this was a great idea for getting our core more active and would help create community.  Matt has coordinated service projects in the past, so he is definitely passionate about them and has been looking for an opportunity to get our ministry more involved with service.  After discussing our goals for service for both our core and the entire ministry, we have identified two areas we would like to lead the ministry in service.  The first is through biweekly service project which would be on Saturday mornings and would be open to the entire ministry.  We would like to get our core involved in coordinating these projects and participating as well as getting more people to participate.  Our goal is to get more people involved in service, thinking about what service means and how Christ served us in so many ways and asks us to do the same for others.

The second area of service we would like to get the ministry involved in is through spring break service projects.  We would like to take the lead in creating our own service projects that would involve more work and allow a great number of people to help in coordinating the projects.  As before, we will have a project each day of the break, but instead of going to volunteer service to find work, we would find places of need ourselves and oversee the completion of the project.  This will allow us to incorporate more people in the planning and execution of a project since we are not going through a third party agency which would do all the project management itself.