| In recent years I’ve had the privilege of coaching middle school soccer for each of my 4 children. I’ve learned a lot about an interesting variety of things: team dynamics…teen hormonal imbalance…but most especially, I’ve learned about the beautiful game of soccer. Soccer, like many other great games, involves both defense and offense. Knowing this, if we as coaches were to only focus on helping the team prevent goals (defense), we might have a better chance at a clean sheet or “shutout”, but we wouldn’t score any goals (offense). Winning involves both defense AND offense. Therefore, we need to keep the other team away from our goal, but we also need to score goals. Likewise, in God’s kingdom, “we the church” need to play both defense and offense. We need to keep the bad stuff out (i.e. obey the “Thou Shalt Not” commands), but we also need to collectively “shoot” out the goodness of the gospel into the world (i.e. obey the “Go and Do” commands). This is part of why we GO to the campus with the Gospel. We mustn’t simply sit in a defensive posture and contend against humanism, secularism, popularism, or any ism. We can’t just complain that these powers are attempting to win the hearts of our brightest young people and future leaders. We must go, and go with the power of the Holy Spirit and the truth of the Gospel. Fundamentally, I am a campus missionary and want to reach students on campus because I was a student that was reached on the campus. I was seeking out sin, but Jesus, through my friends, was more aggressively seeking out sinners like me! Together, Jesus and my friends were “playing offense.” This is what Every Nation Campus (ENC) does all over the world, and here at the University of Texas. ENC is the international campus arm of our global family of churches called Every Nation, and Mosaic is our partner church. Our presence at UT has seen some meaningful growth in recent semesters. For example, we’ve trained up a few dozen students to participate in ministering to their friends, and it has borne fruit: several of their friends have come to know Jesus and get baptized this year. Perhaps the most exciting development this year is that we have 3 new staff members coming on board to join me and Matthew Schumann full time: Jon Maas, Reese Noyes, and Sophia Engman. These three will help us to “run our play,” to engage lost students on the campus, establish them in the truth of the Gospel, equip them to minister to their friends, and empower them to lead on the campus and in our culture! You are part of a church that not only goes to the nations, but specifically goes to the campus where the nations of the world come. Thanks for believing with us for a great move of God at UT! Let’s go! Peter Dusan ENC Regional Evangelist | UT Campus Director |
