Summer 2006 was yet another wonderful summer in which I was involved in all the same ministries and activities of the previous summer. God brought many blessings my way as well as many stretching and trying experiences. I entered my junior year once again full of the joy of serving God and ready for another year of studies.
Another year of studies progressed and again I grew in my relationship with God through classes, ministries, involvement with my church, and through my peers. Through one particular event God stretched me and grew me. The church that I had been involved in, Riverside, was a young church (about 5 years old) and filled mostly of college age students (most of whom came from Emmaus). God had taken this small church through a lot of trials and testing, and it had come through the better for it. I had the joy of becoming very involved as I helped to strengthen the prayer, and had several chances to use my gift of preaching and teaching. Through this body of believers God changed several views that I had toward what a church should look like and how to "do church." When I first began coming to the church I didn't feel comfortable with young people preaching on a Sunday morning. I felt that the old, wiser, and more experienced believers should do the preaching. God changed my understanding of this to see that age is not so much a factor as gifting. The church taught me that one of the important roles of leaders is to encourage the youth into roles of responsibility, growing their gifts, and using them. In this way, I discovered my gift f preaching and was encouraged and guided in my utilizing it. The other way God changed my view of things was that I previously would never have considered a church closing its doors to be a good thing. Here also, God showed me otherwise. Because the church was mostly full of college students it was a very transient church. Even the leadership consisted mainly of recently graduated college students. The leaders saw that despite the many strengths of the church, its primary weakness was its instability. The leaders themselves could not guarantee their being present within a year period. Wisely, and with much prayer, they saw that instead of leaving that problem for someone else to deal with down the road, and because there were other good churches in the area, they decided that it would be best to close the doors and help each of us to get situated into a new group of believers. While this was very hard since we had grown very close to each other, we also felt God's peace on the whole situation. Looking back, I can see how God used it to strengthen the surrounding churches therefore furthering, not hindering the Church, the Body of Christ.
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