March 2026 Overview

This month, Nick, Viany, and I traveled out to my home-state of Kansas to help lead Barclay College's personal evangelism seminar. While in Kansas we also were able to visit my dad's side of the family and preach/teach at Hutchinson Friends Church, where my dad is pastoring. We had a wonderful time leading the seminar with Dan Cammock and Brockie Follette, and were blessed with the opportunity to impart, to believers and nonbelievers alike, the Gospel that Jesus preached and the command of evangelism to all believers. It was very thoughtful as we engaged with this particular demographic and balanced the retention of focus as well as the fullness of the Gospel and evangelism! I'm not sure there's ever enough time to discuss the Gospel and its implications on our lives, but we pray that what we shared and practiced during this seminar would be used by God in His personal formation of each of us who were there. It's always interesting to teach nonbelievers about personal evangelism, but this is a required class for Barclay students, so in some regards they were being personally evangelized to instead of personally evangelizing - still "personal evangelism" I suppose. We look forward to the next time we visit and the new insights we have for how we might better prepare and equip these students in our brief time of contact!

After the seminar, we headed to Hutchinson/Buhler to stay with my family and preach the next morning at Sunday service. My grandma and grandpa also came out to Haviland to spend an afternoon with us and meet Viany (my wonderful girlfriend)! We had a great time and got to show Viany some of the beauty of Kansas, as this was her first time visiting! On Sunday, we preached/taught a version of our Archways Training - a conversational approach to evangelism, utilizing the natural archways in conversations to connect people to Jesus and His Gospel. We had never done this training in a sermon format, so we were kind of adapting it as we went. I think it went well, but you can ask those who attended what they think! It might've been a bit of a firehose of information...

This month at CSUF, we decided to try a slightly different approach to engaging with students - outdoor classroom. This is sort of a cross between open-air preaching and whiteboard evangelism like we have previously done. We've desired for a while to openly preach, but, due to the pre-existing connotation of this form of engagement on campus, we've been cautious to do that explicitly. However, in a time of prayer, we felt led to try a slightly different approach for a month - an approach where we have an open classroom and teach on fundamental issues of the Christian faith such as the Gospel, discipleship, evidence of the resurrection, etc. So far, I would say we've had some mixed results - some days having more engagement than others; however, we've recognized that the teaching of these subjects is very helpful for those we are discipling, not just the unsaved, as most people have an extremely insufficient view of the basics of our faith. We've had great conversations with both believers and nonbelievers, but we'll be curious to see how it continues to work as a tool of engagement!

This month I was traveling all over the US - from coast to coast! From Orange County, CA to Haviland, KS and back; then from Orange County, CA to Orange County, FL and back. I had the pleasure of joining a group from Mid-America Yearly Meeting in attending the Exponential church-planting conference in Orlando, FL! I wasn't certain what to expect, but I was so pleasantly surprised as my time in the sessions and with the group was immensely edifying! A huge emphasis of the conference was on the absolute necessity of diligence in maintaining healthy leaders in ministry. It's not so much that I didn't already affirm this idea; however, the Holy Spirit was stirring conviction in me - not only for myself, but also for those that I'm discipling into future leaders. I have a holy obligation to deeply root and instill the absolute necessity of unity with the Father as a priority before trying to minister to others. How can we give anything of value to others if we have neglected to receive freshly from the Giver of life? As a result of this, I've been reminded by the Spirit how important it is to get people into the presence of God. We can teach them many good things and train them in so many great tools, but at the end of the day it would be a loss if they haven't seen the Father. During all of this, the Spirit used the story in 1 Samuel about Eli and his wicked sons as well as the faithfulness of Samuel to further confirm the weight of this principle. The past few weeks, I've been learning more of the heart of a pastor in how to shepherd people into the presence of God through various spiritual disciplines. It's nice to know that God is the true Prime Minister, and my main ministry is to reunite people to the One who can best minister to them where they are. I'm continuing to learn and explore what the Spirit has for me here, but it was a blessed time with some wonderful people that is already producing fruit in our team and those we minister to! 

I also got semi-stranded in Dallas, TX on my way to Exponential and had about 21 hours until my rescheduled flight, which was a new experience for me! It was during that surge of flight cancellations, so the help desk line was wicked long. I ended up figuring out hotel, meal, and uber vouchers, but was blessed to find both of my uber drivers that night and in the morning to be Muslims named Mohammed - too easy. I got to evangelize them both, which was totally epic, and I wrote a little bit more about those encounters here and here!