We finished up the HSM staff planning overnighter with a brainstorming meeting on the ways we can serve the community this summer. Really our goal is two-fold: 1) serve the community, and 2) raise awareness of our ministry and expose more of the tens of thousands of students in the county to Saddleback’s High School Ministry.

There’s a bunch of really creative ideas placed tenatively on the calendar at this point – my favorites include taking the Save the Planet theme and using it as a ‘double meaning’ by collecting bottles that we recycle and use the funds to purchase Bibles that we’ll take on the mission trip to Ensenada. Save the Planet is good for the environment but it is also about sharing the Good News. Hmmm …not sure if that is cheesy now that I look at it or intensely cool. I’m going to say cool.

We’re also looking to have students visit retirement centers, homeless shelters, adopting a stretch of the highway, serving other local churches, random acts of kindness. We are also going to do some fun community influencing days like bringing donuts and coffee to the summer school teachers and hitting up local skate parks and beaches with free bottled water and invitations to the student ministry. Oh, and my favorite, we’ll be collecting a “mountain of shoes” for World Shoe Relief that will coincide with the grand opening of the Student Zone.

This summer, we want to serve where there are needs, and show up where there are students. Excited about what we came up with … had some good prayer time as a team there and it will be exciting to see how it all firms up in the next 11 weeks before we go public.

JG