On Sunday, August
28th we had our 2nd largest attendance since planting the Church in
January of 2009. We had over 100 at Church. It was encouraging, as we
were singing, to see more and more people coming through the doors to
worship with us. Last Sunday we had an attendance of 85 which is still
super encouraging for a congregation of 53 members.
To kick off the new school year, I preached out of Ezra chapters
1-3. The two points that I challenged us with were to 1. Build Your
Altar and 2. Build the Temple. Even after 2 and half years, we still
consider ourselves to be a mission team and a newly planted Church. Our
mindset and our hearts have not deviated from the mission of ‘making
disciples’ and building God’s Church right here in Clemson, South
Carolina. So, I stressed the importance of every member of Clemson
Foothills Church, especially the students coming back from the summer
(exile), to start off the new school year with the priority of first
‘Building their Altar to God’. Meaning, make sure that you’re priority
is your personal walk with God. When the Israelites returned from Exile
and were given the charge by King Cyrus to rebuild the Temple of
Jerusalem, however, before they began focusing on the Building of the
Temple, they first settled in and then built an altar to God to offer
burnt offerings. God comes first!
We can continue to strive to build the Church here in Clemson and it
would probably grow, but we feel how we build it is so incredibly
important. If we build it but we aren’t first and foremost walking in
step with the Spirit and making our own walk with God a priority, then
we would only be building on sand. We need to have both, building our
personal altars to God and building the Temple (the Body of Christ), at
the forefront of purpose for being here.
We are excited about some of the things we are trying to implement
in continuing to build family and to build conviction here in Clemson.
Here are some of those things:
A couple of years ago we began a
new concept in Discipling. We knew that we wanted to implement
discipling relationships in the ministry but wanted to be careful how we
did it. With the concept of ‘A Cord of Three Strands is Not Easy
Broken’, what we decided was to start in the campus ministry, what we
call, ‘Groups of Three’. Each brother and sister is connected in a Group
of Three. Three brothers in a group and three sisters in a group. No
one is ‘over’ anyone. They are peers even though their may be those who
are ‘older’ spiritually. Naturally, those who are older and more mature
will help facilitate the group, but everyone is equal. They meet at
least once every week with three things expected to take place in that
time, 1. Open with Prayer 2. Open their Bibles and 3. Be Open. Every
semester the groups will change up so that everyone is in a new Group of
Three. We do this in order to deepen new relationships. If someone is
studying the bible and then gets baptized they are added to a Group of
Three and it becomes a ‘Group of Three + 1’ or if more than one is
baptized, ‘Group of Three + 2, but it remains a “Group of Three”. When
the New semester begins the groups are brought back to being just a
Group of Three.
It’s still a work in progress but so far, this has worked for us
extremely well. This semester we are doing some things a little
differently with the Groups of Three. Because we now have a campus
ministry with maturing leaders, each Group of Three has a leader,
however, those leaders are still peers. It’s just their responsibility
to organize and make sure there is follow through with their Groups. We
have also gotten the Marrieds involved. Each Group of Three this
semester has a married brother or sister who is in their group as a
resource or an older brother and sister whom they can go to in order to
settle disputes or get advice. The marrieds will meet with the Group of
Three twice a month. Both the campus and marrieds have been so excited
about this because of how it keeps them connected to one another!
We will be starting a 6 week rotating Young Christians Class on
Sunday mornings (called Boot Camp) for newly baptized disciples. There
will be 6 different topics that will repeat every 6 weeks. Once someone
is baptized they will begin attending this class. They will enter which
ever session is taking place the week after they are baptized. Once they
get through all six sessions, if they choose, they can attend Sunday
Night Cross Training.
Cross Training is an ‘open to all’ group that we have every Sunday
night where we will be helping the campus brothers and sisters to grow
in their personal convictions and to love their bibles. We will be
teaching them how to study the bible with their friends as well as how
to use their bibles better in personal bible study. We’d like to see
them grow accustom to gaining convictions about many of the things that
young campus students are faced with in their generation using the
Bible.
Campus students are faced everyday with the pressures of their
culture. Even in our campus ministries. What Stacey and I DON’T want to
do is implement rules. This, as we have seen, is counter productive. So,
this past Sunday evening we kicked off Cross Training with a charge for
each of campus brothers and sisters who attended to take this week to
study out (biblically), for themselves, some of the big topics they
thought were most important and most prevalent to the ministry. We then
asked them to come in this next Sunday ready to talk about and discuss
the expectations they have for one another regarding these topics. Some
of the topics they considered to be most important are:
Relationship Boundaries
Cleanliness in Households
Speech (Gossip, joking, sarcasm)
Discipline in School
Dating
Alcohol and Smoking
Modesty
These
are topics they came up with and want to have addressed. However, what
we didn’t want to do is have everyone sitting around discussing their
opinions about them, but rather discuss these topics having biblical
support for the convictions they have about them. We did this two years
ago when we were a campus ministry of about 8 or 9 and it set the tone
for those who would come around, study the bible and get baptized.
Because the ministry stood unified on certain standards and
expectations, the young Christians followed suit. But again, we want
them to have their own convictions. Not mine and not Staceys. We believe
this will help facilitate that in them.
It’s hard to believe, but we have 5 dating couples in our campus
ministry now. Love is in the air!!!! Aaron and Laura Styles assisted by
Joe and Alison Bradford will be starting a Dating Devotional for all the
dating couples. Once a month they will meet with the couples to feed
them food and then dig biblically into the principles of relationships.
This is such a need as we have many young dating couples who go without
much or any help in how to do it right.
One of the brothers here, Aaron Styles, is an accomplished
businessman who was converted at NC State as a campus student.
Beginning this year, he will begin a class for our graduating seniors
that will help them to transition from being students in the campus
ministry to the real world. This is such a need for our young,
graduating students.
We have eight married couples at Clemson Foothills Church and
another couple moving along. Brent and Alyssa Emerson have been visiting
with us since April. Their daughters are on the swim team with our
daughters, Chloe and Reese. We have been building a great friendship
with them and have been studying the bible with them for a couple of
months now. Brent is an Engineer and Alyssa, a speech therapist. Please
pray for them.
This past Sunday we officially welcomed into our fellowship as
members, Gregg and Wynn Eargle and Aaron and Laura Styles. Both are
amazing couples who have added so much to the maturity of our group. We
are still praying for mature, spiritual couples from our sister churches
in the Southeast to have it on their hearts to move to Clemson and help
us build a foundation of family and spirituality in our fellowship.
We’re excited about what God can do this next year. We have no idea
what that might be, but we know that he has a great plan! Please
continue to pray for us here in Clemson, South Carolina. Pray for our
plans, pray for our young Christians and pray for us to continue to
build here in a way that is pleasing to God. Thank you so much for all
the support you have given us over the past couple of years! We are so
grateful to all our brothers and sisters in all our churches for your
continued love for God, the Church and the Lost!
Much Love,
Jarrod Robinson
Minister, Clemson Foothills Church