Hey there, Church Family!
Well… about three things popped into my head when I thought of the summertime, but I won’t bore you with the heat, the heat, and the heat. How about I share about the Summer Staffers instead?
Every year, our whole church, and specifically our students, get to be loved on and served by these intentional young adults. This summer, we were joined by Jacob in High School, Unique in Jr High, DJ and Sheyla in Elementary, and Josh and Georgie in Pre-school. It has truly been a joy to hear their passionate hearts for youth and kids ministry, and to just hear their hearts for the Lord! Each one of them has brought their unique compassion, humor, and dedication to our students in obvious ways.
It’s really beyond words how healing and fun it was to spend the summer with them. We did everything from sharing our experiences in ministry over a home cooked meal once a week, to helping out with each other's events (I can’t get the picture of Josh dressed as a Taco Fairy at our youth “Freak Seek” event out of my brain), to praying over each other fervently. We shared a bunch of tears and a bunch of laughs and a bunch of food.
I’m hit this week with how much unexpected joy the Lord has stored in the people around us. Sometimes we expect the least amount of joy in our places of work - in our co-workers or our supervisors. We often have low expectations for joy in ministry.
Jesus did ministry as close as it can get with His disciples - and we all know they had their fair share of discouragement and weakness and apathy and exhaustion. I like to remind myself of that sometimes to find comfort. But I probably should also be dwelling on joy - the joy that Jesus inevitably looked for and found and shared, in the midst of the heaviness. For our summer staff team, it was seeing the look in a student’s eyes when they felt completely seen by one of us, the giggles we shared around a dinner table, sneaking on the kids’ slip-n-slide together, the relief of having a listening ear when one of our hearts was heavy, etc.
Church Family, in what area of your life are you expecting the least amount of joy to grow? May Jesus cause it to flourish, out of every nook and cranny you never thought it could.
With love,
Sophia Steele
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