Suncreststudentlife’s Weblog

Saturday morning Suncrest hosted a youth leader training event for a number of area churches.  I meet with a group of area youth ministers once a month called CAYMA, which is short for Chicago Area Youth Minister Association.  However, there is only one church in the group that is even in Illinois.  I will save that argument for another day.  There were 6 churches represent, and it was a great morning of learning for our youth leaders. The guest speaker was an old friend of mine that works for CIY, an organization that is well respected in youth ministry circles, and we take our students to their events.  While that was going on, there was what seemed like a huge group of people working on the grounds here at Suncrest fixing all the stuff that gets neglected but needs to be done.Then we had our typical Sunday morning,although it feels radically different over here at West Campus without all the East Campus folks around and helping out.  Finally, the Big Event (part 2) was Sunday night over in Hobart.  It was a great night! If you were not able to attend, it was a family outreach night.  I got to meet a number of people that this was their first experience with Suncrest and were shocked to see all the games and food were free.  Miss Sue was telling me about a guy that attended, and I believe his name is Rich, that got invited to church on Sunday at the theater and he began to ask questions about Suncrest.  The thing I loved is he said, “I will be there, you are good people.”  I love when I hear about people in the church loving people the way Christ has called us to.  It might have been a crazy weekend, but it was well worth it in my book.

I did something this week that I love to do. I drove to South Bend, IN to meet with an accountability partner. His name is Josh, he is a youth minister over there, and we have been accountability partners since my sophomore year of Bible College (8 years). Josh is a good friend and he knows me really well and is not afraid to ask me the hard questions. The kind of questions that make people cringe, the stuff you really hope people don’t ask you. Since we have been friends for so long, he knows the questions that I need asked, and I know the questions that I need to ask him. It was really easy to be accountability partners when we lived next door to each other in the dorms; it has been more difficult to keep up over the years. However, I am incredibly grateful to have a friend like him.

It might just be a coincidence that we are teaching the importance of having relationships were truth meets life at Suncrest this weekend. Greg will be teaching on community groups in adult worship and I will be teaching on them in Student Life Worship. This is exciting for me because groups are taking off in Student Life. Last fall we launched 9 groups and 5 of them had success. This year we have launched 12 groups and have are hoping to have learned from past experience. I really hope that all of them will blossom.

To me, one of the most valuable aspects of Community Groups is the accountability. That is one of my soap boxes, I am constantly telling students they need to find. It can be difficult to jump into an accountability relationship, but I think these community groups can be great springboards into those accountability relationships. My prayer for our students is that they will connect with other students at Suncrest and those relationships will push them on in their faith.