I know its been a long, long time since I've written, but I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the last semester/year. This last Thursday, Stephen told the students that this last year has been the most effective year of ministry of his 11 years at UTA and actually told them about some of the goals that Stephen and I set for the year last summer and how God had helped far exceed those goals this year.
I have told our student leaders this as well on several occasions: "We are seeing things happen here at Chi Alpha that never happened during my five years as a student!" I didn't want our younger students to take these things for granted and not see the significance that they have. I just wanted to document some of those things here so as to not forget:
We started the school year with 3 returning students and one of those graduated in December. God has allowed awesome growth to take place this year: We had four students who attended the SLA and have a solid core of eight students returning in the fall.
For the 1st time that I can remember, we have had a huge open door in one of the dorms, KC Hall. Our guys small group met in there and twice we hosted dinners in the Great Room with about 120 coming to the first and about 75 coming to the second. Many students that we have met in KC Hall have come to our Above Ground service and attended the small groups.
We have had three students go through our G2G (generation to generation) class this year and have been affirmed as small group leaders for the fall and we already have 2-3 students who want to take the class in the fall.
We got two small groups up and running for this school year. Both have went very well. The thing that I am most excited about is that both groups have students regularly attending that do not come to the Above Ground service meaning that we are not just funneling the Chi Alpha students who attend Above Ground into small groups but the small groups are actually reaching out to new students expanding Chi Alpha's influence on campus!
We had 4-5 students respond this semester at our Above Ground service to dedicate/rededicate their lives to the Lord. Again as a student, frankly, I just don't remeber this happening before, definitely not on a regular basis like this last semester.
This semester alone we have had 20-25 visitors to Above Ground, most of them living in KC Hall.
About 4 or 5 times, we have had Shorthorn reporters on their own initiative decide to write articles in the paper about different events that we have sponsored. Charles started coming after seeing one of these ads in the paper.
Obviously, the Spirit of God has been very active throughout this year. I am just so excited that I have the opportunity to see the prayers of myself and many other past Chi Alpha students being answered in this generation of students. I can't wait for the fall! Praise God!
