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The College Years
A Quick Word from Pastor Mark:
Pastor Matt Jensen is, by God's grace, a very strong leader. Across the many levels of leadership in Mars Hill, he's in the top category of our young leaders. I love and appreciate him and his wife Amy a great deal. From scratch, he has built a college ministry that culminated in our biggest opening for any local church plant in the history of Mars Hill – 800 mainly college students. Hundreds of college students have met Jesus under his leadership in just the past year. In college God saved me, called me into ministry, and had me marry Grace. God changed my life in college. This is a vital season in someone's life and we are honored to reach and serve college students as a church and through the Resurgence College Conference thanks to Pastor Matt's leadership.
Relationships...
“We are breaking up right now! What’s the point of going to a relationship Bible study?” I said harshly to my now wife Amy. That’s how my freshman year of college started. We had been stuck in a cycle of selfishness and sexual sin and fighting Jerry Springer style for weeks. Thankfully Jesus got my stubborn self to that Bible study and began changing my life. He rocked my world with the gospel, showing me my sin and what he had done to forgive me of my poor leadership and greedy ambition for the future.
The College Years
The college years were going to be about me having as much fun as possible, since the real world was only four short years away. On the other side of “living it up,” I was going to buckle down, get out with an engineering degree, and take over the profitable family business. Then after I got established, I’d marry my high school sweetheart and live the American dream, miserably ever after. I say miserably because it hasn’t worked for generations in my family, and I knew it wasn’t going to work for me either—but I didn’t know another way.
Thankfully some respectable men took me under their wing my first year of college, taught me the Bible, and began to show me what it was like to walk with Jesus. By a sheer miracle of grace, some friends and I started a college ministry our freshman year that grew to impact hundreds of students and is still going to this day. I am now helping to lead a movement of university students at Mars Hill to see Jesus radically change college students from around the world through the Gospel.
With and About Jesus
Ever since God got a hold of me my freshman year, I have not been able to stop helping other twenty(ish)-somethings understand what Jesus has done for them and what a college experience with Jesus and about Jesus can look like. Some of the big issues in these years are: sex, art, music, money, gender, business and culture. Does Jesus have anything to do with the corporate world? Does Jesus have anything to say about sex, gender and relationships that’s relevant today? How do art and music fit into the big picture of the story of God? What we think about these issues is often decided upon during the college years and then played out over our lifetime.
That’s why I am stoked to launch the Resurgence College Conference, to look at what Jesus has to say about these things. There is a lot at stake. In my city, students are literally killing, starving, cutting, and isolating themselves, over these issues, as they seek an identity from success, relationships, and status, while others are setting themselves up for a future of emptiness as they pursue the "big issues" as an end in themselves.
I hope you’ll join me and the ridiculously exciting line up of speakers and bands, for a weekend that could change your life.
All for Jesus,
Pastor Matt
