The End of an Amazing Year

If you’ve been on my team for awhile you know that in the month of May so much is always going on, we’re wrapping up the year with different celebrations, we have our SICM trip for our up and coming student leaders in our ministry, and of course we always have students who are graduating and moving on.

In most years I talk about this time of the semester being very bittersweet because so many of our students who have been around for the longest are graduating and transitioning out of our ministry. But this year it’s just been sweet. By some sort of weird circumstance we don’t have that many people who were graduating this year on the guys side, and of the students that are, almost all of them were staying around in the area and were planning on plugging into our churches. As someone who has been doing this for 6 years now, I know that one of the most painful parts of campus ministry is the turnover. Saying bye to so many students you’ve come to love and cherish over 4 years. So to have a year where I don’t have that heart wrenching end to a semester is so refreshing and has made this month just so much more sweet.

Without that bitterness normally associated with this time, I’ve been able to focus way more on the positive and hopeful side of this month. We have had so many cool things going on. Our end of year parties were a blast, and some of my favorite times were worshiping with our students at a park for the overall end of year celebration, and hearing all these amazing stories our corefas and seniors had to share at the last TNF of the year.

Beyond that watching God do his thing at SICM was as beautiful, powerful, and awe inspiring as always. I talked to students like Connor who had previously counted himself out of ever being able to be a leader in church, and he now told me to forget all that and he would love to lead a small group next year if given the chance. One of my guys named Ray said he had never really thought of himself as someone who could be a disciple who could go make more disciples, and now he felt not only equipped, but excited to go and do that. To live out the great commission not only in the time he had left on campus, but also in his life beyond that.

Stories like that especially touch my heart, because it reminds me we’re not only building up disciples of Jesus just for their times in college, but also for their whole lives. These students will go on to be leaders in churches around the world, they will impact people in ways I will never get to see. But we get to know that we participated in what the Lord was doing in planting those seeds and growing them. Thank you for being part of that. Thank you for investing in the lives of these students. I wish you could see what I see everyday, because it truly is spectacular.