Summer has officially hit, I guess. We've scaled back our community group for the summer - meeting about every other week instead of weekly as we had been. Last night was the first time we had all been together in a couple of weeks. We opted to put the Bible down (dare I say!) and play for a night. The game of the night was Bunco - a highly contagious dice game. Actually, Andrea & I were talking after everyone left at the end of the night & we agreed it was the perfect 'get to know other people' game because it forces you to be partners with so many different people throughout the game. It was good to have some new faces in the group - something I know we'll be seeing more and more throughout the summer & into the fall (especially after we launch our new groups in September).

Being together with friends and enjoying one another really brought me back to my heartfelt conviction that this is really what it is all about: authentic community. No matter what we do, no matter what the young adults ministry at GBC looks like in the years to come - community will still be the cornerstone of all we do. 

I think, especially for young adults, that community is one of those things that most people realize that they need, but very few really know how to find it. We walk around in our lives and long for deeper connection points, relationships that shuffle below the surface every once in awhile. Community is important to us. The problem is that we look around realize time after time that we are not connected with other people in meaningful ways. We can, if we are not careful, slip into an everyday life void of rich relationships - settling for the mundane tasks at hand.

I feel like this is a spiritual soapbox I have to (& am more than willing to) stand upon and call out. My heart is, beyond anything else at this point, that we would see Christian young adults reaching out, connecting in authentic community, growing spiritually with others as well as privately.