Student Life - June 2024
Well, since my last article, our youth ministry has had a lot going on. We have concluded our Wednesday and Sunday night gatherings, went on a retreat to Crossings, had an end of the year party, celebrated seniors graduating and will soon be going to Crossings again for student camp. And now, I honestly share with you all that I believe the students really had a good time with these past events.
To start off, I'll share some of the cool things I noticed in the lives of our students from this past semester. Of course, I have only been in my position as Student Ministry Director for a little over six months, but I have already seen so much growth in these students. One thing that I loved and would look forward to would be the questions some students would ask about God. This could be theological questions, church history questions, or questions concerning Christ. But I loved all of these questions because they were genuine and you could see the gears turning inside their heads and for some of them inside their hearts. I would look forward after every Sunday night Student Gathering to sit in our lounge area in the student room and answer some of the older student's wild questions. "What happens if someone sees the face of God?" or "How could Jesus willingly give up His life if He is completely God?". Man, such rich questions from these young students. I'm happy to report to you all that our youth ministry is blessed to have some amazing leaders/teachers. They have done an awesome job working with these students and answering these questions as well. And then, this past week we had an end of the year party on Wednesday night to celebrate the end of the semester. The good news is some students brought their friends and we packed out the house! The bad news is I didn't buy enough hamburgers for dinner. But it was just awesome to see all of these students gathered together to play games outside, talk with each other, and for some specifically, laugh a little too much. It truly was a great way to end the semester.
I'm also happy to report that our retreat in the middle of April was a success! I had a good friend of mine from college be our speaker for the weekend and preach on how the students can have a correct focus of what to pursue in their lives. The speaker's name is Matt, but we called him either Tall Matt or Speaker Matt. One of those titles is obvious and the other is obvious when you meet him, he's just over 6'7". I knew Matt would be a great fit for the weekend, but he truly knocked it out of the park serving our students. Not only did he deliver great messages to the students, but he also sought them out during our time together and intentionally had conversations or hung out with them. Quickly and easily our students gravitated to him and apparently still text him. Oh how dangerous that might turn out, think before you give students your phone number, Matt.
Then, our church had the joy of celebrating and congratulating our graduates this past Sunday. In case you weren't there for one of the services, I'll share with you who our graduates were. We celebrated Tristan Kinsey, Savannah Koberstein, Sarah Lisembee, Brock Butler, Sydney Gotcher, Moriah Ingram, Jordan Mercer, Eli Schmitt, and Taliah VanDeWege. We said it at church and I'll say it here again, congratulations to all the graduates! Your hard work paid off and we are excited to see what the Lord has in store for you next!
Finally, our student ministry now has the summer to look forward to. The first trip will be a day trip to Holiday World in three weeks. Then in the month of June, we will be taking a huge group of students to camp. Currently, we have 48 students signed up and seven brave leaders. To my knowledge, this will be the biggest group we have ever taken. And apparently the students are excited for camp. All of our spots were taken within two weeks of registration opening. So, camp will be very
exciting and very busy, please pray for us.
His Glory Alone