Dear Cornerstone Family,
Last Sunday, twenty-eight Cornerstone youth and six youth leaders rolled into the Corner House parking lot, tired, tanned (or burned), and filled up from a week at Reformed Youth Ministries’ (RYM) summer conference in Laguna Beach, FL. We gathered with fourteen hundred other youth and their leaders from across the country to spend a week sitting under the ministry of the word each morning and evening.
This summer’s theme was “Farther Along,” about the doctrine of sanctification, the lifelong process whereby God makes his children more holy, more righteous, more like their holy Savior Jesus. When God saves Christians by his grace, he saves us exactly where we are. And also by his grace, God does not leave us where we are. Blessedly, a Christian is not just a forgiven version of his or her old self, but a new creation in Christ, empowered by the Spirit of God to walk in newness of life. This is a needed message in the Christian life when it seems like we are spiritually gridlocked.
Through large group worship, discipleship breakouts, and small group discussion, our students spent the week learning what it means to grow in holiness and live according to who we are in Christ Jesus. Along the way, they got to join elective classes relevant to their season of life. Students learned about defending the faith through apologetics, how to handle doubt, the role of grief and suffering in the Christian life, the theology of the body, how to follow Christ after high school, and other topics like insecurity, gospel identity, and glorification—all while enjoying warm fellowship at the beach.
RYM serves as part of the Cornerstone Youth Ministry’s vision to support and partner with parents in the calling to train children to love God and follow Christ. The youth ministry team does this through regular Bible teaching, prayer, fellowship, and mission—all in order that each youth may mature into a biblically informed disciple, an active member of the body of Christ, and a faithful witness for Christ in the world.
This ministry rises out of God’s call to the covenant community to teach his testimonies to their children and their children’s children (Deut. 4:9, 6:7), so that the next generation—the children yet unborn—might know them, and set their hope in God and not forget his works (Ps. 78:6-7).
Youth ministry is one way our church answers that calling, applying the gospel to the unique circumstances of adolescence, prayerfully walking alongside youth as God shapes them into young men and women. By this, we fulfill the vow we make each time a covenant child is brought before the congregation for baptism. In those moments, we commit to joyously assist the family in the Christian nurture of their child. This local congregation takes that vow to heart.
I am continually grateful for the Christlike love of Cornerstone, its families, and youth leaders, for your generous support in sending us to RYM, and for the innumerable seen and unseen ways you have poured into the rising generation.
Your Servant,
Drew Abercrombie