By Jenny Spahr, Salt Company Coordinator
Salt Company Cedar Rapids just finished one of the most exciting and taxing times of the year: our new student leadership interviews. These interviews are exciting because we get to have in-depth conversations with students about their walk with Jesus, their past school year, and their hopes for the next year. They’re taxing as a staff because there are no “easy interviews.” It’s one of the most condensed, and hopefully, fruitful times of shepherding some of these students have ever experienced. We unpack their struggles with purity, drinking, drugs, conflict, and mental illness. At the same time, we get to hear them tell their stories of God growing them and shaping them this past year. I’m especially encouraged by the stories of students coming from death to life this year – often stories we hadn’t gotten to hear yet!
Before every interview, we’ve been telling our students that the goal isn’t to decide if they are “good enough” as a Christian, but to discern if leadership will help them love Jesus more fully and at a new pace next year, or if the commitments of leadership, the title of leader, or the intentionality of being on mission as a leader would actually hinder and maybe even hurt their pursuit of Jesus. As a staff, we’re sadly too familiar with stories of sin kept in the dark or unhealthy patterns kept secret because a student was trying to put on the mask or persona of a leader. But even with these sad stories in mind, I’m filled with hope as we see the next generation of leaders rising up out of connection groups, ready to multiply their impact on our four campuses.
Through this whole process, we’re holding fast to the promise that the harvest is plentiful, that the Lord knows who He has at these schools, at that as we ask Him to raise up more leaders, He will answer that prayer in ways we can’t even begin to imagine.
