Fall Prayer & Needs List

Hello Everyone!

I bring you incredible joy from Ohio’s Northcoast!  We are frantically preparing for our Fall Semester and we have spent an enormous amount of our summer contacting our incoming freshmen and beginning to develop relationships with them. We have the largest freshmen class enrolling this fall at Tiffin University, so you can imagine how excited we are about the possibilities.  The University’s Admissions Department has opened their doors helping us with contact information for this year’s incoming class.  Because of this, we have been able to reach deeper inside this class than ever before!  We are unbelievably thankful for this opportunity!

 

We are sharing with you our needs list for our fall semester.  And I must say, our list is long this year.  With our ministry growing as fast as it is, we are in need of many things.  As you read our list, we ask you to share it with your church, your Sunday School classes, your friends and family and anyone else that has a heart from ministry and missions.  As you pray over this list, we would like to please encourage you to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s guidance as to how you can help impact our ministry.

• Bibles (any amount given is amazing!)
• The Invitation CD’s ($20 a case for 20 CD’s)
• White Copy Paper ($25 for the semester)
• Colored Copy Paper ($50 for the semester)
• Labels ($25 for the semester)
• Printer Ink ($35 per month, or $105 for the semester)
• Copier Ink ($100 for the semester)
• Boom Mic Stand (approximately $50)
• Discipleship Material for our Small Groups (approximately $125 for the semester)
• New Banners (approximately $125 for 2 – 3’x6’ full color banners)
• Material for our Outreach Project in our cafeteria ($25 per month or $75 for the semester)
• Material for our Outreach Project in our campus’ coffee shop & café (approximately $250 for the semester)
• Media material for our large group worship services ($25 per month or $75 for the semester)
• Material & Supplies for our Freshman Class Outreach Project ($50 for the semester)
• Campus-Wide Mail-Out (approximately $225)

If you would like to know more about the details of any or all of these different projects, please contact us, we would love to share this with you!

On a more personal side, we also have a list of needs for our family that we would greatly appreciate your help with.  Our income is limited, and your support is so very valuable to us.

• New tires for both of our vehicles before winter season starts ($400 per vehicle or $800 total)
• One of our vehicles is in need of mechanical repair (approximately $1500)
• Help with our heating costs for this winter (approximately $400 per month)

You financial support of ANY AMOUNT is overwhelming appreciated!  And if you sense the Holy Spirit moving toward you being one of our regular monthly supporters, we would love to have you partner with us!  Remember, ALL financial gifts to our family is Tax Deductable!  No amount is too small to work for the Kingdom!  Please contact us for more details!

I know this is somewhat overwhelming, but we have so much activity on our campus where God is at work.  The greater the help, the more impact we can have on our campus for Christ.

Thank you so much for praying for and loving our family!  It’s a pure pleasure to serve our Lord and Savior on Ohio’s Northcoast!

Blessings from our family to yours!

 

The Whaley’s

Jim & Denise

www.LifeAtH2o.org

 

 

 

 

 

Chaos!

It’s mass CHAOS at our house!  CHAOS because we are in HIGH-GEAR getting ready for this Fall Semester.  WoW, we’re seriously crazy busy trying to contact all of our incoming freshmen, getting them information about H2O!  We need your prayers…desperately!  We’re praying for a God-Sized movement on our campus this year, join us!

~Jim

Yearly Wrap-Up

The smoke has finally cleared and another incredible year at TU is in the books!  We would like to say ‘Thank You So Much’ for all of your support…all of your prayers…and your friendship!  God is an amazing God, and He is clearly at work here on our campus.  There is not a day goes by that we don’t have the opportunity to reach deeper in our campus than we did the day before.  Only He can open those doors and provide us with those opportunities.  We’re believing for an even bigger 2001-2012 year.  We’re already deep in the planning stages for what this year is going to be like.  We are anticipating a huge freshmen class coming in and making an impact right away.  Our prayers are huge for this coming year!  Please join us as we seek His Face for wisdom and direction!  Here is a snapshot of what our year looked like!  Even now as I write this, I still can’t believe God blessed us this much!

Brief Highlights of the Fall Semester:

• Took a group of students to College Week  in Glorieta, NM.  Man, was that a blast.
• Had an amazing ministry project at the beginning of the Fall Semester as we helped our incoming Freshman Class move in to their dorms.
• Sponsored our 2nd Annual Homecoming Dance.
• Held our first baptism service.  Three students were baptized.
• Passed out late night Hot Chocolate and snacks to Freshmen who were spending the night outside getting ready to schedule Spring Semester classes.

 

Brief Highlights of the Spring Semester:

• Held a campus-wide Movie Night.  We watched ‘To Save A Life’.
• Sponsored our Annual Nacho Booth at TU’s Springfest.
• Lot’s more Hot Chocolate & Snacks for freshmen!
• Held a campus-wide NFL Draft Party.
• Held our annual Senior Commissioning Service.

 

We had the privilege to see 8 students accept Christ!  Our small groups were incredible this year, and, we began our new ‘micro’ Bible Studies, our new  ‘Ten Minute TakeAWays’.  Those were amazing!  Each of our small groups were responsible for ministry/missions project either on campus or in the community.  It was such a blessing watching our students ‘give back’ to our community.  And all in all, we had approximately 150 students involved in the ministry each week!

Please keep your prayers strong for us and our campus community.  We feel that God is on the brink of something mind-boggling in the extreme near future.   We’re believing in God to radically change our campus!  And we want to be ready when He chooses to do so.

 

~Jim

 

Blogathon

Last week was a crazy week for us!  We were so excited to be a part of a national blogathon held at the FaithOnCampus Blog.  The theme for the blogathon was ‘The Future of College Ministry’.  I was blessed to be a part of this incredible event.  You can read my article HERE!   Hope you enjoy!  Let me know your thoughts!

 

~Jim

 

Brand New Doors

This week has been almost breath-taking in what we’ve seen God do!  Normally when we come back to campus from Spring Break, it’s a lull time…attendance is down…no motivation from our students, but this year has been amazing!  We’ve had an incredible month is our worship services!  We’ve seen monumental increases in our Small Groups!  Crazy stuff!

But we’ve had a brand new door of opportunity open for us that we really wasn’t prepared for!  We have a small group of local community high school students that are beginning to attend our weekly worship services, and occasionally one of our Small Groups.  I’ve had some great conversations with this group of high schoolers.  Over the past month, we’ve seen two of them accept Christ, and begin bringing more of their friends.  Overwhelmed to say the least.

So I decided to discuss the possibility of having a weekly off-campus Bible Study with this new group.  This would give them an opportunity to invite their other high school friends and to ‘check things out’ with out having to come on campus.  They LOVED the idea!   So we started looking for possible places to meet.

This past Wednesday night, we had our first meeting…off campus…and we had 5 local high school students attend!  Other than the 2 who are recent converts, the other 3 are unchurched students.  We had a great time!  These 5 students left excited, wanting to bring more of their friends next week!  So now, we have an official, off-campus small group for our community high school students!  I’ll be leading this group myself, along with 2 our 3 of our student leaders from H2O.  Overwhelmed!

Please pray that God will continue to open brand new doors of ministry for us.  This is one of those things that we least expected…but one that we were thrilled to see!

~Jim

Are you Kiddin’ Me?

I’m not gonna lie, I am straight up stoked!

I’ve been a fan of the FaithOnCampus blog for long time.  It’s such a great voice in the collegiate ministry world.  The blog is always current and extremely relevent.  Something that really gets my juices cookin’ is the blogathon that takes place, sometime in the Spring.   Super topics…great contributors…crazy dialog!  Yep, I love this stuff!  It’s kind of like food for the college minister’s soul!  LOL!

This year’s blogathon is scheduled for April 5th – 7th.  The topic:  ‘The Future Of College Ministry’.  It’s gonna rock, there’s no doubt about it!  I cannot wait.  There is already some chatter about it on @twitter.  You would do well to hang out at this year’s blogathon, if for nothing more than the depth of the visions that will be shared about collegiate ministry!

As for me, I’ve been smacked with a truckload of humility!  I’ve been asked to be a contributor to the blogathon this year. Yep…me!  I’m estatic…overwhelmed…blown away…and scared slap to death all at the same time!  Even though I write quite often, this is huge for me!  And seriously humbling to say the least!  Thank you so much to @guychmieleski for this incredible invitation!

I would ask you to please pray that I would be totally in tune with God’s Spirit as I search His Heart about my post in the blogathon.  Pray that I will be a mouthpiece for the incredible opportunity that we have each day to reach this amazing generation that occupy our college campuses for Christ.   And please pray that each contributor and reader would be overwhelmed with what the future holds and how we can truly impact our campuses for The Kingdom!

Geez, I’m pumped!  Geez, I gotta get some coffee!

Facebook As A Ministry Tool

I have an addiction.  I know it.  I’m not ashamed of it.  And it grows stronger every day.  I have other addictions.  But nothing like this.  Take coffee for example.  I can drink it all day every day.  Sun up till sun down.  It’s an unwinder for me…calms me down…helps me focus…helps me process.  The more coffee I have, the more focused I become.  It’s like my brain becomes a massive quad-core processor crankin’ out at 5.0 GHz.  Kinda scary.  Fun, but scary.

But I have a very serious addiction that I honestly don’t know how to handle, and it’s social media.  In specific, Facebook.  I’m literally consumed by it.  And each day it grows stronger.

I remember first hearing about Facebook years ago when it was only on the college campuses.  But when it went mainstream, I began to investigate it myself.  It didn’t take long for me to be sucked in to its massive vortex.  I simply can’t escape.  And you know what, I really don’t want to.

You see my addiction has very unique twist.  I don’t just see Facebook as a means of social connection.  I see Facebook as a massive ministry tool that can be used to minister to millions and to share the Gospel with the world.  I’m convinced of it’s massive potential.  I just can’t quite figure it out!  And THAT’S why I spend hour upon hour fixated on the website!  I’ve clicked every button, blown every whistle, turned every crank and looked at every page longing…believing…

Now don’t get me wrong, we use this site to the extremes for our collegiate ministry and collegiate church.  I’ve had long and meaningful conversations with many colleagues about how they too are using the site for ministry.  But in all honesty, I seriously don’t believe we’ve scratched the surface of the possibilities as to how Facebook can impact our ministries help our churches explode into our communities!

How is your church or ministry using Facebook?  What are your tricks?  Are you using Facebook?  If not, why not?  Please, please share your thoughts and ideas so that others may grasp the depth of this incredible tool!

I need more coffee…

Winter Blast Pictures-February 2011

This past week has been CRAZY here on the Northcoast!  As you can see by these pictures, we’ve had more than our share of snow and ice.  You can see our drive way…before and after…it was shoveled!  Pics around our house.  And the last picture is the road to Sandusky, OH.  We were trying to go shopping on Saturday, February 5th.  We ended us turning around and heading back home!  We are definitely looking forward to Spring!

Weekly Roundup 1/30/11

Hello Everyone!

Hope you have had a great week!  We have had a great week here on the Northcoast!  Seems like Ol’ Man Winter has punched us a few times in the few days.  We currently have about 6 inches of snow on the ground as I’m writing this.  After church tonight, I came home and shoveled out our drive way again.

Denise and I have spent the past couple of days getting prepared for this massive snow storm that we’re supposed to get hit with this week.  We’re being told that we could get upwards of 10+ inches of snow in addition to 2 or more inches of ice!  Now won’t that be lovely!  LOL!  That will make for a LOT of shoveling!  LOL!   I’ll definitely post pics if all that happen!

We’re off to an amazing start to our Spring Semester!  We’re having great Worship Services on Thursday and Sunday nights.  But we’re blown away by what we saw in our Small Groups this past week!  It was week one of getting our Small Groups off and running, and boy were they running!  We have 4 student led Bible Studies taking place on campus and I’m leading 2 micro-Bible Studies in our Student Center.  Are you ready for this…this past week, we had almost 5%, yes I said 5 % of our entire campus community attend one of our Small Groups!  I am so pumped!  Our student leaders are so excited!  It’s so amazing to see God at work on our campus!  PLEASE DO NOT QUIT PRAYING!!!!!  We truly believe God is going to do miraculous things in our campus community!

That’s about it for the week from the Northcoast!  Be Blessed!

~Jim

 

Ready For The Weekend…1/21/11

WOW!  It’s COLD!   Here it is Friday evening, 4 fresh inches of snow, 7 degrees and a -4 degree wind chill!  Brrrrr!  Even had a little freezing rain this week, which sure hadn’t made the the roads easy to travel on.  Last night, I had to shovel our drive, which was no easy chore.  We’re anxiously awaiting Spring!  LOL!

We’ve had a great week here on the Northcoast!  Classes has resumed back at TU, and our students are trying their best just to get back in routine.  Hard to do so however with all the snow.  We had our first large group worship gathering for the semester last night.  Students were super excited to get back involved!  Love seeing students passionate for Christ.  Our main thing right now, it getting our Small Groups launched for this semester.  We’ll have 4 student-led groups this semester.  If you would like to know more details and what we’re offering in our Small Groups, CLICK HERE.

Sunday night church resumes this Sunday night back on campus, super excited about that.  Could sure use your prayers for our Sunday services.

Pray for the weather to WARM UP!  LOL!  Have a great weekend…stay in touch!

 

~Jim