ReCAST Church has grown and shifted and changed shape many times since we began in the Spring 12 years ago. When we had our first service with 14 adults and 21 children, there was no youth group in sight. We had two kids entering middle school that attended in those early days and I even remembering sitting down with their father and communicating that we would not likely have an kind of middle school or high school youth group for his kids to attend, unless God opened the doors to a influx of what we thought of then as “older parents.”
Fast forward 12 years and I am now older than what I then would’ve called older parents.
The church has continued to grow and we have indeed added some families that have teens, but there has been another fabulous dynamic that I have loved to see. As those young kids that were in the preschool and elementary ministries have grown, they have grown together. We now have routinely between 20-30 middle school students participating in ReCAST 180 and nearly an equal amount in our high school youth group, Gravity.
So when David Schrock, our previous half-time youth director, stepped down, I went to the board with a request. My heart is to build off the momentum David has created in our youth groups by hiring someone full-time to work with this next generation.
The search did not take long after Ben Wainwright, who was already a member of ReCAST, submitted his resume and went through the interview process. I am super-excited about his enthusiasm and energy. I look forward to what the Lord is going to do in and through Ben in the coming year. Ben will begin his journey on staff at ReCAST Church on August 15th.
God has grown our church to be more broad in age range. We have a full nursery and plenty of gray hair too. I believe that a healthy church reaches in all directions. And my hope and prayer is that students are more vitally connected to Jesus Christ as we embark on a year of more energy and resources going toward the middle school and high school ministries.
