Super Summer activity begins to take shape
JEFFERSON CITY – Imagine a revival breaking out in Missouri with more than 700 students actively sharing their faith and being Christian leaders in their communities. That is what the hope is for Super Summer this year which takes place June 12-16 at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar and June 19-23 at Hannibal-LaGrange College in Hannibal.
Matt Kearns, student ministry director for the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC), said that 700 students are signed up and ready to be trained. Kearns recently talked about the theme.
“The theme for this year is YOU, and a part of the desire for our theme was to help students,” Kearns said. “We are all prone to being consumed with ourselves, and I am just as prone as the next person to be fixed on me and what my desires are. Students live in that world as well. So what we hope is as they come into the week after telling them that Super Summer is all about YOU, that we can help them turn from all their attention being fixed on them and their own YOU, to God, the Creator of the universe who desperately loves them and wants to have a relationship with them, and wants them to live out the kind of life that He wants for them through them whenever they leave Super Summer.”
Kearns also talked about the multi-faceted purposes of Super Summer.
“Super Summer serves a lot of purposes for us,” he said. “Primarily it is going to be an evangelism training opportunity. We also will provide an opportunity for our youth pastors and lay leaders to go through Engage leadership development training. We will provide resources to equip and encourage them and for them to be with other youth pastors from across the state. Another huge part of Super Summer for years has been a joint worship experience in the evenings. We try to provide an opportunity for students to really engage who God is and what He wants to do in their life.”
Kearns mentioned that another purpose for Super Summer is to be a partnership with local churches.
“We want churches to know we want to provide opportunities for their students to be equipped for evangelism,” Kearns said. “We want them to share their faith with their friends and to have a greater impact on their local church’s student ministries. I want our churches to know that I want to partner with them and help meet their needs (by) discipling their students, training their students for evangelism, and then sending them back to be missionaries in their own home church, on their school campuses, and in their homeschool groups.”