The summer season at Council Road is one of my favorite times of year! My kids are out of school and can join me in my office, we have sweet interns that we get to pour into, and there is always something exciting being planned. There is less consistency with meetings and everyone learns a new level of flexibility. We are all being pulled in different directions with our various ministries and we all get to cheer one another on!
I’m very grateful that I was able to go to Falls Creek as well as Super Summer this year. Camp is an experience like no other, being able to get away for a week with your friends and be with God is something so good for your spiritual health! The Lord showed me so many things these past two weeks at camp!
If you’ve ever stepped off that last camp bus, sunburned, sleep-deprived, and full of lukewarm coffee and pizza, you know that church camp doesn’t just leave you tired—it leaves you changed. Not always in the loud music, baptism-in-the-creek, mountaintop kind of way. Sometimes it’s quieter than that, but real change is almost always there. You see it when a teenager raises their hands in worship for the first time, when a mentor prays over a bunk bed, when a mom kneels in the kitchen and prays for her child hours away, or when a minister drags himself out of bed for the fifteenth day in a row to preach to tired teenagers who just want to be on their phones.
Ah! The fabulous days of summer are upon us again! If you have been at Council Road very long at all, you know that all things for kids and youth are geared up and ready to happen. From a popsicle fest to the really big Magnified Vacation Bible School and Kidventure week for kids, to Super Summer and Falls Creek for Youth, our focus is on making great things happen in ministry for these age groups.
I had the honor and blessing of getting to illustrate this year’s children’s Christmas book that our church will give away during our annual Christmas Eve Candlelight service. What Christ Brings is the third of these books that I’ve had the opportunity to be part of and each experience has been so unique for me due to the season of life I’ve been in.
Last year, I had the privilege of contributing to an Advent devotional book called Advent: Preparing for the Arrival of the Savior. My contribution included Christmas and Advent hymns from church history, with a peek into the theology and history of the hymns. For our blog post today, I have included the introduction that I wrote for that devotional. I hope it encourages you in your own Advent studies this year. May the hymns you sing during Advent encourage and strengthen your faith as you worship the birth of our Savior!
It's really hard to trust God when you don’t know what is coming next. I am a planner; I like to have control over the things in my life. It can be really difficult when I have to relinquish control or admit to myself I never had as much control as I thought I did. The last few years have been a journey of learning how to trust God when he calls me to new seasons of life.
