Young Adult Ministry Changes
I am excited to welcome Alexandra Storck to the staff at Faith as our College Age Ministry Intern. Alex recently volunteered as an adult leader on the youth spring break mission team. She was partnered with our Youth Director, Mark Fowler, and he was very impressed with her leadership on the trip. Alex was in my youth group at Living Water and was a valuable leader in our congregation. She is currently in graduate school full time and will only be with us in a very part time role for the summer. Our Young Adult Director, DeRon Gabriel, was recruited to work for Project Transformation as the site director. DeRon has previous experience working with PT and finds the intervention work with the children incredibly important. This new position will keep him busy on weekdays. He had planned to start a College Age Sunday school class for the summer but we knew that he would be too busy to work with these younger adults (18-25). That’s where Alex comes in. Alex will coordinate the Sunday school options for the College Age, offer a monthly mission project and a social event. She is one of these College Age young adults!
DeRon will be with us on Sundays only for the next two months. His two year commitment with the Oklahoma Annual Conference (which sent him to Faith) will be over at the end of July. We plan to celebrate his ministry here at Faith and send him with our prayers and blessings for wherever God calls him next. I expect that we will see him again doing amazing ministry in our conference. We discovered at Annual Conference that DeRon was interviewed about ministry with Young Adults for the Annual Conference monthly magazine and featured on a full page!
You may not realize it but many churches struggle to be in ministry with young adults. They are all in different places in life and have different needs from their spiritual home. But the one constant thing that they all say they are looking for is a place that cares. Relationships are what is important in this ministry. DeRon has done a wonderful job growing our ministry with young families. I hope that Alexandra will help us in this area with College Age adults and showing them that they are important to our congregation. Please pray for her ministry and tell any 18-25 year olds that you know to check us out.
Our Leadership Team is currently in discussion about what staff changes might need to be made to cover the ministry that DeRon has helped grow in our congregation. We have also considered other creative options with adjusting some of the existing roles on staff and maybe adding a part time Young Adult Director. These decisions will be finalized as we kick off the Fall semester. Faith, we are so blessed. None of these important ministries would be possible without your faithful giving to the life of our congregation. It is so wonderful to have a church that is filled with people of every age group.
I will be returning to Tulsa from Annual Conference on Saturday. Rev. Jeff Jaynes will be preaching this weekend and he is really dynamic. I look forward to hearing him.
See you Sunday,
