Prayer List

Leadership Team – Our leadership team is struggling to consistently reach out to people, they’ve felt a bit of a burn out on trying to engage people and are changing tactics to personally invite people. Please pray for their efforts.

Discipleship – Pray for the new students and students coming to STK, as many of them have never experienced someone sitting down with them to teach them the scriptures and it’s very odd to many of them. Pray for their eyes to be opened to discipleship, growth, and delving into the faith.

The Hockey Team – Our hockey chapel has grown a little bit, pray for the men who are open to hearing the Gospel that they would be fertile ground for the word.

Family – My children are both teething, prayers for my wife and I for rest amongst the work.

Campus Ministry Thoughts

Virtues are something we ought to desire, they are wonderful outpourings of our faith.

2 Peter 1
​“Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, 6 and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, 7 and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. 8 For if these things are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the full knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. “

To apply with diligence the teachings of the scriptures is a difficult task. You have to be hard enough on yourself that you do not permit your flesh to sin flippantly, will forgiving yourself for the sins you do commit and not them against yourself when rightfully repented of. This is a difficult cat walk, but it’s such a necessity it cannot be avoided. It’s a tightrope, where you must continuously reassess your status, your balance, even regulate your breathing.

Teaching someone to pursue virtue would seek easy on the outset, but it’s been surprisingly difficult. It’s not in the understanding something is a virtue, it’s always in the application of that virtue rightly. Many of us are plagued with mindsets that worry about self-righteousness, self-validation. The most difficult thing is teaching people that doing or preaching the word of God, even if for a selfish reason, is God Glorifying. Yes, I know that’s a bit controversial, but I find Paul to be my guide in this alongside Jesus words.

Philippians 1
​15 Some, to be sure, are preaching Christ even from envy and strife, but some also from good will; 16 the latter do it out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel; 17 the former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives, thinking to cause me affliction in my chains. 18 What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in this I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice,

Mark 9

38 John said to Him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, and we tried to hinder him because he was not following us.” 39 But Jesus said, “Do not hinder him, for there is no one who will perform a miracle in My name, and be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me. 40 For he who is not against us is for us. 41 For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in My name because you are of Christ, truly I say to you, he will not lose his reward. 42 “And whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea.

Often there is complaints about someone doing something for the wrong intent, even if they are still preaching the truth. A man preaching on a box on campus is doing it in a way I don’t believe to be as effective as others. Yet, Christ would tell me to be an encouragement to this man, and to even pray for the work of that evangelist. Yet, if he taught that all are going to hell unless they come before this man and worship, I would also be called to correct him. An uncomfortable balance is struck, that requires me to be diligent in not allowing my understandings of evangelism to inhibit the Gospel, while also not allowing my enemy the opportunity to preach a false gospel.

This is the never ending battle inside each of us, is it not? To struggle to do what is good, while ALSO desiring to do that good and not just for their own flesh. We struggle against our own flesh and blood to do things candidly for Christ. Yet, we see people are encouraged, or at least not inhibited by Christ or Paul (AKA the scriptures) to allow these things, as they are still proclaiming Christ. If we became people who were able to see our sinful desires and intentions, and do good in spite of them, we would overcome much.

Be Virtuous

Pursuing virtue is something learned, like any discipline. Being taught to desire the Good, to pursue it even as you fight the temptation inside of you is a battle with a behemoth. Yet, we cannot relent. We must fight tooth and nail for every bit of ground upon our hearts to establish Christ as King, ruler of our own lives. We have to teach and learn the virtues, to be virtuous, faithful in each moment of our lives, each day we awake.

We must decide each moment to be virtuous or give in to vice. There is temptations that come, that cannot stall us from doing good. In a week we must have hundreds of chances to choose virtue over vice. Each choice is a choice to not do the evil things we come up with, but in spite of those, to do what is right.

My week has been riddled with opportunities like this. Hot Cocoa was very windy, and many people were astonished that between the wind and snow we stood out there faithfully handing it out. Of course I wanted to not be in the cold, rain, or wind. The Hockey team had to move our Chapel service because they had 2 hours of video, and they were excited that I was willing to maneuver my schedule to still meet with them, even though it meant I was late to dinner with my family. A student came up after our Tuesday meeting, concerned about preaching about the abysmal state of the Christian Church as it may be considered depressing, and I got to walk him through the necessity of knowing how to fight well, love well, and learn/teach well is dependent upon knowing the state of the battle. I could have simply told him to prove me wrong, called him immature or called him less manly for agreeing with me. Each of these times I had an opportunity to practice a virtue, diligence, patience, love, whatever it may be. We are faced with hundreds of opportunities each week to pursue virtue, to encourage righteousness, to be faithful.

This week, I ask that you pray for a growth in virtue amongst the students on campus, and amongst us as staff at MTU. I also want you to consider what it is like to pursue virtue for your life. If we can recapture a desire to be virtuous, even with the temptation to be arrogant or parade our virtues (as some would consider the previous bit of my examples to prideful bragging as a natural temptation) we can reclaim a Christianity that is unashamed of being Pious, of being Faithful, of being openly, unquestionably, Christian. A Christianity that proudly displays a God worth following, a Faith worth sacrificing for, and a strength found in nothing besides the Cross.

To God be the Glory

Brandon Charbonneau