Student Leadership Training Weekend

This weekend, we have our leadership training weekend. It consists of a bunch of things, from going over Equip vision, teaching more about discipleship, Bible study training, evangelism training and a bunch more.

This is perhaps the most excited I've been for one of these weekend training times. I think part of the reason is because of the time we are planning to spend on reflecting on our vision and whether or not the events and activities we do actually fulfill the purposes God has placed before us.

For instance, we do several social events throughout the year. One common tendency of social events is for them to turn into nothing but fun and entertaining times with friends. Now, there is certainly nothing wrong with having fun with friends or being entertained in and of
themselves. However, it becomes so very easy for these events to become ends in themselves. The student have fun, and everybody has a little bit of social fellowship, all the while true outreach and mission mindedness is lost.

I could apply this to virtually anything, including large group meetings if we are not careful and intentional about how we do what we do. Therefore, we have a list of everything we do, and this weekend we are going to spend a couple of hours reflecting on each and every one of them, asking what purposes they have served, what purposes we think they should serve, and how we plan on going about making that happen.
As an encouragement, I was looking at our annual "Soiree" event, and noticed that about half of the girls that came were not involved in Equip, nor did I (personally) know them at all. That was exciting to me, seeing the outreach that the girls intentionally did. Pray that this would increase and the gospel would be spread through events like these. If not, pray the Lord would convict us to 'cut the fat', get rid of whatever we need to get rid of, and use the time differently.

We are doing a bunch more, including listening to a gospel message together from STP this summer, having the STP students share and reflect on their expereince this summer, serving us in what they learned and wanting to apply it to Equip ministry this year.

So, I'm excited for this weekend, we will be in Madison, SD, in a big house that Central Baptist let us use last year for a retreat...it worked super well.