a few things learned...

Looking back at the semester in review:

1. I'm terrible at blogging frequently.

2. A little goes a long way. Amazing how much a phone call to check in on someone or a facebook message can encourage someone. People are desperate to know they are loved, and God's love is often most tangible when it comes through people. That is why Jesus narrowed the entire Law down to two simple instructions: love Him, love people.

3. Comparison tends to steer us towards insecurity (jealousy, powerlessness, or disconnectedness) or arrogance.

4. God is a God of restoration: Of hope, of joy, of peace, of passion, of discouragements of every sort. His heart is for our fullness.

5. Love and honor always move us towards people. Everyone has barriers that keep them from both giving and receiving love.

6. Ministry is not for spiritual All-Stars, because there are none. Everyone has their imperfections and mistakes, but are perfect in Christ. The calling of ministry is inseparable from the belief and faith in Jesus.

7. I'm getting older, slower, and weaker, but it's because of laziness. When I purpose to, I can still hang with those in their athletic primes - which is a great way to build relationships in ministry.

8. We must never stop learning, never become complacent, and settle. One of Satan's greatest lies is that every new step we take is "good enough."

9. Leading two small groups (one of freshmen, the other small group leaders), discipling four student leaders, co leading a group or around 120 student leaders, and helping lead a ministry around 350 people, I've made excuses far too often of not having enough time, lacked intentionality, and have yet to change a culture of the next generation of Christians - this is a glass is half full mentality. Thank you Jesus for an amazing semester. Where we know He is taking us and not being there yet should never keep us from celebrating that which He has done now. Lives have been changed, friendships built, and eyes opened to the Good News. People have been freed from spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical prisons. God is good.

Murder Mystery Theater and Jamaican Invasion

Hello friends!
This past Friday, we turned the Main Chapel into a Luau grounds, complete even with a beach in the corner, for our Hawaiian themed Murder Mystery Theater. We had about 100 student leaders and freshmen show up and participate in groups to solve the case. Our staff really got to "ham it up" in our acting exhibitions for the year, and the night was a good opportunity for people to bring people together for a good time.

The past few weeks, we have been getting our Jamaica trip finalized. Last year, 110 staff, leaders and freshmen went to Port Maria and Montego Bay for Spring Break. This year, we expected we might have to go to three locations. To our astonishment, 200 people signed up to go, and our director Stephen had to go to Jamaica last week to look into additional locations, finally arriving us at the place of 3 locations (adding St. Ann's) with about 70 people each. We're blessed: what a great problem for a ministry to have.

God has really been pouring out favor on this year. It shows not just in numbers, but also in depth. In our Freshley Monday night service, we just wrapped up a three week series inspired by the book Radical by David Platt (I highly recommend reading it). In all my years in Athens (this is my 6th - wow), I have never seen a community so purposed to reach out and take the kingdom of God not just to this city, but to the world - and the weight behind the momentum is a community of 18 and 19 year old Freshmen in the body of Christ. Love it.

Please be praying for the upcoming school breaks - our freshmen and student leaders have all grown so much, and Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks can be so discouraging every year when they are removed from that intentional community. The enemy really gets people down with the lie that they can't help but backslide into who they used to be. Pray that these breaks would be seasons of taking more ground and advancing even further into what God wants to do in them and through for the rest of the year.

Freshley Retreat

Hey Friends!
I apologize, it has been far too long since I have written anything on here. Maybe this blogging habit isn't coming as naturally to me as I would have hoped.

Freshley Retreat was last weekend. With over 200 people (Freshmen, student leaders, and staff), we headed up to Dahlonega for the weekend. We prayed and prepared a lot in the weeks before, and God was so faithful. The weather was perfect. People connected and built friendships. Saturday night we had our meeting end with a 5 hour worship session as people just lost track of time. Some time after 2 AM Sunday morning as I reflected on the weekend to that point, I realized the Lord had changed dozens if not hundreds of lives forever in just a short weekend. I love the blessing and fun that is my job. The best part is really that I see people transformed more and more to His likeness on a daily basis.

I had been sick most of the week leading into the retreat, and just as I was getting better, I got my prescribed 3-4 hrs of sleep per night that comes with retreats (Love it!). So with no rest over the weekend and heading right into Monday, my busiest day of the week with Freshley, I got sick enough that I had to take Tuesday off. I think I'm just now shaking it off in time for another amazing week.

So recently I have actually become pretty discouraged with keeping this blog. I just felt like no one was reading it; then I realized this is not about how many people actually read it or how many it blesses, but faithfulness to what God is calling me to do. I'm humbled by my inability to regularly chronicle another year in ministry at Wesley, if only for my own use. Though I cannot see the purpose, love is about commitment, so in that sense at least I am aiming to love, even in this blog.

Two Weeks into the Year

The year has been incredible thus far. Our first two services at Wesley have been amazing. The first one filled Tate so fully I felt led to go worship in the hallway outside the ballroom for most of the service. It helped it was a good 10 degrees cooler outside the room where probably 1400 people or so came together to worship God.

Freshley: We split the 580 or so people who came to Freshley this past Monday into small group, which made for quite the chaotic transition, but now we have almost 40 (including prayer groups) group where students are being challenged to grow spiritually in community. My guys are so hungry for God. I could tell they were all really excited about a place where they could fellowship, grow, and outreach together. They're so cool too. Too bad I wasn't that cool when I was a freshman.

God is teaching me rest. Last weekend I had my first true Sabbath where I wasn't doing something Wesley or for other people in weeks. All the roommates were out of town or not around, so I tried to spend a day of rest in God's presence. Nearly killed me: I am such an American. Valuing time that is not tangibly productive stresses me out (and many others), but God has a heart for true rest.

Hopefully another post coming soon, I went to an amazing conference this weekend called Jesus in the Qur'an (JIQ). I'm still digesting it, and there's much too much to fit in with this post. Please be praying for God to sustain me as this week will be busy trying to launch Intramural teams for Freshley, as well as finalizing (hopefully) our leadership curriculum for our 3 areas of Leadership.

In Between Intern Training Weeks

We started intern training this past week, which has been exhausting, fun, spiritually fruitful and very different from last year. I think the final number on interns is 76 of us, meaning we now have a staff of about 90. That's not a typo. The nature of everything from how the internship is done to how the office building is set up is changing, and its very exciting to be in the midst of a place where God is building and moving in powerful ways.

This past week we had training sessions and teachings on the core values of our ministry (His power, His love, and His voice), community building/get to know each other games and competitions, and even things that were just plain fun, like dressing tacky and going roller skating as a staff. We worshiped together, prayed together, and began to open up to each and build relationships in our discipleship groups with the directors who would be discipling us this year as we seek His purpose in ministry and Christlikeness in character. Life is busy, life is good, and the school year still has yet to even start. Looks to be a great year.

We also had our Freshley staff retreat Friday to Saturday. Our first night we spent hours just getting to know each other through our testimonies and sharing of who and where we are now in life, praying together and for each other, and of course stayed up late into the night playing games. We had incredible fun tubing on the lake Saturday morning as well, even with my shoulder freshly coming out (it's still pretty sore now, so please pray for my healing). It has been an exhausting week with intern training all day and different commitments every night. The remainder of this weekend turned out to be a really great Sabbath though, which will be the needed launching pad into another week of interning that will lead straight into the school year starting a week from tomorrow.

Please Pray for:
A hunger in all the students to know the Lord, and especially the freshmen
The continued unity/community and spiritual growth of both our staff and Freshley staff
Our staff (all 90 of us) retreat the next two days
Rest - we're trying to build a culture that honors the Sabbath, a very countercultural idea in the US
Our faithfulness to the will of the Lord and not seeking our own means and ends
My role/our ministry in the leadership development of our Freshley leaders
My shoulder to heal - I don't want to miss out on anything on our staff retreat

india

India has been amazing so far. I could probably write a book, but I have spared you for the time being: www.missionindia2008.blogspot.com

much love
mike

India

It's been a while since the last post. Sorry about that if anyone has been checking in. For the next seven weeks, I will be in India. I'll try to be updating at http://missionindia2008.blogspot.com/. Be praying for us

Healed Ankle

It has been one amazing week in Athens! God has been moving in our student body so much as we prepare for next year! He seems to be growing the ministry in ridiculous ways: this year, we have 51 full time ministry interns (this is what I do) for a total of 66 full time staff (directors now added in) and around 330 students on student leadership. As of right now, it looks as if we're going to have over 70 interns to bring us to 80 for total full time staff, and over 350 student leaders for next year. We're adding a Spanish speaking ministry, the details of which I really know nothing about, but when people get a vision for something, God uses that to expand into new opportunities and our community is amazing at facilitating such enterprise. Thursday was leadership day, and our staff interviewed near about every single one of those student leader applicants. The vision of Wesley Foundation is to send Christian leaders out into the world, and to have that many to get to disciple 1 on 1 or 1 on 2 with our staff, as well as for them to step into leadership in various ministry areas, is a very exciting prospect. I am so thankful to work in a place where we see God's kingdom take ground on a daily basis.

Here's a fun example: Once a month on Tuesday mornings we have a staff activity that the third year interns plan to facilitate community amongst our 51 interns, and when a lot of people were unavailable a group of us ended up playing ultimate frisbee on a quad between the dorms across the street. During the game, I was running and stepped awkwardly in a divot causing my ankle to roll outwardly, loosing a loud pop and toppling me to the ground where I writhed in pain for a good 5 minutes. I have rolled an ankle from time to time and this was by far the most painful ankle injury I have ever sustained; my first thought was that it was broken and I was cautious to let anyone touch it, as it hurt so badly. My burly friend Clark carried me back to Wesley, where for the next two days I got around by wheeling on an office chair or limping slowly when necessary. My ankle swelled out almost an inch to look noticeably worse from even a long distance away. Despite tons of people laying hands on it and praying for it, and hours of icing it on and off, and even some ibuprofen, it stayed just as swelled up and hurt just as much. I thought about going to a doctor, but really believed God's will was to heal it, plus I didn't want to spend any money.

Wednesday morning at Staff prayer while we were praying for our Wednesday night service, I had my eyes closed and attention focused on the Lord when I began to see a scene play out in my mind (some call this a closed vision). I saw a group of freshmen surrounding me, laying hands on my ankle, praying for it, and feeling the swelling go down as God healed it in the vision. Later that day when David (one of our directors and my discipler) were praying for it, I felt God impressing the number 7 on my heart constantly. Seven is thought of as the Biblical number of completion and so I thought maybe God wanted to bring to completion my ankle's healing (even though it felt just as bad in my physical body) all the prayers people had been sowing in that night at the service with some freshmen. Or maybe use seven freshmen specifically. I didn't know, I just was encouraged. So that night at Leadership prayer (before our service at 8), I limped into the room at about 7 PM to pray with for the service. I had texted several freshmen I know through Freshley to come find me and pray for my ankle, so at about 8 when leadership ended, I had 6 freshmen and my friend Thomas pray for it. As they did, the pain went away, the swelling went visibly down, and I got up and walked out of the room to go to our service in the room next door. We decided we wanted to get to service, but that in the opening worship set we would meet up and ask God to remove the remaining soreness and immobility. When that time came, we only had 5 freshmen and Thomas to pray, so they laid hands on my ankle and prayed for a few minutes. As everyone got quiet and Thomas began closing the prayer out, I felt two more hands on my back, to find out they were two more freshmen whom I got to know on our Jamaica spring break trip, making that seven freshmen and Thomas. I stood up, ran in place on it, and then even jumped on that one foot; everybody cheered, and then we went about worshiping God. It was a pretty good night. Feels great now, I even played about 2 1/2 hours of volleyball today, where I was constantly jumping on it.

The most amazing thing: not how God healed, I am actually becoming more and more convinced that is supposed to be part of normal Christianity. The craziest part of the whole thing is that testimonies like this are becoming almost normal in our ministry and the body of Christ in Athens. We rejoiced at how good God is, but I don't think we were surprised when God showed up and made miracles an everyday part of how He loves His children.

Jamaica, Jamaica, Jamaica - the Land We Love!

Jamaica was amazing! I am so blessed that part of my job is helping lead a mission trip where I get to see 50 freshmen and student leaders transform in front of my eyes into mature men and women of God. It has been amazing all year sowing into their growth and now they are stepping into student leadership for next year.

So a quick rundown. Some of this I'm writing now, and some of it is out of my trip journal, so its a confusing mix of past and present tenses:
Thurs. March 4 - We leave Athens at 1030 PM to head to Atlanta, and stay the night at Chris's, one of the freshmen from my small group in Roswell.

Fri. March 5 - We arrive at the Atlanta airport at 5 AM, starting off a full day of traveling on about 4 hrs of sleep. Once the team arrived in Montego Bay, we got to eat at a Jamaican restaurant called Scotchie's, and then drove about 2 hours to where we stay for the week in Port Maria, the capital city of St. Mary, the poorest province in Jamaica. We begin meeting every night to worship and pray for the team, Jamaica, work sites, and our ministry there.

Sat. March 6 - Since the work projects don't begin until Monday, we take the whole team (57 of us) into the mountains to go on a hike to a waterfall and down to this small cove only locals know about. We spent the day building fellowship and community that would bear incredible fruit during the week as we worked with each other to serve on construction sites. At worship/prayer time, I got to speak about comparison stealing all joy and how having selfless servant hearts during the trip would enable us to walk in Christlikeness.

Sunday. March 7 - We split the team and went to two different Jamaican churches, both of which were amazing (though I can only speak of the other what I heard). We gave the team the afternoon off to swim and fellowship, and even catch up on rest for the week.

Monday - Wednesday - We split up in four different teams each day, starting off by going to schools and doing devotionals where we prepared (in the weeks leading up) skits, teachings/testimonies, songs, and crafts to minister to hundreds of kids in the local schools. Our sites included painting a church, building a wall for a school, another site with a bunch of concrete work, and building a wall/filling in a concrete floor for a church (the one I was in charge of for the week). We kept meeting each night to worship, pray, and hear teachings by other Wesley staff.

Thursday. March 11 - We went to an infirmary this morning where dozens and dozens of men and women with mental and physical disabilities as well as terminal illnesses live. It was a very difficult environment, but hope was present in many of the people as they sang praises to the Lord with us and prayed with us. Two guys from our team prayed for a man who was in a car accident and he stood up for the first time in 6 months. God used the opportunity to really stretch and change every person especially in their capacity to just love the people, whether that meant sitting and talking with them, or rubbing lotion on their hands and feet, or painting their nails (the girls with the women). It seemed like it was not too much to handle for anyone, but everyone walked away changed.

After the infirmary we went to down town (its not a very big city) Port Maria to eat some very enjoyable Juicy Patties, which is basically Jamaican fast food, before we went to a church on a hill and interceded for the city, country, culture, and people of Jamaica. We prayed and worshiped for about 2 hours before coming back to the hotel where we stayed. A bunch of students got to go snorkeling in the late afternoon while many just enjoyed fellowship around the pool.

Friday. March 12 - Friday was sort of our tourist day. We drove over to Ocho Rios and bartered in the marketplace for souvenirs before climbing Dunn's River Falls. We converged with the 60 or so people from the other team in Montego Bay to have one big Freshley group at the Falls, and it was beautiful to see everybody come together and share with each other about their two very respectively different amazing weeks of growth and service. This might be my favorite day of the trip, not for it being the most like a vacation, but for it being one of the most beautiful visions of what true community in the body of Christ could look like. For the second year in a row, I am blown away by the community I have experienced in Jamaica in how people push each other and encourage one another towards the Lord.

Saturday. March 13 - Another full day of travel. Coming back through Atlanta was interesting with flights rerouted from NYC by bad weather, meaning we sat in the plane for an hour waiting for a gate. Coming through Homeland Security and Immigrations was interesting with one of our girls being mistaken for someone banned from coming in the country. In the end, we leave the airport somewhere around 1030 PM.

Our mission to Jamaica was amazing in so many ways. With two groups totaling over 100 people, we're able to serve in some real tangible ways, and when that many people come together as one to passionately seek the Lord in prayer, something shifts in the spiritual climate. We experienced incredible ministry and fellowship with the Jamaican people, and ourselves were forever changed. Seeing freshmen move into who they were made to be in the Lord amazes me, and now almost all of them are seeking to be on leadership for next year, where we get to invest in them even more to be world changing leaders of tomorrow.

Keep praying for increase in all these things, especially for the freshmen and student leaders to grow into mature men and women of God, powerful for His kingdom purposes. Thank you for all your support and prayers, God is moving in amazing ways, and I am saying that from what little I can actually see.

Jamaica!

In about 9 hours from now, we'll be at the airport, getting ready to take 60 freshmen, student leaders, and staff to Jamaica. The entire trip will be about 110 people total, and was so big that starting last year (this is like the 8th year) we had to break it up into two sites. We'll count that challenge as a blessing - what a great problem to have.

My heart for this trip is to bless the Jamaican people, and not necessarily to bring them a Jesus they don't already have there, but He who is already doing more than we can imagine in this beautiful place. We are seeking to really go with the hearts of servants, and to love selflessly. I also really want to see our student leaders and freshmen step into who they are as mature believers. This trip is designed to really call them into that, and it is a beautiful process. So here we go.

Pray for:
-safe (and even stress-free) travel
-unity in the team. serving one another in truth
-focus on the Lord. We're going to serve Him as our first love. His honor. His glory.
-rest. we're going to need it. especially with most of our site starting the trip on limited sleep
-Jamaica. The people. The culture. That it would be wholly exalting the Lord in every way.
-focus. We want to be fully there, no distractions from home, school, life.
-love. We were made to be famous in the way in which we love not just one another, but people who don't know Jesus. Not for our names, but so overwhelmingly that it makes His name great. (Is. 26:8)
-the multiple other Wesley Spring Break mission trips: Peru, LA, NYC, Costa Rica, Honduras, SE USA, Bethel (CA)

The First Post

Hello Friends!

These are the chronicles of my experiences as I pursue a life of ministry, and more importantly, a life walking with the Lord as He transforms both me and people through me. My objective with this blog is to inform, connect, encourage, and perhaps even inspire. I will post themes to pray for, and I appreciate your every prayer, as not a single one escapes God's notice. So thank you for being part of my life, and allowing me to be part of yours.


Since August of 2009, I have been interning in Athens, GA at the UGA Wesley Foundation. The Freshmen ministry, which we lovingly call FRESHLEY, is my specific ministry area, which I get to run with 6 other incredible staff (1 assoc. director and 5 other interns) and about 70 students leaders. We have seen incredible fruition of hard work and prayers so far this school year, and I am convinced God still has the best to come. We have seen multiple Freshmen come into salvation, and many more begin to really step into maturity and ownership of their faith, and with that leadership, as they become closer in Christ centered community. The body of Christ is very much alive and expanding in Athens, a city so hungry for His kingdom.


What does it mean to be an intern?

Every intern has a different experience, especially since we all have different ministry areas (15 diff. areas @ Wesley) in which we focus a lot of our time, but we do have common ground. We have over 300 students on leadership, and for every one of them that leadership commitment includes one-on-one discipleship once a week with an intern to pour into their lives. As interns, we also meet for discipleship in a similar manner with an associate director once a week, forming a framework where everyone is being discipled (even Bob our director). We have general staff meetings, pertaining to staff development, intercessory prayer, and the Wednesday night service and ministry specific staff meetings. In Freshley, our meetings focus on running our separate Monday night Freshmen Service/small groups, pouring into our student leaders, and planning special fellowship events, which we have at least once a month to facilitate fun, fellowship, and even outreach to freshmen not comfortable with coming to typical worship services or on Monday or Wednesday nights. We also have many other miscellaneous responsibilities, but I wanted to keep this concise.

My particular vision for the ministry also includes generating fellowship and community at Freshley, so I put together volleyball and ultimate Frisbee games together (and even social/game nights some times) on a regular basis where students can connect. My vision is that this ministry would be a people with such great love and connection with one another that the world would know Him by how we interact, how we love one another - check out John 17 for more on that.


In any case, life is good, albeit very busy. I probably spend around 55 hours / week with activity connected to Wesley - mostly over Monday-Thursday - so it gets very tiring mid week.
PRAY for both myself and the ministry:
Rest - not in myself, but in the Lord, He will sustain me. Psalm 1
Hunger - that worldly things would not satisfy the people of the body of Christ, and that we would be in passionate pursuit of God - seeking new depths of intimacy in our relationships with Him
Vulnerability- the breaking of fear of judgment and being known will go a long way in bringing together this people an embodiment of what the kingdom of God on this earth is supposed to look like
Joy/Gratefulness - that we would be a people that look different from the typical Athens scene, and that hope and fulfillment of people in this city would be centered in Christ
Discipline - (especially for me, this blog is after all, starting in February) - I shudder and tremble at what God will do through a people so totally sold out for His glory that they are willing to apply disciplined action to do whatever it takes to bring heaven to earth and revival to where they are

"Give me one hundred men who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergyman or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon the earth." - John Wesley