I grew up being dragged to church by my parents. As a kid I was a very shy kid and didn’t have many friends at church. I sat quietly in my seat during the lesson and watched as all of the other kids would play together during free time. Eventually I discovered the art of pretending to be asleep on Sunday so I didn’t have to go. But every week my attempt to avoid church would fail so my escape became my dad’s classroom where I would avoid Sunday school and serve snacks for the toddlers. So due to both my sister and my lack of interaction with our peers, my parents decided to change churches.

 

During each summer in elementary school, I would go to the church across the street for VBS and this was where my parents decided to take us. I had already made some friends through VBS and you could immediately see the change of excitement that I had to attend church. Eventually, I entered the youth program which became my refuge. In middle school, I started to be bullied by my best friend and a lot of the other students. I found myself cursing, getting into fights, or picking on other people so that I wouldn’t continue to feel inferior.  At home, I started to argue and rebel against my parents. I was also in boy scouts, and there, your age and rank signified power which always led to being inferior and then taken advantage of. Church became my escape from the dark world around me. Through my peers and my youth leaders, I felt safety in my community at church. God used them to be present in my loneliness and difficulties. And at a winter retreat, I decided to accept Christ into my heart.

 

While I did accept Christ, my life did not get any easier and how I responded to my circumstances around me remained the same. I was unaware of this at the time, but I soon found myself seeking after attention because I felt that I had never received much from anyone. As I approached high school, I began to serve in my high school’s Christian Club or at church for the wrong reasons. While I looked like this great Christian from the outside, my desire was simply to find value from other people. I took pride in how much I served, but in my senior year I started to wrestle with my faith. I started to realize that I knew a lot about God and would do “Christian” things, but I had never truly been a follower of Christ.

 

Fast forward a couple of years, and I joined AACF in my sophomore year of college at CSULB. I had decided to go to AACF because I felt that I needed some sort of social life and because I wanted my friend to be involved in a fellowship. Neither of which were healthy reasons. However, God had such bigger plans for my life that I could have ever expected nor was I ready for God to wreck me in such life changing ways. Condensing how much God worked in my life while I was in college into a few paragraphs is impossible. Each year came with different struggles and amazing blessings, but there was one day in particular that I was able to see God’s love for me in such a powerful way.

 

As I mentioned above, I had been struggling with my faith when coming into college. I would serve to earn the praise of others and my identity soon became “a good Christian kid who had a servant’s heart”. But as I started to grow and encounter the flaws in my faith, the identity that I held onto began to break. The initial uprooting began as I started to question my salvation. As this began to roll through my mind, I remember being filled with so much confusion. At the time, I was unaware that God was reforming my identity as he was tearing off my legalistic mindset as I attributed my faith to how many Christian deeds I could fill my schedule with. After the second and final uprooting, my identity was shattered. My discipler from AACF and I were meeting on campus to talk about how I was struggling with my salvation. While I don’t remember the flow of our conversation, we eventually reached a point where we started to talk about serving. He began to share with me that serving can be an idol and how it’s not about the act, but about loving people and that God is receiving the glory. This wrecked me. Up until then, I had been serving for my own glory. I had used service to build up my reputation which I based my identity on. As I sat there, I felt lost and overwhelmed. The kingdom that I had built for myself began to fall along with my tears. I sat there crying on a campus bench and stared at the ground so no one could see my tears. But as my discipler began to pray for me, I looked up at him. At that moment, I could see that he was weeping with me. I immediately felt the love of Christ. I knew that I wasn’t alone. I knew that God was in control. I knew that He was working in my life.

 

From that moment on, my faith started to grow and my relationship with Christ began to truly form. There were many ups and downs, but God remained faithful through it all. In my junior year, I experienced complacency, but experienced community.  In my senior year, I struggled with difficult relationships. However, I learned that service is not something you do, but demonstrating the love of Christ to those around you. In my senior+ year, I struggled with vulnerability, but learned about leadership and humility. There were a lot of growing pains, but so many joys and blessings along the way.

 

After I graduated, I was ready to say goodbye to AACF after summer missions in Japan. I expected to serve and experience Christ through this short-term mission trip and then come back, find a job and serve at my local church. But while I was in Japan, God was revealing to me where He had planned for me to go.

 

In Japan, I found myself running around with some of the kids we were serving. As we were there, I realized that God was teaching me about Matthew 9:37. “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” The pastor we were serving with shared how he didn’t really have much help, but there was a fruit to be harvested. As we were debriefing one night, I felt the Lord telling me to go into ministry. I was realizing how much I wanted to let God use me in the harvest and for people to be touched by the Gospel. I wanted to be able to have a higher capacity to be available to go wherever God wanted to send me. Five days after we returned home, I was presented with the opportunity to serve on staff for AACF.

 

The number one response that draws people to AACF is the community. I pray that this community be used to break the strongholds in your life, refine your faith, and bring you into a deeper love for Christ. In the five years of college, God challenged me in ways that I would never have expected. And he still continues to do so.

 

I honestly don’t know what I am doing as a staffer. I’m not much older than all of you. I don’t have a seminary degree. What I do know is that God has placed me here. While I am still learning what that looks like, I am excited to see how God will be sanctifying me as I get to walk alongside each one of you as an older brother in Christ. I am excited to get to know each of you and would love to hear your story as well. Thanks for reading this essay.

​

And thank you, Kyle! (≧◡≦)