Last week on April 1st our small group (All Day) had a Krispy Kreme doughnuts fundraiser in Angell hall. We bought close to 600 doughnuts (or 50 dozen) and by the end of the day they were all sold. It was truly aamzing! Different small group members took hour shifts during the day to man the table and it was really funny (because some people were being really crazy!), challenging, and encouraging to see. Not only was it a mission to try and sell as many doughnuts as possible, but as the day went on we all began to realize that it was also a test of faith and boldness in sharing about our faith indirectly. We might not have been preaching the gospel, but sharing about our church or the fact that we went to church brought up insecurities that many of us had to overcome. The entire event was challenging--from persuading health-conscious students to buy doughnuts to learning to share our identities as Christians, we were definitely more prepared beforehand for the first challenge than the latter. However, both worked to build teamwork amongst different small group members as well as stirring a greater awareness of our responsibility as salt and light on this campus, which is something we always seemed to talk about but never really got a chance to see put to the test in this way.

The best part of the day for me was when an older man completely ignored us as we tried to get him to buy doughnuts from us, but once we mentioned it was for our church, he immediately stopped walking and came back around to our table. We explained the money would go to buying a church buildling so we could have a permanent home instead of meeting in Angell hall every week. He donated $10 and didn't even want a doughnut! This one man's gesture deeply encouraged me--it reminded me that it is not just our church members who are in this together but also the greater body of Christ on this campus...we are all desiring to see more lives saved on this campus!

It's common knowledge that the girl scouts sell awesome cookies: samoas (except they have a new name now??), peanut butter sandwiches, and other sugary sweets. And though I try to remain faithful to the girls who have supplied me with the best cookies money can buy, there's been some competition. That's right, the freshmen class, affectionately called "Frontline", will be holding a bake sale to raise money for 40DTD THIS FRIDAY.

So resist the temptation to buy any sweets from other vendors! In fact, hold off from buying any sweets AT ALL until Friday. Consider Friday the day you can go wild and buy to your heart's content. Buy it for yourself, buy it for your friends, buy it for the fatty squirrels that aren't afraid of humans.

Bottom line: buy cookies! (and tell your friends too! btw, wouldn't it be great to share your experience with God and our church over a cookie with your friend?)

Where: the Black tables outside of Angell Hall Auditorium A
When: Friday 9am - 4pm
Why: to support 40DTD and to have some fantastic cookies

Interesting fact: there's an ATM right outside the fishbowl windows, so if you're like me and don't normally carry cash around, not to worry! just head on over the to friendly machine =)

CLASS NIGHT: CALLING FRONTLINE, TEMPO, DIESEL & ROOTS!

This Friday after ACCESS we'll be having CLASS NIGHT for the undergraduate students. Class night is when students from each class gather together for fellowship, activities, and prayer. As we hit the last leg of the school year, our goal for this night is to provide the opportunity for students to get deeper with one another and reflect on God's goodness and faithfulness. So come out to ACCESS and stay for class night!

GLOBAL ACCESS RETREAT TESTIMONY

By the way, I lifted those pictures from Freddy Ng's Facebook photo album...

I wanted to share a testimony from our first ever Global Access Retreat that we had during spring break. The retreat was amazing and God was so graciously moving in our worship and prayer times. We even got to see one person make the decision to trust Christ for salvation! We also shared great times of fellowship, most memorably that Iron Chef competition for dinner. Good times. Here's CJ's testimony:

10 Years Ago

was faithful.

During this 40DTD campaign, it's been awesome reading scripture alongside the entire church, blogging about it (http://destinycampaign.blogspot.com/), and praying altogether on a daily basis to see where God is moving our church.

Something that has caught my eye are the undergrads. Emails are flying, ideas are brewing and change is appearing. Literally. The classes have recently launched a "Pennies War" to help raise money for the campaign. Word on the street is, Tempo (sophomores) is kicking major butt with a heavy carton of change. But then again, i saw some bills in the Roots (seniors) carton sooo...you never know.

Regardless, it's great seeing the entire church respond to God on so many different levels. From prayer to pennies, i'm constantly reminded that God cares about the "little things" just as much as the big. I can honestly say that the church's united effort has increased my excitement for what God has planned for us with each new day.

Game on undergrads! "it's all about the Lincolns baby"

Last Tuesday night during University of Michigan's spring break, a group of 30+ HMCC members cleaned Crisler Arena to raise funds for our church's Destiny campaign. The group was diverse - ranging from undergrad freshmen to single adults, from Michiganders to international students. At least 6 different small groups were represented that night. Upon arrival to the stadium, our group grabbed some seats and caught the last few minutes of the men's basketball game. Northwestern vs. Michigan! Northwestern won 62-60...


Two weeks prior, 20+ church members cleaned Yost Arena in under 1 1/2 hours. Crisler Arena is much larger than Yost Arena and it took a couple of hours longer to clean, but the group didn't seem to mind. It was fun and worthwhile getting to know each other and partnering with members from such diverse backgrounds, all for the same cause of "building up" the body of Christ.


Plus, we had an added incentive. One of the stadium managers struck a deal with us. Originally, we only had to sweep and pick up trash in the bleachers. But if we mopped, the manager would allow us some game time on the court! Some of us could not resist the offer and took some extra time to mop the court. Due to limited time, the manager instructed us not to play any "games" with teams, scores, etc. So we promptly engaged in a "Knock-Out competition" for 15 minutes. We were excited to know we were shooting basketballs on such a historic court in college basketball history.


It was encouraging to see so many church members put in their free time to take part in, literally, building the church. The 40 Days to Destiny had not officially started then, yet here was a group working hard behind the scenes for a greater unified vision. Even a few single, working adults stayed the whole time to help out - past 2:00AM!

What a blessing night - we had the opportunity to mingle with members we normally don't see or meet, continued building good relationships with the Crisler staff, and raised $450 for the church. Though we could not physically see the money we raised or the building and ministry it would go towards, we had the awesome privilege of continuing to build a legacy for generations to come! The transformation vision is becoming a reality and we were part of history in the making. A humbling experience... and this is just the beginning of a new chapter in our church's story. Praise God!

Welcome back students! I noticed some of you returned to Ann Arbor with tans faces- I hope that your spring breaks were refreshing. The Global Access retreat the previous weekend (2/22-23) was amazing! Thanks for all who prayed and even served at the retreat. Hopefully we'll be able to post some pictures and testimonies sometime this week.

For me personally, the spring break was a good time to catch up with work, prepare for the LAST 1 1/2 MONTHS of the school year (which is also the end of our church's ministry cycle), and start thinking about spring-summer and beyond.

Today is the start of our "40 Days to Destiny"- the time of preparation as we head into our Destiny Campaign in April. This is a breath-taking time for our church as we get a fresh spirit for our Lord Jesus Christ. Remember that it's so much more than just purchasing a facility! It's about taking steps towards fulfilling God's mission as we get filed with a passion for God's glory.

Check out the links to the 40 Days to Destiny. This page has the Bible reading plan, prayer calendar, and Vision Journal- all for you to participate in this movement!

Dorm Storm? Didn't we have that 6 months ago? Did it even accomplish anything?

At the beginning of the school year we invaded the different dorms on campus holding various events (game nights, ice cream socials, etc) to reach out to the students on campus. Each night we met hundreds of people, gave out free slices of pizza, played wii until our arms fell off, scooped ice cream even after the ice cream sundaes turned into ice cream soup, and talked with A LOT of different people. At the end of each night I'd walk away feeling excited that the harvest was plentiful, but a bit uncertain, wondering if our efforts would amount to anything at all.

So it was CRAZY for me to see that one of the people I met at our first South Quad dorm storm was becoming a member on Sunday! It was surreal watching him sign the covenant - I flashed back to his first week of school as he wore his Michigan orientation lanyard and met people from our church for the first time, and couldn't believe this was the same person.

Throughout all the prayer and preparation for each dorm storm, we would always say, "We don't need to reach hundreds of people, just one person will make all this worthwhile". Seeing that "one person" on Sunday reignited my excitement for everything we've been doing since August.

With the end of the school year quickly approaching, consider this a big PUSH to sign up for OCR (operation campus reach) next year. You freshmen may not realize it, but a lot of prayer and preparation went into your joining our family. Every year, we come to school a week before the start of classes to prepare for the students' arrival and "storm" the campus. It's always exciting and challenging and I've never once regretted taking part in it. So before you guys schedule your return flights to arrive the day before classes, RETHINK THAT DECISION. As P.Seth loves to say, "our decisions determine our destiny" =P

Architecture. At times it's been an amazing experience and at other times it makes my life completely miserable. What's funny is most of the time it does both of these things at the exact same time. Probably one of the most challenging things about it has been the isolation it forces us architecture students to submit to so often. We're on north campus. (I cannot believe how many people I've talked to that have never been there.) We're in one building for all of our classes. We spend many many hours outside of class in this one building. Our roommates never see us. We are difficult to relate to, our program is obscure, and occasionally on those delusional nights when the sun has almost risen and our projects are still not complete we wish we were back in the good ole school of LS&"play."

What I've been discovering is that these seemingly horrible aspects of being an architecture student are really what make so much of the experience worthwhile. The fact that no one else sees us and that no one else can really understand us makes our community so unique. No one else sees us, but we see each other very often. No one else completely understands us, but we're able to relate because of our similar academic situation. We're a group of 120 with similar passions and dreams.

However, a smaller group of us also have a different passion. Five or six of us who are believers and involved in various ministries on the campus have begun a prayer group for the school of architecture. After a semester of adjusting to the school, starting relationships with classmates and instructors, and being torn apart by projects and late nights, we all recognized a similar burden upon all of our hearts. We realize that we are in such a unique situation here in this school, being amongst people who never see anyone else but one another. With this in mind, we wanted to take full advantage and ask God to use us to show Christ to this concentrated group of people. We began to meet once a week as the second semester started up, sharing our prayer requests for the school, encouraging one another, and praying together. It's been exciting joining forces with fellow Christians in the school instead of feebly praying on my own occasionally. There's something about knowing for sure that there are other Christ followers fighting right along side you :) One of the girls in the prayer group has already testified to a small way that God answered our prayers. After a meeting where we prayed for the Holy Spirit to just begin moving in our specific design studios (sections of about 12 students) and to open up opportunities for us to be used, she shared that after inviting her studio to her Michigan Gospel Chorale concert, one of her classmates approached her and she was able to have a pretty open discussion about her faith and specifically prayer. She was excited to share that she really felt that it was God speaking through her and that this was just one seed that was able to be planted. We want to keep praying with faith that this is just the beginning of what God wants to do in this school!

Whew...winter retreat, praise night, and now "The Game: The Rules of Sex and Relationships"! This past Friday at ACCESS, the campus ministries started this series to teach us how to be "PROS"...

"P" stands for the PLAYERS: Part of God's purpose in creating us was for men and women to be in passionate marriage relationships.

"R" stands for the RULES: The boundaries for sex and relationships should follow these general principles. First, we need to abstain from sexual immorality. Second, we need to abide in holiness. Third, we ought to aspire to honor God. The ABC's of such God-honoring relationships are: accountability, boundaries, and community.

This upcoming week the second part will cover the "O" (objectives) and "S" (scoreboard). So for those who are on campus, we enthusiastically want to invite you come out to ACCESS this Friday night.

As part of the evening we will have a question and answer session. If you feel so bold, please check out our Facebook event and post your question on the wall. Or if you want to ask a question anonymously, you can write it out and bring it to ACCESS. There will be a basket in the back to place questions as well as people to collect your questions.

In the meantime, have a great week!

STARTING THIS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8!

I've felt a strong need to have a series like this for ACCESS because there's such a strong culture of sensuality as well as gross inaccuracies regarding sexuality on college campuses. I learned about sex in my 5th grade sex-ed class, in the locker rooms, and through the TV shows and movies that I watched. Too often I see believers in Jesus "Christianize" their secular concepts of sex, dating, and marriage with a smattering of random Biblical wisdom. The results are a lot of broken hearts, physical and emotional baggage, and disillusionment towards God and others.

I won't claim that we have all the answers or that we've done it 100% right. But I do believe the Bible gives us principles to light our way in this tricky topic. There's too much at stake here to not address this topic though! I've seen too many brothers and sisters get off-track...and I've seen the power of relationships when the couple is set on honoring Christ and one another.

We're also going to spice ACCESS up a little bit with a few different items. This week, the Creative Worship Team will present a compilation of songs and there will be a Global Access retreat promotional. Next week (2/15) for the second part of "The Game" we will have some time dedicated for a "question & answer" session where hopefully people can pose questions through our Facebook event and/or some other means.

More developments to come soon! See you all at ACCESS tomorrow!