Investing in Campus Life students multiplies ministry. -Gwen Sprague, Bluffton/Pandora-Gilboa MS
As my years within YFC add up (or maybe I should say multiply, ha ha!), one of my favorite parts of the ministry is seeing students come to know the Lord in such a real and impactful way that they come back to serve within the YFC ministry. We’ve seen it time and time again, but it’s always such a special and beautiful thing to experience students from our past stepping into the lives of the students of our present and future.
This year, about half of my leaders are people who were previously impacted in some way by the ministry of YFC, and now want to build relationships with students to share the life-changing love of Christ! One of my leaders shared “I found Jesus here at Campus Life, and I love having the opportunity to make that possible for the students now.”
We love to see this potential in students. As students come to know the Lord, we get them connected, reconnected or more deeply connected with a church.
As they continue to grow in their faith in the Lord, we invite them into a small group called CORE where the students are invited to deepen their faith and explore what it looks like to share their faith with their peers. This ministry group (CORE) is really exciting for the growth of our ministry, because it creates environments for significantly deeper conversations and discipleship between students and leaders, while teaching students who are ready to turn the tables, being the ones sharing the Gospel! Peer-to-peer evangelism is proven to be one of the most trusted ways that a student can hear the Good News.
It has been exciting to see students year after year step into this season of their life! For middle school ministry specifically, it has been a treasure to watch my past students get more serious about their faith as they grow up and become high school/college student leaders to the middle schoolers just a few years younger than them!