This isn’t really my year end blog post per se but as the celebration of Christmas reaches a crescendo and 2016 stares us in the face, I’m grateful for what has been and look forward to what will be. I have great optimism and anticipation for what the next year has in store for us at Granger Community Church (GCC) Elkhart as we continue to build our teams of volunteers and staff, helping each other connect with our community and engage in the work of bringing the kingdom of God from up there, down here. Having said that I’m very pleased to share the following bit of good news with you…go ahead. Read it. Yep. All the way to the end. It’s awesome!

During the past year we have been evaluating the whole of GCC through a process called Strat Ops. One of our discoveries was that over the years we said “yes” to many things because we wanted to be as inclusive as possible in our invitation for others to follow Jesus with us. But through this process we also realized that we needed to identify the core of our mission and become laser focused on it. When we considered students, there was no question that this would remain one of our core areas of ministry and, in fact, we would work to elevate Granger Student Ministries (GSM) because of our belief that there are few things that we do as a church that are as important as raising up the next generation of Christ followers. 

For us in Elkhart, that meant that we needed to be very intentional about establishing leadership that would be fully focused on connecting with students and building a solid leadership structure. During the past six months we’ve connected with multiple potential candidates for our Student Ministry Director role. We are excited to now be able to announce that Jordan Kerns, who some of you know from his leadership on the Elkhart Creative Arts team, has accepted our offer to serve as our full time Director of Student Ministries in Elkhart. He will begin serving in this capacity on Dec. 28. Jordan, along with his wife Krista and sons, Mason and Brayden, have been part of our church family since May of this year. He comes from a sales position at a local insurance provider and prior to that was the leader of worship and student ministries at his previous church. 

We’ve been so fortunate to have the engagement of the current volunteer team. Their leadership and commitment has been faithful and for that we can all be grateful. As Jordan joins the team, please help me in welcoming him and please thank the current team and encourage them as they also welcome Jordan into his role. Thank you for your patience and please continue to pray for our leaders.

Students, we look forward to seeing you all again at GSM Elkhart on January 3, 2016! 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!