Jason Gaston

I try and challenge our student ministry staff here to make sure that we are not getting caught up in “doing” ministry that we totally forget about loving students and building healthy relationships with them. My prayer has always been that we would be the type of ministry that values relationships more than anything.

One of our studentLIFE staff interns Josh Lawrence, has taken this challenge very seriously. Let me tell you a little bit about Josh. Josh is a senior in college at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and your typical college student. He goes to all the football and basketball games, is involved in leadership with a Campus Ministry, tries to find time to work out (he’s a stud, he’s gotta keep that look goin,) and still maintains great grades while in school. Oh yeah, he’s also completely sold out to the ministry here in studentLIFE at The Summit Church.

Josh is also a beach bum from Southport, NC. This may come as a surprise to you when you look at the picture of Josh on this post. The great thing about this picture is that Josh has literally invested his life into one of our students here. He spends time with Nick outside of church playing video games, doing bible study, eating dinner with Nick’s family and has even taken up hunting, so he can spend more time with Nick doing the things that Nick loves to do. Why? Because he cares. Although separated by 10 years in age, these guys are friends. They are friends doing life together, challenging one another and learning to love in the midst of difficult circumstances.

I have so many stories about so many of our amazing leaders in our ministry who are INVESTING their lives into the lives of students. That is what it’s all about. To all my Student Pastor friends out there, a challenge to you (and to myself) is to get out of the office, get out from behind our desks and start fostering healthy relationships with the students God has entrusted to us. I take encouragement from guys like Josh and all of the other studentLIFE Ministry leaders here, and they challenge the heck out of me.

In other news, it seems that another Summit Campus has taken up blogging! Our Cole Mill Campus lead by Pastor Rick have decided that it’s finally to take the plunge. It looks like I’m running out of room on the side under my Blogroll for links, so I may have to dedicate a whole new page to Summit Church bloggers. So, here is a short rundown of all those great links. (You can also find them in the links section on this blog)

• J.D. Greear, Summit Church Pastor
• West Club Campus
• Cole Mill Road Campus
• Danny Franks, Connections Pastor
• Spence Shelton, Small Groups Pastor
• Summit Students, A Blog for studentLIFE Parents

One more thing, to all Summit Staffers, it seems that Pastor Rick is buying up all the rights to your name from Godaddy.So if you were thinking about buying the rights to your name to use as a website…you better hurry before he buys it and charges you triple for what he paid for it.