I spent this past summer interning with the Student Ministry at Bethel Baptist Church, in Yorktown, VA. I had a blast working with the youth pastor, Jeff Mingee, and the female intern Jennifer Blackwell. It was in fact our second time working together, as Jen and I had interned last summer as well. That first go-round was certainly a learning experience. The unofficial theme of that summer, as we now joke, was “Welcome to Bethel; we’ll date you and then hate you.” Of course, that wasn’t our official theme, but it certainly seemed to be an accurate description of all of the middle and high school drama that had gone on. In actuality, we had no theme last summer, which I felt led to a bit of its chaos.
So, when Jeff, Jen, and I began to talk about what we wanted this summer to look like, I immediately suggested that we have a theme, one unifying purpose to unite us as a leadership team that we lacked last summer; an attempt to be responsibly proactive rather than frustratingly reactive. And so, with the drama of the previous internship still weighing on our minds, we settled on the theme of “Love in Action,” a challenge to the youth to seriously consider how we develop our earthly relationships in light of our heavenly relationship with Christ.
