Kat Bair

This weekend, at the Refuge, we’re doing what we call an “Immersive Scripture Experience” – an interactive way of engaging with the stories of scripture, specifically, Jesus’s encounter with the Rich young ruler. Take the time to consider your story – what is your story of meeting Jesus, and how do you still meet him today?

The young woman is Taylor Swift, the pop superstar, and in the recently released documentary about her on Netflix, you watch her learn one of her albums received no major Grammy nominations and her immediate spiral into shame, self-loathing, and a clear sense of inadequacy.

Whew, y’all. January is second only to summer as the most intense season of my year. Confirmation is part of the Youth Ministries, so in the past three weeks, we’ve had Confirmation Baptism, our biggest Revolution Weekend ever, Confirmation Retreat, Spring kick-off for the Refuge, and Confirmation Sunday.

This weekend, 130 of my closest friends and I are headed out to Glen Lake Camp for two of our biggest events of the year: Revolution Weekend and Confirmation Retreat!

About once a month at the Refuge, our Sunday night youth programming, we have a Worship Night, where we gather in the prayer room, worship together, and take on a topic that is relevant to the adolescent experience, but is either too heavy or needs too much time to unpack for us to do on a Sunday morning. This Sunday, we’re talking about self-harm.

This past weekend at the Refuge for All Saints’ Sunday we had our own little canonization service, and honored some perhaps previously overlooked saints, such as beloved coaches and teachers, Brenda Kegans, 9th grader Taylor Ledbetter, youth group alum Chris Vardy, and Dave Alvarado.

This weekend, Matt and I (along with 2 of our most beloved volunteers) are taking a small group of our juniors and seniors out to Lyle Lodge with a distinct aim: to help them leave youth ministry well.

As one of five churches accepted in the Innovation Lab, we are setting about a project that will use a combination of design thinking and practical theology to creatively imagine what the future of ministry to the young people in our midst might look like.

Our hearts are broken for the Paschal High School community today as they mourn the loss of one of their students to a tragic accident.