Student Life - December 2024
At the time of this writing, our student ministry had just finished our DNow for 2024. And what a ride it was. This year, praise God, we hit another record high
attendance for an event. From sitting in the chairs during worship to hanging out and sleeping at host homes, this year we had 74 students signed up for our weekend DNow event. Once again, praise God for the awesome opportunity we had to pour into students' lives for about 42 hours. And none of that could’ve been done without the selfless help of our amazing leaders. While there were 74 students for us to keep watch over, it took 20 leaders, 3 adults for the kitchen crew, and 6 band members to make the weekend happen. And all of this is only because of what the Gospel has done in our lives. Because Christ first loved us, we then desire to love others (1 John 4:19).
If you don’t know what DNow is, I’m happy to give a quick explanation about it! Historically, the youth ministry of Oakhill Baptist has been doing DNow weekends for 10+ years. I remember when I was a student in the ministry going to a couple of DNows myself. DNow stands for Discipleship Now and its goal is for intentional discipleship over a weekend retreat. For us this past weekend, this looked like starting Friday night, staying in Evansville over the whole weekend, and concluding at 11am service on Sunday. What we do in between is always a great time. We worship together in song, hear the preaching of the Word, play games, go to Newburgh FEC for a couple hours, eat
together, and sleep at host homes Friday and Saturday night. While all of these events go on, our goal for the weekend is intentional discipleship and relationship building. Pair that with the faithful preaching of the Word, it is our prayer that the Lord would do work in these student’s lives during our time together and after our event ends.
During our weekend together, I wanted to make sure that the students had a good teacher to hear from. And I was incredibly excited to invite my good friend Max to take on this role for our students. Max and I became friends in college and grew to become like brothers as the years went on. I served by his side in the youth ministry of the church we attended during college, so it was an incredible joy and honor to ask him to speak for this student event at Oakhill. We also worked together to find the theme for our weekend DNow. It quickly became apparent that we should teach through the Promises of God. This sermon series is one that I got to learn from when Max was preaching it to the students in our college church. And where he got it right once before, he did an even better job for our students this past weekend. It was our goal that the students would become stronger, grounded, and more secure in their faith when they consider the many great promises God gives us in His Word.
Now that the weekend is over, the work isn’t done yet. I’m looking forward to conversations with all of the students on their thoughts about the weekend, what the Lord taught them, and what they plan to do with what they heard. Please, be in prayer with me that the students would receive what the Lord has in store for them and that they would follow Him.