In God’s kind providence I’ve had the privilege lately to see the fruit of covenant faithfulness come to roost at WRPC. The particular blessing I’ve witnessed (and you along with me, though you may not have realize it) is to see young people who were once a part of the WRPC youth, come back in their young adult years to make WRPC their church home.
First, I should say I’m incredibly grateful to the staff and session for allowing me to remain and serve in the capacity I do, working with the young people of the church. Although there are a few, those who get to have a long tenure working with young people are by and large the exception to the rule. Credit my incumbency to a sober-minded leadership who can recognize that fun and fellowship are not evils but who also believes young people benefit most, as all of us do, from serious exposition of the word of God, from theological and doctrinal teaching, from striving toward maturity, and from age-appropriate content and application.
The commitment of WRPC to those ministry emphases has resulted in an exceptional though not surprising continued commitment to the church in our young people. Over the years, somewhere over 90% of our covenant youth, who became communing members and stayed plugged into our student ministries through their high school years remain to this day plugged into solid evangelical churches with most of them settling in the PCA.
The particular recent blessing that led me to write this has been in seeing several of these young people not only staying committed to THE Church, but also coming to settle in OUR church. Among the young adult members of our congregation, integral to our weekly ministries and serving throughout the church, are former students I either inherited from my predecessors student ministry pastors (David McIntosh and Jeff Hooker) or who never knew a “youth pastor” besides myself. These “alumni” are now WRPC choir members, musicians, mission trip participants, Sunday School teachers, nursery workers, youth chaperones, VBS staff, kitchen crew, and more. They’re not just present, they’re PLUGGED IN!
Given how transient our culture is, and how uncommonly pastors remain in one local church for a decade or more (especially in working with young people), to have so many “come home” AND to be able to see it is exceptional.
But as I said before. It’s not surprising. When we pray persistently for our young people, when we’ve given them reasons to know they’re loved by the church, when they’ve come to trust that God’s word will take priority over personality, when they can expect that worship will not follow fads but be recognizable as serious and steady, year by year…well…we shouldn’t be surprised that they see the church of their youth as still being their church when they come into maturity. We shouldn’t be surprised, but we should be incredibly grateful.
Scotty is a native of Santa Anna, Texas. He graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1994 and completed his Masters of Divinity at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in 2005. Scotty’s Air Force service of eleven years included time as a Security Forces Officer protecting nuclear weapons and also instructing at Officer Training School before being called into pastoral ministry. He and his wife Kerry are parents of three children, Clayton, Avery, and Grace.
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