Read Your Bible

"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God."- Colossians 3:16

    Back in August this verse was introduced to the staff as our theme verse. Our theme verse for the year is something we let guide our year as we plan everything. Last year, we focused on how to do evangelism through friendships. It was something we heated up and talked about with our leaders often. We saw students being bolder than ever in their classrooms, making efforts to befriend people who would not typically come to a ministry event. So, I love how this year's verse is influencing our community. 

    Our staff team has started different initiatives to promote scripture reading: a scripture memorization challenge and hosting a public scripture reading event weekly. The scripture memorization challenge has been going well. The first challenge was to memorize the Beatitudes. We heard grumbling at first, but the next week, we were blown away by the student engagement. The brave, few students who memorized the Beatitudes set the tone and now we have even more students attempting to memorize scripture, many of whom do an amazing job! 

    The second initiative is now underway. Graham has been heading up public reading of scripture. He hosted an after-event the night of our service. Students grabbed some food and then met on campus to read Galatians. We read the whole thing out loud and then discussed what we took away from it. The image to me is incredibly sweet. Students chose to hang out and read the Bible together at 10 p.m. What a declaration of God's goodness! Graham is going to host Bible reading events for students to attend. So be praying for that! I am excited about how these events will grow our ministry. 

We went to a Rangers game and THEY WON! It was glorious because it was also $1 dollar ice cream sandwich day. 

Here's me and two of our student leaders. We had an impromptu photoshoot because we needed some photos together. 

Here is a glimpse of our Friday night service. We are in a new room and our students have been going towards the front when we worship. 

Here is the scripture reading after-event. We were blown away by the students who chose to stay and read Galatians after service. 

A little selfie after a post-church lunch. :) My dear friend Amelia keeps my life well-documented. 

Our ministry is really into karaoke right now. Here is a different after-event where we simply yell-sang our favorite songs.