Due to some of the limitations of this blogsite, we decided to move our blog to more of a website. We felt this would allow us the ability to provide you with more features and content than what we've been able to do here. So, change your bookmarks to: schubertfamily.org (there's no www at the beginning). If you're having problems with that web address, you can access our page directly by going to staff.gcmweb.org/schuberts(again, no www).
The following is an update report I received on June 10th from the Director of the LT program in Virginia Beach:
"Our opening weekend had lots of energy. The students all are pursuing the word, prayer and evangelism strongly thru our biblical challenge system.
Evangelism was our initial focus and we have had 4 evangelism trainings alrerady: silent evangelism, bridge training, spiritual conversations, survey training and a bridge practice session. We've had one LT-wide survey time where every project saw at least one salvation. As of my knowledge today, we had 7 professions in week 2 and 6 during week 3. A good start!!
The talks have been good and the sessions are being run at a real high level of excellence. Worship is totally rocking!
Lives are changing! Stories are happening!"
Please keep praying for God to do great things in and through all the LT students this summer!
According to the US Department of Labor, the average American makes seven major decisions in their life. At least five of them begin in college.
Thanks to the generosity of some friends of ours giving us a couple tickets, we were able to spend the day at Seaworld on Tuesday, June 5th. It was a really fun day, one we were happy to spend with our dear friend Jenni Sternberg (Thanks, Jenni!).
There is a sampling of the photos we took in the photo gallery of this blog; but if you want to see all of them, click here.
These are a couple videos we took of the girls while there.
May 19th, we kicked off Leadership Training 2007. This is the day that students arrived at both the Virginia Beach and Wilmington, NC LT programs. The following week, more students checked in at Estes Park, CO. And finally, June 11th, the LT program in Columbus, OH will be kicked off. In all, there will be almost 220 students from 14 colleges and universities investing 8-12 weeks of their summer to grow deeper in their faith and learn how to effectively share it with others.
Overall, the mission of the LT programs are to make fully devoted followers of Christ out of college students.
Each LT, although nationally coordinated (by the National LT Director, and yours truly), is locally programmed. Here are the focuses, themes, or goals at the different locations (along with the Universities represented there):
Wilmington, NC - Focus: Helping the students develop a missional lifestyle. They've thought through what they would do if they had 10 weeks to train a missionary. [Virginia Tech & Ball State]
Virginia Beach, VA - Theme: A Heroic Generation: Truth, Justice and the Biblical Way. The main underlying theme is a challenge to live out a biblical life. They are mapping out challenges that push participants to elevate the Bible to a higher place in all that they do. [Univ. of Michigan, Michigan State, Univ. of Maryland]
Estes Park, CO - Goals:
- We want students to learn to submit to the Master in every area of their life. Stewardship of all time, all resources, relationships and gifts.
- We want students to walk in dynamic grace oriented relationship with their King. We will teach this relationship in all we do!
- We want students to live in cooperation with God for their entire life. We must prepare them for a lifetime of service to our King.
- We want students to learn to share their faith as a lifestyle. They must learn the message and how to share it! Evangelism training and practice is a must.
- Training in the spiritual disciplines is key. We will teach these practices and give opportunity to exercise them as well.
- We want to teach and uphold the Great Commission as beautifully as we can!
[Univ. of Missouri, Texas A&M, Univ. of Texas, Illinois State, Univ. of Illinois, Univ. of Wisconsin, Bowling Green State Univ.]
Columbus, OH - Focus: Personal growth, mentoring, developing ministry skills, and evangelism, while growing deeper with God and with one another. [Ohio State, Otterbein College]
Please join us as we pray that God would do amazing things both in and through these students this summer!
It's hard to believe it's been only 3 weeks since Serena started pulling herself up! She's gotten so good at it, we had to lower her crib to make sure she didn't fall out!
Lowering the crib did make for a new situation that we never experienced with either of the other two girls. The crib actually makes a great jail! Check out the video to see what I mean.
There are a couple pics of Serena in the hoosegow in the photo gallery.
Serena is also doing a great job of moving around. Now, I wouldn't exactly sayshe's crawling- it's more like the motion of a seal! Instead of using her knees, Serena has grown accustomed to throwing her hands out in front of her, then pulling her feet up behind her. It's slower, but she gets by.
Finally, Serena has started taking her sweet time going to sleep when put down for naps - preferring instead to just sit in her crib and play until she gets too tired to stay awake. One day, after one of these play sessions, we found Serena sound asleep in her crib, but not like any ordinary baby - oh no, not our Beana! Rather, we found her folded over, in half, upper body laying over lower body - like a clam! She must have been so tired while playing that she didn't even take the time to lay down.
We've got quite a girl on our hands!
Well, we finally got our house on the market! After starting to work in earnest after the holidays, changing the goal date twice, and working almost 5 days straight on last minute fix-ups and cleaning right before, our house went up for sale on Saturday, May 5th.
We kicked things off with an auction/open house. Our hope was to set the opening price low enoughto get a bunch of people to come look through the house at the same time and hopefully create a sense of excitement and competition. It would also allow us to get the house looking really good and show it only twice - saving a lot of wear and tear on the family.
We had 1 person come through during the 3 hours on Saturday (our realtor's wife, bringing him a snack!). However, we did have 10 different groups come through on Sunday - resulting in 1 bid. It was much lower than we were willing to accept, so we passed.
So, now the house is for sale in the traditional fashion - one of over 17,000 homes for sale in the Central Florida area! However, there are only 43 within a 2 mile radius of our home with the same general characteristics. Our house even has it's own website! Check out
www.8615havasudrive.com to get a gander at our wonderful Florida home. There are more pictures of the house in the photo gallery. Please pray with us that our house will sell soon!
I first heard of the Virginia Tech massacre about two hours after the actual shooting took place while doing some work on the internet. My first response was, "Whoa! We've got a church there!"
GCM does have a church at Virginia Tech (VT), one of our biggest, and one of the biggest on campus. There are well over 1,000 students that are a part of the New Life Christian Fellowship [nlcf] in one form or another - about 1 in 25 VT students.
This video is an excerpt from the Larry King Live tv show the evening of the shootings. It includes a brief conversation between Larry King and Jim Pace, a GCM staffer and one of the Pastors of [nlcf].
My first thought, unfortunately, became reality when a couple days later we learned that three of the 32 people killed had in fact been a part of the [nlcf] church:
In addition to these three, there are reported connections with 8 of the other victims and two of the survivors. Many lost boy/girl friends, teachers, co-workers, room mates, dorm mates and class mates.
I just got the following email from my supervisor, GCM's Director of Campus Ministries, Greg Van Nada:
"Our pastor and staff team are running on empty and are overwhelmed. They are laying down their lives for the Lord’s sheep and those not yet of His flock. They just need someone to be there for them. I plan on canceling my trip to Colorado at the end of next week but still am not sure if I will be at the [Pastor's] retreat [next week]. I made myself available to Jim [Pace] and their student leaders for as soon as he tells me when they need me. Please pray that his team has wisdom to know what is best. Right now they have a guy from Columbine coming to help. Jim is going to see if that meets the immediate need and if so, have me come later in the week or, if not, to have me come earlier in the week."
As you can see, there's still a tremendous amount of work to be done, and the Pastors, Staff, and students of [nlcf] are doing their best to represent the love and concern of Jesus Christ to these hurting students, faculty, and families.
Please keep them regularly in your prayers!
-Dave
This is our first blog - ever! Our hope is to use this as a dynamic way to keep our friends and family more up to date on the goings-on in the Schubert Family.
As time goes on, you'll see a combination of family and ministry related updates, as well as the occasional musing or deep thought. We're used to providing ministry and family updates about every other month through our "Ministry Update" news letter; something we'll continue to do. However, now we have a means to create more of a "living" news letter as well!
Up until now, the flow of updates have been one-sided - us sending the news letters out to you. It's fine, but it really doesn't provide a true connection with you. Our hope is that you, our friends and family, will now be able to "close the loop" and provide comment on the things we tell you about in this blog.
Our understanding is that you can even set it up so that you receive an email every time a new post is made. Pretty cool!
We'll, we're looking forward to the opportunity this blog will allow for greater connection with all of you!
-Dave & Collette
