Giving and Receiving: Vision 2019

The last two weeks, A2F along with Klesis, MakeNew, and Gracepoint church plants across the US got a chance to attend the first iteration of our church’s summer student leadership bootcamp, aptly titled Vision 2019. We spent the days attending workshops, bible book studies, life skills classes and tech skills training. These courses and moments of discipleship gave us a chance to get trained up to be future leaders of the church and prepared us for God’s work.

But it wasn’t all just work! We made tons of new friends from church plants, took part in “tribe” competitions, played games, performed dances, ate so much good food, and heard a lot of impactful messages, testimonies and videos. A2F even got the chance to go on a vision trip to UC Santa Barbara for a couple days to help our church plant there reach out to their campus!

Taking a step back, it’s easy to see that doing God’s work doesn’t come easy. There is a cost to it. For every hour planned for a course, there are many more hours of preparation and practice. For a meal to feed 200+ students, there is an entire cooking team spending hours on food prep. And for a campus event to be put on, there is the background work of flyering, reaching out to students, planning the event and logistics, and doing setup and take down.

I was lucky enough to be a recipient of the blessings that come from that work, and I got to experience for myself the love poured out onto me. As I look back, I was blessed in so many ways by so many people throughout Vision. During our vision trip, I even had my own chance to work hard and pour out my love onto others, and as the giver I was just as blessed, if not more. A takeaway for me is that doing this work is worth it, and God indeed uses this work to multiply joy and blessing to both the receivers and the givers.