Mission Team Planned for Norman, University of Oklahoma this Summer
Zach F • April 1, 2015
We are excited to announce that this summer, the DFW Church will send my wife, Susan and I to lead the mission team to Norman, home of the prestigious University of Oklahoma. Living in tornado alley, Oklahomans have seen their fair share of powerful storms, but we believe God is bringing a storm over Oklahoma that will not cease until it has accomplished God’s goal. For those of us who choose to go, we are that storm. By faith, we will plant, we will water and we will watch it grow. We will work as if it depended on us, but we believe God will bring about such an awesome victory that no one will be able to boast.
We are praying for men and women to join the mission team and go with us to evangelize this area. Our dream is to have a thriving campus ministry, surrounded by a loving church. If you choose to go, you will be joining a team of faithful disciples who will be giving up homes, jobs, friends, and family to help spread the gospel in Oklahoma.
The Norman mission team will join the already established church in Oklahoma City, led by Jason and Rachel Touchatt, which meets just 10 miles from campus. Norman is only the first domino to fall in a chain reaction of change across this state, fortifying the churches of Oklahoma City and Tulsa, while also dreaming of future mission teams.
We look forward to what God will do as we prepare for the first faith-building school year of campus ministry at OU in over a decade.
If you are interested in being a part of the mission team, want more information, or you know of someone in this area interested in studying the Bible please contact me at ben@dfwchurch.net.
More from ICOC HotNews:
More from the International Church of Christ
Imagine you are at a neighborhood barbecue. Your new neighbor arrives late, dressed casually, and barely speaks. Someone whispers, “She thinks she’s too good for us.” You feel the quick sting of that snap judgment. Later, you learn she just lost her husband and is quietly grieving. In that moment, you sense the discomfort of judging wrongly, a rush to conclusions that harms relationships and reveals more about our own hearts than the other person. Yet, the same evening, when another guest makes a racist joke, you feel an inner nudge to speak up. Is that also “judging”? This everyday tension captures what Jesus presents in Scripture: a divine balance between grace-filled restraint and righteous discernment. The two commands in tension “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” – Matthew 7: “Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.” – John 7:24 At first glance, these seem contradictory. Don’t judge. Judge correctly. Which is it? Matthew 7 warns against a critical, hypocritical spirit that condemns others while ignoring our own faults. The context continues: “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Matthew 7:2). Jesus then uses the vivid image of someone with a plank in their own eye trying to remove a speck from another’s. Notice the aim: “then you will see clearly to remove the speck.” Self-examination is not a reason to stay silent. It is how we become safe enough to speak (Matthew 7:3-5). John 7, however, shows Jesus defending his healing on the Sabbath. He challenges the religious leaders: stop superficial, appearance-based judgments and instead apply right, truthful judgment aligned with God’s character and Word. This is not a contradiction but a divine tension, two truths that must be held together. We are called to humility and self-examination (do not judge harshly or hypocritically), while also exercising discernment and moral clarity (judge correctly, according to truth). Christianity rejects both naive permissiveness (“anything goes, no one can say anything”) and harsh legalism (constant condemnation without grace).
Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about next year’s trip to Mt. Kilimanjaro.
The physics of the pendulum Picture an old grandfather clock in a quiet hallway. Its long brass pendulum swings steadily: tick, tock, tick, tock. Now give that pendulum a hard shove to the right. It does not simply glide back to the center and stop. It races right past the middle and sways just as far to the left. Left to its own momentum, a pendulum never rests at either extreme; it finds peace only when it hangs still at the center, held by gravity and its fixed point. The church behaves in much the same way. Push her too far toward one side of a truth and she does not gently settle into balance, she swings. Often for a whole generation toward the opposite error, and then back again, wounding people at both ends of the arc. And here is the crucial thing the clock teaches us: the pendulum comes to rest not by being frozen in place, but by being held. Balance is not the absence of force; it is the fixed point that keeps opposing pulls in tension so that the weight can finally hang still.