Troy and Megan

There are lots of good ministries here in the U.S., there’s the local church, and there are ministries going out into the world. Why focus on college students?

No demographic is better or necessarily “more strategic” since every individual is precious to God, but here are a few reasons why I think reaching out to college students is awesome. College students are:

Deciding

After having grown up under their parents’ supervision and guidance, college students are dropped off on their own for the first time. They are deciding what they will believe and how they will live. It’s possible they can change this later, but we see a great opportunity for them to know the gospel and to decide to live as disciples of Christ.

Moving On

After receiving years of education that will put them in the top tier of potential influence in global society, college students graduate and go out into the world. We see a great opportunity to train them to be leaders who are sacrificial followers of Christ, going into the workplace and full-time global missions.

At-Risk

Most church discipleship is necessarily centered around the tithing members and families of the church. It’s hard for community churches to have a substantial impact on college campuses. Also, public universities don’t teach Christ to students, but instead they often teach things that are hostile to the Christian message. Both of these factors make college a difficult environment to maintain faith or come to faith. We see a great opportunity to reach a group of people who are less likely to hear the gospel message or be discipled otherwise.

In the end, it’s really our passion for reaching college students (I became a Christian as a college student) that compels us to do what we do. Every group and every individual is important to God. But if you have a passion for college students to hear the gospel and to be made into sacrificial followers of Christ, please check out how you can help our work to continue and/or look into other ways you can get involved. Thanks!

I’m excited to be working with these guys! Please pray for us all as we raise support and get ready for the church plant. Thanks!

Here’s a disclosure of something I learned recently. Please check it out if it’s helpful for you as well:

It makes me really anxious when people around me express their negative emotions (like sadness and anger). I want everyone to be cool and everything to be okay, and I don’t want to feel like I need to drop everything and fix this person.

Sometimes that causes  me to react in ways where my primary motive is to get people calm as quickly as possible for my own sake: I have an idol of peace. The most common thing I do is point out truth before it’s the right time. That can make people feel like they can’t express how they feel or that their emotions are invalid.

The bottom line is I’m being selfish. Because I want peace so much, I manipulate the situation to get what I want (peace) instead of doing the right thing for them (listening and empathizing). One verse that is helpful for me is “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).

The reality is that I don’t need to drop everything and fix this person’s problem…my responsibility is simple: to listen and empathize with people. When I think of it that way, it’s easier for me to let go of whatever I’m doing and enter into the emotions this person is experiencing.

I do care about people, but anxiety and a desire for peace can stand in the way. Analyzing the issues and focusing on appropriate truth helps me. I hope it helps you too!

Thanks for all your past prayers for my Dad, Duncan Wallace. He passed away last November 25 at home after his war with cancer.

His obituary is still available online here. You can also check out a slideshow of pictures from his life:

“And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?” -Jesus, in Luke 12:25-26

John Freeman, who will be one of the pastors of our Pitt church plant, recently led a discussion among some of our student leaders and potential fellow church planters on the subject of idolatry. Being someone who struggles with worry a lot, I was struck with this description of the idol of control: Life only has meaning if I am able to get mastery over my life in the area of <insert here>.

The areas of my life that seem way behind or that I’m not sure what state they’re in can cause me the greatest worry. The issue for me seems to be control: I want all the areas of my life to be in order, and I believe I’m the one that needs to make it happen.

The truth is that God is in control. That doesn’t mean I should shirk responsibility; it means I should trust God to help me be wise and strengthen me to work hard on the most important things, as well as trust God with everything else. (I have finite time and resources, but God’s power is infinite.)

My expectations about how ordered the various areas of my life will be in should be based on what is realistic given my finite resources. I need to let go of my desires for absolute order and control in my life and trust God for help to manage my life in a way that is responsible and honors him, even if many things fall through the cracks.

Are you like me at all? Do you struggle with the idol of control? I hope these thoughts help you as they’ve helped me!

After much research, consideration, prayer, and counsel, our church plant team has decided on University of Pittsburgh! Thanks for your prayers for us during the decision-making process.

Lord-willing, we will start arriving in the summer of 2012 and reaching out to students that fall.

We’re super excited that we will be doing a unique work at Pitt in that we will be an on-campus church that does ministry to students right in the dorms.

Also, there aren’t many ministries in general that are reaching out to students with the gospel of Christ and building into them. So there is a great need.

Please join us in praying that God will keep our team unified, since we will have staff and volunteers coming from different churches to make up this new church at Pitt.

Also, please pray for us in all the work we’re doing to make this a reality.

We’ll be recruiting staff, recent college grads, and other friends  to join us; raising funds  to seed the church plant; selling houses and finding jobs (for some of the team); and saying goodbye to friends and family as we seek to make Pittsburgh our new home.

I’m trusting that you will keep praying for us and supporting GCM so we can continue our work even as we expand to minister at Pitt. Please let me know if you have any questions and concerns.

Your financial support and prayers are so encouraging to us! God bless you in your sacrifices for his name’s sake.

Sparticipation is a huge event where MSU students can learn about the different organizations on campus that they can be a part of. Here’s our setup…yes, it really is this crowded!

We used our spiritual interest survey to find students who want to get plugged into a church and students who aren’t necessarily Christians but want to hear what the Bible teaches. We also handed out thousands of cards with info about our on-campus church service.

RivCafe is where we give out free coffee and invite people to check out our church service and whatever else we have coming up (like broomball).

The staff are making this happen for the first 5 weeks or so, training and inviting students to take the reigns for future weeks.

Before our first Sunday service we had a preview service on Wednesday night to show new students what we’re all about. We broke down into Chapters to get people connected to our small groups.

I’m super excited about all the new people we have to follow up with! We should have lots of opportunities to share the gospel and help people get plugged into community. We have lots of returning students to build into and train to help us with this process.

(photos courtesy of Craig Hensel)

Thanks for your prayers as Megan and I have been considering our future direction. We decided to join the church plant that is being sent out by Riverview Church next fall (2012). We’re really excited to join this team and reach out at a new campus!

Please pray for wisdom so we can come up with a location by the target date (November 1). We have some really good options at this point and are just nailing it down.

Please continue to pray for us to be able to raise the extra support we need for GCM and for us to have a successful transition to whatever campus we go to.

It will be sad to be further from friends and family, but we are looking forward to the opportunities to share the love of Christ and make new friends. Our network of campus-focused churches is continuing to grow, and it is exciting to be able to reach even more students and see them made into sacrificial followers of Christ.

My Dad was admitted to the hospital yesterday. He is on his 6th round of chemo with the latest treatment plan. He still has some residual pain from the bout with shingles he had.

Now he also is getting these strange lesions which seem to be coming from his white blood counts being so low. They gave him antibiotics and Neupogen (a drug to help his body create more white blood cells), but they aren’t exactly sure what the lesions are.

The chemo has been doing its job to fight the cancer, so we are thankful to God for that. Now we’re praying that these other side effects will go away. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers. Thanks so much!

Restoring the Throne

In Chapter 5 of A.W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy, he talks about the nature of sin as it relates to the self-existence of God.

“I AM THAT I AM. Everything God is, everything that is God, is set forth in that unqualified declaration of independent being. Yet in God, self is not sin but the quintessence of all possible goodness, holiness and truth” (29).

In contrast, the sin of mankind comes from challenging “God’s selfhood in relation to his own” (29). In what way? In that humans are rebels, and we assert our own authority with disregard to God’s.

“Sin has many manifestations but its essence is one. A moral being, created to worship before the throne of God, sits on the throne of his own selfhood and from that elevated position declares, ‘I AM’” (29-30).

So it’s our “I AM” that we set up against God’s “I AM THAT I AM,” not giving proper credit to the fact that without God we would never be.

When we come to an understanding of who God is and what we’ve done, we might have the proper reaction: “‘What shall we do?’ is the deep heart cry of every man who realizes that he is a usurper and sits on a stolen throne” (30).

Only through Christ can we be forgiven of this sin and restore the throne to God, now promoting the “honor of God and the good of our fellow men” (31).

When I was a first-year student at the University of Michigan, I first trusted in Christ’s work on the cross to cover my sin. It wasn’t until the summer after my Sophomore year that I understood that I needed to set aside my desires and put God in his proper place in every area of my life in order to truly be a follower of Christ.

Living Under the Reign of God

Since then I have experienced the joy of the reign of God in my life. He gets no sadistic pleasure when we deny our base impulses to conform to his will. Rather, his ways are what is best for us in life, and he shares them with us. He’s smart and he wants us to live freely and joyfully in him, not as slaves to sin.

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” – Jesus, in John 10:10

“As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?” – God the Father, in Ezekiel 33:11…though the statement is addressed to Israel in this context, it provides an example of his heart in general.

Contrary to popular belief, God’s ways don’t limit us, but free us up. When we continue to live in darkness, getting better and better at giving into our most base desires, we become less and less in control of ourselves. Our impulses guide us and eventually control us against our better judgment and all warning. This is not freedom, but slavery.

I have personally experienced the joy of becoming free from my base desires (addiction to pornography, internal anger, using people for selfish gain, etc.) in order to live a life characterized by peace with God and strength from him to love and serve others and help them know that God is both real and good.

If you haven’t already trusted in Christ and restored the throne of your life to God, please consider doing so as soon as you can. If you have already taken these steps, please consider if there are any areas of your life that you still hold on to, not letting God reign. Pray that God would reveal them to you. I’m praying this for myself as well.

Please contact me if you want to discuss these things. Thanks!