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Jacob's Porch
College Ministry
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Grant with some of the high school students and the Jacob's Porch band at the Jacob's Porch high school retreat.
What Have We Been Up To?

February was a busy month here at Jacob's Porch.  Well, more like away from Jacob's Porch.  We led the annual Jacob's Porch high school retreat at Camp Kern in Cincinnati and it was a blast!  Pastor Grant was the main speaker for the weekend retreat, and the band and small group leaders were all college students that volunteered to give up their weekend in order to help minister to several high school youth groups from around southern Ohio.  It was a weekend of traffic jams and snow storms, improv games and bible lessons, and silly questions and deep, meaningful insights into the Kingdom of God.  The theme was 'Be Adopted', and the four texts Grant used for his talks revolved around God adopting us into His family and what that meant for us individually (we are no longer orphans) and what it meant for us as a church (we help complete each other through Christ).  Every year, our students volunteer to teach and model what faith can look like during college, and every year they come back to the Porch saying they learned more about faith from the high school students than they ever imagined they would.  There's just something so raw and honest and beautiful about high school students and their faith; before the cynicism and apathy and defenses set in that we all face during our years in college, high school students love for the sake of love.  They don't need to defend their beliefs; they are able to love Jesus just because He is Himself.  It was astounding to see.
The music affinity group at the 'Swinter' Advance
Not only do we call our retreats 'advances' since the Kingdom of God is an advancing body, but we also coined a new term for this semester's Advance: swinter.  Since the Advance takes place during Spring semester, but the weather outside is still very obviously Winter, we never knew which season to use.  So we made up a word.  The weekend after the high school retreat, the Porch left again, this time for Camp Mowanna in Mansfield.  The theme was 'Be Here' and we heard echoes of that topic in sermons and testimonies, one on ones and affinity groups, and a new confession and song.  With nearly 40 college students in attendance, at least a dozen of whom were new to the Porch, this was our biggest Advance in years.  On our last night, during worship and the Eucharist, we wrote down on a big piece of paper what we were taking from the Advance and what we were leaving behind.  The most common take away for students was the willingness to be vulnerable.  That feeling carried over to Sunday night service at the Porch, when we didn't have a traditional sermon, but instead the students talked about what the Advance had meant to them.  It was very powerful to hear.
Dance worship
Feel free to drop by any day of the week here, there's usually Kingdom shenanigans happening.  We love having visitors :)
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