30-Mar-2026

After the turmoil of the weekend, had a fairly good start to this week. Worked through staff meeting and found some good conversation pieces that helped us all be more on the same page. It is always difficult to talk about measuring ministry. There are many challenges to think through. If it is simply based on numbers, then you lose some of the intangible pieces of ministry. It is one thing to count attendance and then see how well that is going. It is quite another to try to measure Gospel conversations and depth of relationship. What should we measure to think through ministry well and to ensure that the motivations that the measurement implies are good. Sometimes it can become easy to just beef up a number out of pride's sake. Valuing attendance numbers will implicitly drive you to emphasize events, strategies, and other methods of just getting people in the door. While measuring the impact of a conversation or using some criteria to establish if a conversation was "Gospel centered" or helped someone understand an new aspect of Jesus, is a bit of a different story. Then again, if you focus too much on understanding, then someone's knowledge becomes the measuring stick. Important, but not a full picture when it comes to capturing a relationship with Jesus that is growing.

What stands out to me today is simply prayer. I feel as though I am stuck when I don't pray. Prayer is key and central to all we do. The furnace of all our work. And it just keeps hitting me in the face that to develop a heart for students, for the campus, for those who don't know Jesus, is done through prayer. Through being on our knees and bringing before God what we are doing and struggling through. We must pray. We cannot afford not to pray.