Collide
I’ve spent a lot of time recently thinking about some of the students that have been a part of the youth group over the years and some of the trips, events and special moments Jill and I have had with them. Everything from students getting baptized, to a flat tire on the church van in the middle of West Virginia, to student leader retreats in our living room, to Kenny G, to introducing students to our firstborn, to graduation ceremonies, to all-nighters in a bombshelter, to standing next to former students while they get married. One event in particular has created some of my fonder memories, Collide.
Collide is a summer event where we spend a week doing service projects around church and the community in the morning and different fun activities in the afternoon. It’s kind of like a local mission trip where we spend a lot of time serving and growing closer to God and each other together but we go back to our own comfy air conditioned houses each night.
I’ve shared before about my experience with short-term missions trips in middle school and high school. My dad worked for CrossRoads Missions as a Project Manager in their Appalachia Field in Eastern Kentucky. I spent 2-4 weeks there each summer all through middle school and high school. I still believe that during my time there I learned more about God, what living out the life that Jesus called us to live looks like, and probably even more about myself. In so many ways Collide has been my attempt to recreate that environment for our students. It gets them out of their weekly routine, it forces them to think about others before themselves, it forces you to spend a lot of time together, and it creates opportunities to see God work in ways and places we aren’t used to.
This year Collide will look a little different. Our theme for the year is Depolyed25. As we talked about ways to provide opportunities for people to be deployed, I thought it would be great if we invited everyone to join us for an abbreviated Collide.
Next Friday and Saturday, August 8th and 9th, I hope you will be able to join us at the church at 8am. We will break up into groups for service projects in the morning, meet back up to have lunch together and then in the afternoons we will go hiking one day and watch a movie in the worship auditorium the other. It will be a great opportunity to serve, get to know people in church you may not know very well, and live out our theme of Deployed25. I know some of your work schedules may not allow you to be there both days, but if you can only make it one day, that’s okay!
If you have any questions about Collide, you can email me at jacob@bridgeschurch.net
If you could, please click the link below and fill out the short form so we have enough food for lunch and projects/materials prepared: