Stories...

What stories do you come in contact with on a daily basis?  Perhaps you sit down in the evening and hear a recap of your spouse's day, or you overhear co-workers talking about their social or family life.  While you eat breakfast, perhaps you listen to stories of famine, war, and recession on the news.  Each of these stories, however, exists in a vacuum - your co-worker's weekend recap has about as much to do with your daily life as the uprisings in Syria.

What if we started to think about how our stories could be interconnected?  Imagine God for a minute as a wise author, penning the tales of not just world events and dramatic mission trips, but your daily experiences.  Could it be that God is in the business of telling one grand story from Genesis to Revelation, and that even our daily experiences figure into this story somehow?  Let me give you one example of one young girl's story becoming part of the story of an entire school district.

A young girl in our program in Ft. Worth sat in her AVID class one Friday while LINC NT's SALI teachers showed a video entitled, "If you really knew me..."  She was impressed by the concept and thought back to her story of surviving bullying.  She went home and created her own video that proclaimed how if you really knew her, you would know that she had survived bullying, depression, and worse, and that she was ready and willing to help others going through the same thing.  Tears in their eyes were the common experiences as the young girl showed the video to her class, and as the SALI teacher showed the video to the school faculty, then as the school administrators told the district leadership about the video.  The video is now set to become part of Ft. Worth ISD's bullying-prevention program.

One young girl had the bravery to share her story with others, and it now has the power to affect the stories of thousands of students across the city.  Her story was told because God weaved together the stories of LINC NT's staff, board members, and donors to create a program called SALI and bring it to a middle school in Ft. Worth.  This young girl asked, "Do you really know me?"  Now her classmates do.  If you hold your story inside and don't share it, whose stories will not be impacted and released?  And at the end of the day, do you really know those around you?  Think today about the stories that God is writing in you and in others.

Kids Are Not Tea

On the Tazo tea box on my desk, there is a description on the back which reads: "A delicately balanced blend of green tea, spearmint, lemon verbena & lemongrass."  If the advertising department at Tazo can write such a eloquent description of simple tea, I wonder how LINC North Texas's work would be written about:  "A superb and robust blend of teachers, students, volunteers and donors gives LINC NT a strikingly bold and reviving capacity for transforming the lives of families and their students, drawing out sweet harmonious notes of community with a nicely developed warmth . . . "

But kids are not tea, and despite all the eloquent wording that could be written about what we do here, one would be hard pressed to measure our impact in any other currency than this: action.  Our aim is to change the lives of those we reach, and we can only do this because of the actions of our teachers, donors, and employees.  These actions not only speak louder than words; they shout.  Though words are powerful, it is the 'walk' that truly fights in the trenches.

At LINC North Texas we strive to walk the walk.  We know that like farmers planting seeds, the grounds are fertile for an abundant crop - that even if we just reach one person, that person has the potential to  reach many others.    We thank you for your continued physical, spiritual, and financial support - your actions speak for themselves.

If you'd like to learn more about being apart of our mission, please contact Brandon at brandon@lincnt.org.

Exponential

What would it look like to achieve exponential growth in an organization?

I would like to take a moment to consider what the word exponential means.  It's a term that we talk about a lot, but I'm not sure that we're looking at the whole picture.  This graph (source: Wikipedia, "Exponential Growth"), shows such a line.  Let's consider each of the three lines as if they were a church congregation.  The red line is "linear" growth.  Every year, 50 new members are added.  That's great growth!  The blue line is "cubic" growth.  Each year, the church grows at a faster and faster rate.  That's even better - this would be a great goal for any church.  But the green line represents what is truly exponential growth.  Each year, the number of members doubles.  This represents incredible growth, staggering to nearly any organization!

But what does this term, exponential, mean to us, really?  It seems that most of us, when we think about exponential growth, think about that overwhelming point of growth....later on down the line.  We are looking at the growth that the graph shows around year 9 and 10.  But if we look back toward the beginning, the line looks stagnant!  Even further down the graph, it takes 9 years to surpass the linear growth, and 10 to surpass the cubic growth!  Many of us would look at the growth happening on the green line for the first five years and conclude that the project was a failure.  In reality, that project is preparing to reach a tipping point where it will far surpass all of its peers.

Let's think seriously about how to start out if we want to achieve exponential growth.  I believe that this graph reminds us that we need to be prepared to start slowly and be okay with staying small for quite a while.  At LINC North Texas, we are blessed to be well down the line.  I would place LINC NT at about the 7 point on the graph - after years of investing in the foundation, we are starting to see incredible things happen, and we as a staff are getting more and more excited about what God has in store for us on down the line!

SALI Program Starts New Semester

"My mom got the letter . . . and she cried."  This familiar phrase was repeated to SALI teachers all across the city as they stepped back into the classroom this month for the start of the new spring semester.  The 'letter' was a part of a lesson on parental appreciation, where students were given a chance to say to their parents  something they might usually not:  thank you.  These thank you letters were mailed out to parents at the start of the winter break, and many arrived on Christmas day.  Students reported their parents were 'stunned,' 'taken off guard,' and even 'shocked'.  Moms and dads were reminded just how much they were appreciated; guardians were told of how they, though not parents biologically, had always been like a father or mother to students; letters were put on the fridges, saved in desk drawers, and even placed on Christmas trees.  Students saw all of this and learned something: their small actions can have a big impact.  

This is just the most recent example of how the SALI program has affected the lives of its students, teaching them how they themselves can influence others and make a positive impact in the lives of their family and friends. This is the trickling down of our mission here at LINC NT.  From our amazing SALI teachers who devote their time to making a difference to our partnering AVID teachers who help us engage their classes, it all boils down to a simple vision: changing lives and transforming communities.  Now we're empowering young people with the tools to go out and do the same.  With iron commitment, clear perspective, and caring hearts, we hope to continue to foster these meaningful relationships and work together with our partners to make our community a better place to live.  

A big shout out to our SALI instructors and AVID teachers throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex: Perry, Creekview, Newman Smith, Gaston, Polk, Haltom, Daggett, RL Turner, Field, Blalack, JL Long, DF Long and Marsh.  With our most sincere appreciation, truly, thank you.

Merry Christmas from LINC NT!

Merry Christmas from my family and the LINC North Texas family! I hope that you are doing well and that you are experiencing Christ’s love. I love the Advent and Christmas season for many reasons, but especially for the worship focus on Christ, being a father of two little ones. Those of you who are parents know that nothing compares to the joy and wonder on your children’s faces at Christmas-time.

I am thrilled to share with you that God has opened the doors to allow LINC NT to be in relationship with thousands of families in North Texas. We have a clear vision: we are called to transform communities through church planting and outreach to families whose children attend public schools. Our God is faithful and has given us the opportunity to work with 1,400 families in our SALI (Student Advancement and Leadership Initiative) program in fourteen public middle and high schools in Dallas, Ft. Worth, Carrollton, Farmers Branch and Haltom City. In addition, we have launched six parent support groups and now have four Bible studies in Spanish. We don’t do this alone – we are partnering with six churches in planting new missions through SALI.

I want to share with you a story of a life that has been transformed this past year. We met Luis through our parent nights at Long Middle School. He is a parent who was very ill – he was losing weight and was becoming fearful of death. On top of that, his marriage was in trouble. Beto Alzate, our church planting director, began visiting him and praying with him. Through Bible studies, prayer, and counsel, Luis began to improve emotionally and his marriage started healing. The doctors also noticed remarkable improvement in his health. Luis and his wife reconciled and committed to a Bible study that Beto was leading. They are currently finding other couples to reach with the transforming Gospel and may help begin a faith community next year.

The growth has excited us but also overwhelmed us. We are planning to expand our capacity to transform more families; however, we are under budget in contributions for the year. We are praying for God’s provision yet continue to see him open more doors for us. We know that we are at a defining moment for our organization – it is time to take SALI to the next level and begin to see communities transformed, but we need your help.

I get many letters from organizations wanting a contribution this time of year and it’s difficult to only choose a few worthy organizations. Many years ago before I was called to LINC NT, I evaluated many organizations for my church to decide which ones we could financially support. Year after year I chose LINC NT as one of our premiere organizations to support because of its significant Biblical mission. Today, we are even more strategic and sustainable in our goal of transforming communities through public schools and new churches.

Our Board of Directors believes strongly in our mission and has pledged their personal support for LINC NT. They have pledged to match all gifts that we receive to the end of the year up to $28,500. That means that you can multiply the impact of your contributions. We could potentially raise over $50,000 with your help – enough to operate SALI at 4 schools for an entire school year, reaching more than 400 students and their families!

Will you partner with us and help us transform these communities? With your help, we can make up the shortfall in the budget and invest in real life-changing initiatives. A one-time gift of $120 reaches one student and their family for an entire year, or a pledge of $50 a month reaches five students and their families. We welcome your tax-deductible gifts of any size.

From the LINC NT staff, Board of Directors, and partner churches, we wish you a joy-filled Christmas. We pray for you and ask you to do the same for us!

For our King and His Kingdom,

Pastor Oscar Benavides

LINC NT is a 501(c)(3) charitable non-profit organization recognized by GuideStar Exchange as a Valued Partner for our transparency and accountability. We are audited annually by CapinCrouse LLP Certified Public Accountants and have previous audits and IRS tax returns available by request.

Parent Night at Brookhaven College

College classrooms are great for intellectual lecture series, distinguished tenured professors, and ripe bananas on sale from Guatemala.  Last Thursday night saw the latter of these three unmercifully scarfed  by voracious students contending for relay-game glory in  Brookhaven College's first ever parent night, hosted by Early College Start and  LINC North Texas.   With an evening of pizza, conversation, workshops and games,  students and their parents were brought together in the way that only family bonding can do - by destroying the other team in a spontaneous classroom tug-of-war.  Laughs were had and  PhDs (Parent-Student Hilarity Demonstrations) awarded, emeritus.   Interested in helping out?  We're always looking for volunteers to help.  Contact us at brandon@lincnt.org and thanks for reading!


 Brandon
  LINC North Texas

Parent Night at Perry Middle School

If ever machines are able to harvest human beings for their bio energy, their capacitors would blow a fuse at Perry Middle School last Thurs night (10/6) -- the energy from the kids was that intense.  After revving the engine a little with relay games that included lemons, bananas and bedsheets (don't ask) these kids and their parents put the peddle to the metal in some serious team-builder games.  Excitement and fun was in the air as moms and dads got to see their kids in a new light and work together.  The tug of war scene was an especially contentious battle for strength and the will to win! . . . All in good fun, of course.  Thanks so much to all the parents and students that came out, and to the all the great volunteers and teachers that helped make this night truly one for the record books. Can't wait for the next one this Thurs night 10/14 for the Early College Start parent night at Brookhaven!

If you would also like to volunteer for our next event, please let us know - we lots of kids and we could use the help!  Contact brandon@lincnt.org

Thanks!

Brandon
LINC North Texas