Amazing Opportunity in Austin! Student CPx...

I can't believe it's happening in Austin.

Last year, I "accidentally" went to a missional experience in Lawrence, Kansas, put on by Campus Church Networks, called STUDENT CHURCH PLANTING EXPERIENCE. Student CPx.

It was an accident because I really intended to go to a different program called Antioch Forerunner Foundation, which was more geared toward the Asian nations than toward college campuses. I knew about Student CPx, but I didn't want to go because I had already been to all the simple church conferences, and had heard all the top speakers and read all the top books, and was honestly feeling like an expert on the topic. An expert in the theory part that is- I had never actually done this stuff. Well, they ended up combining the two programs, so two weeks of AFF was spent at Student CPx.

Turns out, Student CPx was a lot more than I imagined it would be. A lot less in terms of physical grandiosity, but a lot more in terms of spiritual riches. I expected a grand conference room in a big building. I found myself in a small lounge-size room, with blank walls and old mismatched furniture. This is where we met together. I expected 500 students. But by the end of the experience, I could call all 50 students my close friends. I expected to applaud and admire gifted speakers. I did not expect to hang out with them and partner with them in evangelism. I expected to work among cool, i-Pod cladded, status-quo American college students. I was suprised to be sent to a tiny college for Native Americans, working among the overlooked, the rejected, and the forgotten of this nation.

It wasn't broadcasted on God TV. It didn't break attendance records. And it was not known about or talked about in Christian circles. But I'm pretty sure the devil will never forget it.

We lived in a dorm building called Pocahantas Hall. I thought that was pretty cool, being a Disney princess fan and all, until I realized that every student we told acted shocked that we were staying there and let us know that it was haunted. A century earlier, 100 or so sick Native American children were sent to Pocahontas Hall as their hospital quarters, but they were not looked after properly, and many of them died there as a result. It's not a legend. It's a fact. Sure enough, many of us started getting dreams and weird encounters with what looked or sounded like children in the night. To add to that, we went down to the basment and found all sorts of monuments and idols for witchcraft and Satanism. We exposed of them all and prayed over the area.

So we started off with spiritual warfare. As a community coming together in agreeance, we repented on behalf of the children who were left to die in that very building, and we repented for our nation's wrongful treatment of Native Americans throughout history and currently. We cried out to God for mercy. We asked him to rebuild these people with the restoratational power found in the good news of Jesus.

Our prayers then led us to action. Every day we went out on campus and ate meals with students, played sports with them, and started to get to know them. We were not slow to bring up the gospel because we knew we only had two weeks with them. Whatever we learned from speakers and teachers in our meeting room, we would go out that very day and apply on campus.

I remember one day, we learned about finding the "person of peace," a principle found in Luke 10. The next morning I went out with some friends to pass out snacks and water bottles to students for finals week. This guy named Bear stopped to talk with us, and I knew that I needed to say something to see if he was hungry for God. I asked him about his name, and he said he wished he could live up to it by being more courageous. I told him I had a Scripture for him. I showed him 2 Timothy 1:7 "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind." He seemed really appreciative of this. So I asked if he would like to read more of the Bible together with me and my good friend Harold. We met with him that night and spent hours going through Bible passages and talking about the call of God on his life. The next day I met with him again, along with my friend Kelly. I was learning about the importance of going with a partner.

On the last day of CPx, we put on a dinner for the students, and Bear and some other students came. One of my precious friends Priscilla asked Bear if she could pray for him. Priscilla has a strong prophetic gifting and everything she prayed I knew to be true from my conversations with Bear, but she had only just met him. As she spoke into his family situations and even mentioned some of the Scriptures we had discussed the night before, he began to break down and cry. I realized the power of people with different giftings working together for one cause with the same love.

After dinner, we left to have a time of prayer and commissioning. Two students asked if they could come with us- Bear and Tabash. As we prayed over one another, the Spirit began to fall on us powerfully, and we prophecied over each other. The whole time, in the back of mind, I was wondering what Bear and Tabash were thinking. Were they freaked out? When we had finished up, Erik announced to us, "As we were praying, Jesus spoke to Tabash, and Tabash asked him to come into his heart! He wants to get baptized!" I was immediately reminded of 1 Corinthians 14:24-25 "But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you."

As we headed upstairs to baptize him in the community bathroom bathtub, Bear made the decision to follow Jesus and get baptized as well! We baptized them, saw them filled with the Holy Spirit, and prayed into their destinies as Native Americans walking in the love and power of the living God.

There was great rejoicing in heaven on that day, as those who were lost were found again and brought back to the open arms of God their Father. All these church planting theories were not just theories anymore. They were not just dry information. This was the living, breathing, reality of the kingdom of God arriving in the lives of college students with the transforming power of Jesus! It caused me to see church planting in a new way. It is not about the strategies or the visions or the methods. It's about encountering Jesus. And there is nothing like it.

This summer, Student CPx is coming to Austin, August 10th-20th. For more info go to http://campuschurch.net/empower/stucpx/austin/. Don't miss the chance to encounter Jesus and his kingdom together.