The end of some things and beginnings of others

Tuesday night marked the official end of Jake’s tenure as the primary leader and teacher of Clearnote Campus Fellowship. Eight years ago Jake helped cast a vision for a ministry from our church to college students with an on campus presence. Initially he wasn’t directly involved, but some things changed and he quickly became head honcho, if you will.

You might remember that first year I was leading a small women’s Bible study in central campus. The next year Jake was having a men’s Bible study in our living room that often went into the early hours of the morning. Those men studied and memorized the Sermon on the Mount and some agreed to shave their heads as a consequence of failing to keep up. A year or two later I lead a group of ladies in memorizing the same thing (that’s all of Matthew 5-7), but I didn’t require hair cutting of those that lagged behind. Some of the students that came to CNCF in those earlier days mark how long they’ve known us by how old Peter was when we met them.

The ending of this chapter is a bittersweet one as CNCF has been such a huge part of all of our married and family life to this point. Our family grew and grew and it became more difficult for me to be directly involved, but we kept trying to get students in our home for dinners, Bible studies at various times, and a party here and there. We’ve experienced sweet and encouraging times of growth as well as some sad and very hard things along the way.

Jake’s work with CNCF is not completely over. The bulk of the work is being passed on to Alex McNeilly and his wife, Dani. Both Alex and Dani have served in the ministry since they came to IU as high school sweethearts. Alex attended the pastors college after graduating from IU and has been growing in leadership in CNCF. Jake will be stepping back to focus more on other things while still overseeing and advising Alex and the other leaders in the campus ministry.

Jake’s new role will be that of pastor for discipleship. Which broken down means that he’ll be overseeing Sunday school and student ministries. He’ll be freed to work more closely with the junior and senior high youth group leaders to help them further develop and grow their ministries. Another big part of this new tasking is integrating and streamlining the various children’s programs (Sunday school, Wednesday nights) so they work together better. These things are integral for seeing our church grow and sustain families.

We’re ready to move on from college ministry and we’re looking forward to the new things coming up. At the same time, we’ll still miss it, some of it anyway. 😉