On Monday, a group of TeenRock students headed to South Padre Island for Student Life Camp.

Today marks the end of Day 2 and it’s been a good and restorative past couple of days. Leaving on Monday, the weight of the summer months came upon me and I looked back to see that our high schoolers in particular have been busy. The rate of ministry in the summer is always fast and rather breakneck but 2009 more than any other summer has been especially grueling.

With that in mind, I asked our students to adopt a spirit of rest and find restoration this week. It is no accident that the Lord has us at a beach with a very loose schedule of activities, so why not capitalize?

The students have responded well. Additionally, unity is strong and the teachings of Wes Hamilton and the worship leading of Jeremy Riddle are being well-received.

I’ve been most impressed this week by the maturity of our students. I’ve intentionally taken an almost hands-off approach in leading them to see how they would respond. Also I just needed to know, have we trained them to feed themselves? Have we impressed upon them the value of content over context?

The answer is yes.

One student exemplified this with a simple suggestion. “Hey Tyson, for devotion time tonight, would it be cool if we all rather than starting out together on the beach in one big group spread out individually or in smaller groups and reflected on the message ourselves and then came together?”

That sounds a lot like church to me.