Last night, New Life Church held its annual end-of-the-school-year celebration service, Overflow. We probably had about 300 in attendance (during finals!), soaking in all that God has done this school year. We danced, sang at the top of our lungs, heard story upon story of lives that have been radically transformed by the love and grace of Jesus Christ, and bid farewell to the senior class, wishing them all the greatest in their kingdom-building endeavors around the world. It’s so incredible to think of what God has done in each of those students’ lives in their 4 short years at New Life.
As I wrote about months ago, our pastors declared this school year to be “A Year of Freedom”. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen. We had an entire spring break trip to South Carolina dedicated to finding freedom through Christ from past wounds (it was one of our fastest-filling trips). In addition, our campus director, Nik Spasovski, shared last night that 875 different people had attended a New Life small group this year, and that 520 of them were regular attenders. That makes this (from a purely numbers standpoint) the most influential year on campus in New Life’s history! What an incredible thing God has done.
And he’s not just doing it at New Life, either! At this year’s Great Commission Ministries Churches conference just a week ago, New Life joined with 12 other campus churches to celebrate what God has done in college churches around the country. The statistics were so encouraging. New Life’s lead pastor, Steve Hayes, reported 15+% growth in worship service attendance, small groups, student leadership, full-time staff, and pastors. Most incredible was the 42% growth in small group attendance and 46% growth in total full-time staff nationwide.
It couldn’t be more clear to me that God is undeniably on the move on America’s college campuses. I overflow with joy at the thought of what this kind of growth in ministry involvement for college students will mean for the next 30 years of our country. I long to see transformation in the so-called “7 Mountains of Culture” (Arts & Entertainment, Business, Education, Family, Government, Media, and Religion), and tomorrow’s leaders on all 7 mountains can be found right now, concentrated in patches of just a couple square miles all over the country.
We call them college campuses.
What an opportunity! To know that Kingdom influence is growing where the campus churches are right now energizes me like few other things. I only hope that those campuses with little church influence are being prepared for workers who will go and plant churches there. Beginning in just a few weeks, I will join the workers’ ranks doing ministry full-time on campus at U of M, and I couldn’t be more excited and ready. Friends, keep praying for workers to be sent out into the fields (Luke 10:2). We have every indication that they’re just as ripe as Jesus said they were.
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Mike,
This is encouraging. I hope that you are encouraged and invigorated to continue to work in the fields for whatever harvest might be in store for you!