Here is part 2 of the brief story of our ministry through the eyes of one of our college directors, Logan Gentry, who has been here from the beginning.
Summer of 2008-Transition to Current and Future Vision
The Summer of 2008 gave the College Ministry an opportunity to reflect on the vision of the Church and how it applied directly to the context of the local universities, primarily the University of Texas. Through this evaluation, we began to understand that we weren't fully accomplishing the vision of the Austin Stone in the college context and needed to transition our leadership team and future leaders around the idea of Missional Communities.
This summer served as a dramatic shift in vision and philosophy, moving away from community groups, which often became small groups bible studies, to the vehicle of missional communities. The idea was that a missional community would be a group of believers who together were outwardly focused on reaching the world around them with the gospel through word and deed.
Fall 2008
Structurally, the college ministry shifted to primarily student-led groups with adults serving primarily as the role of coaches, mentoring student leaders. To assist the adults in the college ministry, a bi-weekly training was developed and we went through "Church Planting Movements" and discussed how the work of God throughout the nations might be accomplished on campus.
This discussion allowed us to grasp the ideas of abundant prayer and abundantly sowing the gospel on campus as the key characteristics that define missional communities. From these ideas were developed 4 accountability goals that each group would be asked to accomplish, Prayer, REAP (a bible devotional method), Community, and Evangelism.
Also during the fall about 35 freshman and general college missional communities joined the church in going through the Vision Series material to develop an understanding of being "For the City" and specifically for us, "For The Campus".
Spring 2009 - The Gospel Defines Our Communities
In the Spring of 2009, the College Leadership Team prayed through and directed the missional communities to remember, embrace and enjoy the gospel above all else. It was our understanding that delighting in the gospel would flow naturally into accomplishing the 4 accountability goals identified the previous semester.
Truly enjoying the gospel causes Christians to seek the Lord (Prayer) and through His Word (REAP). It also results in the uniting of the body of Christ to love one another and serve each other (Community) and the naturally makes Evangelism normal both for individuals and the community together.
This changed all of the training for ministry to focus on a right view of the gospel for our leaders so they could lead their fellow students in accomplishing these 4 actions, which amount to the things that are essential for being and living out faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.
This semester also made it clear that to truly accomplish missional communities, the leadership had to be decentralized and primarily occur through the coaches rather than the college leadership team.
Renovate UT
The Spring of 2009 was also the semester that Renovate UT, a unifying of various churches and campus ministries around missional communities, was established. College pastors and leaders of various campus ministries gathered weekly for prayer and discussion centered around the goal of unifying around common language and practice to reach the entire campus of the University of Texas.
This organization continues to meet weekly and work together, sharing resources, students, and praying toward the renewal of the campus. It's an amazing testimony to God's people placing the gospel of Christ above ministry reputation and gain so as to remove all hindrances to the gospel and unite so an entire campus can know Jesus Christ.
