Boulevard Debut

Hi everyone, happy October! I can't wait for the temperatures to drop, and for all the holidays to start rolling around. Ministry on campus has been so encouraging this month! I'll share more throughout this update but in summary, lots of guys are getting involved and diving deep into faith and community.

Tim

Meet Tim! He's from NJ and started his freshman year this semester. He's in the process of joining a Christian fraternity called BYX, and has been coming around FOCUS as well.

We started a weekly 1-on-1 bible study a couple weeks ago called Focus on Jesus, and it's already been a blast. He has a hunger to grow in his faith, and is inquisitive and driven. I'm so excited to watch how God uses him to impact BYX, Focus, and the rest of SMU over the next several years.

Since there are so many guys getting involved, I'm thinking I'll share about 1 or 2 specific students each week and share a little about them. I have a feeling you'll be hearing more about Tim as well.

Boulevarding!

SMU doesn't have very large parking lots so on Gamedays, instead of tailgating, organizations and alumni will reserve spots of grass or pavement and go "Boulevarding." It's basically just a massive party with thousands of people packed in like sardines.

We reserved a spot for the first time and it was really successful! We met several new students, got the chance to hang and eat hotdogs with our current students, and got to meet a lot of their parents/siblings due to it being family weekend.

Speaking of gameday, SMU took on TCU in our annual face-off for the Iron Skillet a few weeks ago. For the first time in a few years, SMU won! I got to bring my cousin who's a TCU alum, and was also a part of BYX while in college. God has been drawing a lot of connections like that this year!

Then this last week, I got to bring my father to watch SMU take on Florida State and win by a landslide. He also joined for the Boulevard and got the chance to meet several of our students, and even got to share his faith with a student who is exploring Jesus for the first time! So cool!

A follow-up note on that, my dad was a part of a campus ministry while he was in college (Campus Crusade for Christ aka Cru), and he got to reminisce as he watched ministry take place at the game. What a cool picture of the life-long commitment to Christ we're trying to cultivate in our students. Who knows how many of them will have kids and grandkids that follow in their footsteps because of what God is doing right now on campus. Gives me chills!

SMU gives me a few free tickets to every home game, so if you'd ever like to come to a one, let me know! I'd love to show you around campus and introduce you to some of our students who you've been hearing so much about!

Community Group

I'm using the same pic from last month because I keep forgetting to take new pictures! But I wanted to share about how well Community Group has been going so far! We've continued to grow each week and are now settling in with about 12 students who are consistent, and around 5-6 who come off and on.

This is huge for our ministry at SMU, and is hopefully going to be a catalyst that God uses to train up more leaders in our community than we've ever had before! That's been my prayer lately. We already have six of those guys who have started meeting with either Luke or me weekly around campus for 1-on-1 bible studies, and I tell you, that's the good stuff. We've been able to dig so much deeper into the scriptures and each of their life stories than many of them have ever had the chance to leading up to college.

Thank you so much for your support!! God is certainly up to something at SMU and I'm so excited to continue watching it unfold. If just those 6 guys became leaders next year, our men's leader team will double! Please continue to pray for these students and that they would experience the deeply transformational power that Jesus wants to unleash in their lives. 

Your brother,
Taylor