William's Ministry Update

Happy Easter!

    I hope you had a great weekend, and got to take some time with your families to celebrate Jesus. I'd love to start this blog with a passage out of Philippians and an encouragement!

"In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
 Who, being in very nature God,
 did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
 rather, he made himself nothing
 by taking the very nature of a servant,
 being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
 even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
 and gave him the name that is above every name,
 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
 in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
  to the glory of God the Father."
-Philippians 2:5-11

    Last week as I was reading the book of Philippians for our New Testament class, I was struck by this beautiful poem in chapter two. As we head out of Easter weekend and back into a new week, let us not only celebrate the Jesus who died for us and was raised to life, but also the Jesus who modeled for us in word and deed what it truly means to be human. Let's consider what it would look like in our own lives to take the very nature of a servant, humble ourselves, and live obedient lives to the glory of God. 

    While you're here, let me tell you about what's been going on at CTF!

Pizza Theology

    Twice a year our campus ministry, FOCUS, puts on an event called pizza theology. It's basically a few hours of a lecture-style teaching on a relevant topic in Christianity, with a break in the middle to eat some pizza. This semester, we decided to host a watch party for our CTF students! The topic for this pizza theology was "How Should Christians Think Through Entertainment?". I am so glad that we had this event. I'm still thinking through some of the things that the speaker talked about, and I know it was helpful for our students too! Our culture is so heavily distracted, busied, and entrenched in entertainment. We're constantly receiving messages from the world through movies and tv shows we watch, music we listen to, social media, advertisements, and everything in between. In Romans 12, Paul encourages Christians to "not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds". How can we not be conformed to the patterns of the world when we're constantly subjecting ourselves to the messages of the world? That's one of the questions I've been pondering myself and thinking through with our students in response to this pizza theology. I hope it gets you thinking too!

Spring Break 

    At the beginning of March, Ronnie (the senior pastor at our Garland church), Clint (an apprentice with our Garland church), and I got to take five of our Wylie students up to Edwards, Colorado for spring break. Thanks to the generosity of a few of our church members, these guys' parents, and my in-laws for letting us stay at their home, we had an absolutely amazing week. We drove up there one day, skied three days, and drove home. Clint and I did our best to keep up with the young bucks while they skied up and down the mountain, and we took a few good spills trying. It was totally exhausting, and about as fun as a week could possibly be! There's just nothing like getting to talk about God while you're up in the mountains admiring his beautiful creation. One night at dinner we all talked about the different ways that we had seen God that day, and getting to hear those guys share about how they could see the power, love, and creativity of God by just looking around the mountains was so sweet. This is a really good group of young guys, and I'm so grateful to get to spend time with them and help them know Jesus better.

The guys on Day 1!

Logan, Jacob, Blake, Tyler, and Kole. Really good group of guys!

Last day on the slopes!

The view from the top of Loveland Pass

Ministry Update 

    It's hard to believe that I'm already through with eight months of this apprenticeship! It has challenged, blessed, and equipped me in so many ways. I've continued to fall in love with Jesus, His Word, and the work that He has called me to right now. I'm really excited to tell y'all that I'll be staying on staff with CTF once the apprenticeship is over at the end of May. Ministry is difficult, and ministry during a pandemic has been strange and challenging. Teen ministry itself can be absolutely heartbreaking. But throughout these past eight months there hasn't been a single moment where I felt like God wanted me to do something else. This is what I feel like He wants me to do right now, and I'm excited for that! I say this in every blog post, but I'll say it again: Thank you for your partnership! I couldn't do this without your financial support and your prayers for me, our ministry, and our students. I want to ask you to start praying about staying on my support team after May (or joining my team!). There is so much work to be done here in Wylie, and we have some really exciting things planned for this summer and for next school year. In the next month or so, I'll be reaching out to you to talk more about what my role will look like with CTF after the apprenticeship, and if you can continue to partner with me in the work I get to do here. God is good, and I'm so thankful to get to do what I do! 

Prayer Requests

-Pray for our students. It's been a tough year to be a teen. Pray that God would open their hearts to His Word, that He would strengthen them to not conform to the world, and that they would know and feel the love of Jesus.

-Pray for our ministry and our leaders. We're in the process of moving our Wednesday night gathering from one large group to a few, smaller groups. So far it's been great! For the guys specifically we've been able to play some basketball, and then have a small group discussion. It's been fun and impactful. Pray that God gives us wisdom and discernment in the way we lead our students. 

-Pray for the students that I get to personally mentor: Hudson, Tyler, Logan, Aiden, Jacob, Kole, Connor W, Connor C, Cole, and Tucker. 

-Pray for CTF Camp this summer! God always blows us away with what He does at camp. We can't wait to see what He does this year!

-Pray for Springjita, our fundraiser coming up on April 22nd-24th! This fundraiser is HUGE for our ministry because 100% of the donations go to sending our students to CTF camp this summer. 

  As always, reach out to me for anything! If you have a question, idea, comment, or you just wanna catch up and hear more about what I'm doing, text, call, or email me! 

    "Every time I think of you, I give thanks to God. Whenever I pray, I make my requests for all of you with joy, for you have been my partners in spreading the Good News of Christ from the time you first heard it until now. And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue His work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns." -Philippians 1:3-6

Love,

William Royal

972-979-6722

william@ctfwylie.org