The Start of Fall

The Langley Staff Team

   I was warned heading into this summer that the summertime is a very different season of youth work. My natural assumption was that with the more time that teens had free, the easier it would be to hang out. My, much more experienced, co-workers told me that I was wrong. While school was out, a lot of teens kept quite busy. Summer is also a time when our programs take a break to regroup and prepare for the year ahead, so we spend a lot more time at our desks and in conversations and prayer.

   In an adventure-ish spirit, a co-worker and I decided to try to combat this lull in youth work by running a Youth Alpha program for the youth in our programs who had recently expressed interest in getting to know Jesus better or getting to know about Jesus for the first time. As all people expect the first time they run a program, we expected more people than we should have. However, over the summer the consistent group of teens that showed up week after week stunned me in their desire to dig deep. It seems that for a lot of the conversations we were having, they just had not had a place to chat that openly before. It was all around, a great experience and gave us some amazing direction for the fall.

   I also want to emphasize that the time spent “at our desks” is not at all a waste. I am more prepared for this fall than I could have hoped, and because of that I have been able to dream even bigger dreams for this year. I have no doubt that God has huge things in store for these next ten months, and I am so excited to see this journey that Jesus is taking me on.

- Thomas Murtland