Setting Sail

Two weekends ago, we had the opportunity to get away for the weekend at a beautiful cabin in the mountains. We spent the weekend with some of our youth leaders dreaming and visioneering for what's ahead in youth ministry. It was an incredibly refreshing weekend! Aaron and I actually got to go up Thursday night after work, so we had almost 24 hours of just "us" time! :) It was glorious. When life is so crazy, you are always thankful for time away and time together. It was so relaxing and fun to just be able to hang out and read and sleep in and feel like you are a million miles away from everything.

The purpose of the weekend was to get away with some of our youth leaders to dream for the future. It is amazing how God speaks to us when we are still and quiet long enough to listen :) We prayed and talked about what we want Journey Student Ministries to look like and what we hope our students will say when they look back on their youth group experience 10, 20 years down the road. So much of what we kept coming back to was the heart and soul of Journey church already, we simply want our students ministry to be modeled after what we believe in so strongly at Journey Church: "We will dwell in soul environments to know, live, and tell the love story of Jesus." We want our students to understand what it means and looks like to love and serve well. We all got super excited about including many more opportunities to serve and do missions in the upcoming year, and not just something that you do here or there, but developing a heart and lifestyle of serving and loving well in these young people, a heart for the broken. We talked about our deep desire for them to know the word of God, to live in authentic community, to know grace and redemption, and to walk in freedom! One of the themes that came out of our time there reflects one of my favorite quotes ever: "A ship in a harbor is safe, but this is not what a ship is built for." It would be easy to play it safe, to never risk or never dream of what could be. You could avoid the tension between what is now and what could be in the future. You could live life day by day with no real direction or passion, but that is not what we were designed for! Of course, it will be dangerous when a ship leaves the safety of the harbor and heads out to the unknown of the wide open sea, but what adventure lies ahead! You can either fear the unknown or find incredible excitement and anticipation in the blank canvas of the unknown. So, we are excited about "setting sail" in our ministry. We are ready to risk some big things, willing to fail and make mistakes along the way. We are excited for what is to come and to see God radically work in the hearts and lives of these young people. God is writing an incredible story in each one of their young lives. We are excited to watch the Author and Perfecter of our faith reveal these stories before our very eyes...