Today was my first Sunday at my new church, LifeBridge Christian Church, in Longmont, CO. As you may have read, God called me to move from New Hampshire to serve as the Student Pastor at LifeBridge, overseeing their 6-12th grade ministry.
Currently, the students meet altogether on Sunday mornings for two worship times. Instead of their usual message and small group discussions, I shared a quick version of my testimony, and the students had some questions for us. It was really fun, and we met a ton of new people! Overall, I felt like we connected pretty well with everyone.
One of the downsides of having two student ministry worship times at the same times as main worship is that we were not able to participate in that at all. In fact, we were pretty much down in the student area the entire time. So, while we saw a lot of students and some parents, we didn’t really get to meet anyone else. One of the things I want to do is figure out how to get into worship more often.
Tomorrow, I head off to CIY Mix with our middle schoolers. We’re taking 38 of them to New Mexico for the week. I really enjoyed going to CIY’s high school summer conference (now called Move) when I was in high school, and I’ve led trips of high schoolers to that event and to their weekend middle school event called Believe, but this will be my first time at Mix. I’ve heard the camp we’ll be at is really great, though, and it will be an awesome time to connect with all the middle schoolers.
There certainly is a lot to get used to at my new church (meeting new people, learning all the new policies, getting setup with the database, and more), but I’m feeling great about the student ministry! In the middle of our big move, all the unpacking, and learning new stuff, I noticed I felt right at home when our program started this morning. Connecting with students is where I feel at home. It’s what God has designed me to do, and I love it!
Steve Cullum 