David’s Dialogues
April- Teaching, Celebrating, and Easter
Dear Friend,
April is always a busy month for our church, as well as the campus community of Virginia Tech. We started off the month with our annual spring dance, this year being 90’s themed. This was an opportunity for outreach, inviting others outside our church community to join with us for a night of fun and dancing. The next morning, I was blessed with the chance to teach at our Sunday morning worship service for the second time this semester. I opened up our mini-series leading up to Easter, focusing on the power of the Resurrection (see video post).
I was thankful to have my parents come and visit that day! Later that night, we held a “Town Hall” style meeting to discuss our plans to plant a new church in 2020. We feel that God has been calling us to plant a church somewhere in a few hour radius of Blacksburg. At the meeting, we started the very initial discussions of what the process will look like over the next few years, including the style of church and narrowing down a location.
In order to serve the community, several of our church members participated in Virginia Tech’s Big Event, an enormous service day where VT students go out in the community to help with various household spring cleaning projects. The following week was Holy Week, an especially powerful time for our community this year since Easter Sunday fell on the 10th anniversary of the shootings at Virginia Tech on April 16th. On Thursday of Holy Week, our Hokie Family collection of engage groups held a Seder dinner to reflect on the Last Supper of Jesus. Friday included a Good Friday service, and then a combined worship service was held on Easter Sunday, including our community congregation as well as NLCF, the student congregation. This was a very special Sunday, as many alumni who were here in 2007 came back to visit and remember those who were lost. Sunday night, after months of prayer and planning, a community-wide unity event was held to remember the 10th anniversary of the shootings, as well as the redemption brought forth through Jesus. Churches all across the New River Valley came together to worship, and everyone was blessed by the vision carried through the event: bringing light out of darkness, hope out of tragedy, and life out of death. The parents of one of the April 16th victims shared their moving testimony of how God has helped them through the loss of their daughter.
After such a powerful Easter weekend, we had about a week before the staff team traveled to Alexandria, VA for the Missio Alliance conference. This was a blessing to us to attend a conference designed to empower ministry leaders. We got to hear from many influential speakers in the evangelical world, including NT Wright! The month of April closed out with our annual leaders and servants appreciation dinner, a night to thank the members of our congregation (mostly students!) who have led and served through the year. It was amazing to see 66 people there that night to celebrate!
Students are starting to leave town, and it is a bittersweet end to another school year. I am thankful for both the busy and slower seasons in campus ministry. I look forward to the summer of developing as a minister and preparing for next year! (and getting married too!)
In Christ,
David
David McCann 