Rockbridge Academy Blog
Posts Tagged "ministry"
Faith in Action: Summer Missions with Mr. Swanson
March 20, 2024
My passion and calling in life is to make disciples of Jesus, and part of how God has led me to do that is through leading mission trips with Royal Servants Mission Trips during my summers away from teaching Bible at Rockbridge Academy. Royal Servants is a division of Reign Ministries, an organization that exists to build and advance the kingdom of God by developing youth and youth leaders who have great commandment hearts and live great commission lifestyles.
My first summer with Royal Servants was as a 17-year-old student. I loved the community of a Royal Servants team. It was a powerful experience to be a part of a team of my peers who were all focused on a unified mission for Christ as they worshiped and sought the LORD together in the Scriptures. Sharing the gospel was a really stretching experience for me, especially cross culturally. I loved every minute. I returned for a second and third year as a student and received leadership training and the opportunity to study the Bible in Israel. After I started teaching in 2008, it was a no-brainer to return to serve with Royal Servants during the summers and help provide that same discipleship experience for the next generation of students.
We believe that this sort of training and mission experience can be an integral part of growing young people into what David Kinnaman calls “resilient Christians” who are able to sustain and live out their Christian faith in a post-Christian culture.
A Royal Servants Trip is different from many other mission trips. They are between 5 and 8 weeks long and start with intensive training at our camp prior to going overseas. As a part of the trip, there is an intensive discipleship training program that each middle school, high school, and college student goes through. We study and memorize the Scriptures together, talk about the Word in small groups, worship, and learn how to effectively share the Gospel in a cross-cultural setting. Our trips are not meant to be an end in and of themselves but are field experience and a part of the training to go, live out, and share the Gospel at home. It is a summer of service for a lifetime of ministry.
We send teams all over the world each summer. Last summer (2023), my wife Stacey and I, along with our three children, led a trip to Costa Rica where Royal Servants has been partnering with a church for 20 years. Our ministry is focused on connecting our students with other teenagers and giving them the opportunity to share the Gospel. Most days we traveled to a nearby town and set up at the local soccer field. We would play pickup games of soccer along with other games and activities. We also used dance, drama, and puppets (for little kids) to build a crowd and share the Gospel. Members of the youth group from our church partner joined us as interpreters since most of our students did not speak much Spanish. On our last day of ministry, we had been invited to the local elementary school to serve in the classrooms during the morning. During recess, we played and shared the Gospel. After lunch, Pastor Alfonso, the Costa Rican pastor with whom we partner, had the chance to do a special assembly with 5th and 6th grade students. During that time, 15 students prayed to put their faith in Christ. It was an awesome way to end our ministry in Costa Rica.
We continue to find that spending five weeks away from the routines and distractions at home and moving into an intentional community focused on seeking and serving Jesus continues to be a profound and life changing experience for many students.
We continue to find that spending five weeks away from the routines and distractions at home and moving into an intentional community focused on seeking and serving Jesus continues to be a profound and life-changing experience for many students. We believe that this sort of training and mission experience can be an integral part of growing young people into what David Kinnaman calls “resilient Christians” who are able to sustain and live out their Christian faith in a post-Christian culture. We had one Rockbridge student join us last summer. We plan to continue to serve in Costa Rica this summer (2024) and, LORD willing, for years to come. We would love to have more Rockbridge students join us in serving Christ around the world this summer. Would you or your student be willing to join us in a life-changing summer of seeking Jesus together?
Please contact me at mswanson@rockbridge.org for more information.
CLICK HERE to read the final update from our summer 2023 trip.
Matt Swanson, a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, has served as an upper school Bible teacher for 16 years and has been leading Royal Servants Missions Trips for 14 years. He joined Rockbridge Academy in 2022. Matt and his wife, Stacey, have three children.
Posted in
Upper School
Letting God Work Through Relational Ministry
November 17, 2022
Faithfulness over time works wonders in the heart of man. This past summer, I had the wonderful opportunity to experience this firsthand. I traveled to Budapest, Hungary for a month with the Navigators, a worldwide Christian organization.
I learned so much from this trip, but I learned something special—that Hungarians take friendship very seriously. Once you make friends with a Hungarian, you will be friends for life. Because of this cultural norm for friendship, ministry in Hungary is relational. This basically means forming relationships and building trust are a necessary part of sharing the gospel in Hungary.
One sweet example of spiritual conversations stemming from relational ministry happened when my team and I took a trip into the mountains of Slovenia with twenty-three Hungarian college aged students. In most of their minds, this was just a really cool summer camp opportunity. For my team, it was a gateway to relationships, trust, and spiritual conversations. One day, my group was sitting in a beautiful grassy field at the foot of a mountain. As we waited to begin hiking, we split into pairs to discuss the question, “What is trust?” I was paired with Martzi, a student in school studying psychology. He typed me as an extrovert five minutes after he met me. (Who would’ve thought Sarah Williams would be typed as an extrovert? I was proud of that!) I had talked to him a good bit before, so when it came to this question, we were able to jump right in. Martzi is not a believer, but he shared with me that he liked this community because they were different. He felt like he could trust us immediately. “You are all such good people,” he said. “My other friend groups aren’t like this.” As the conversation went on, I explained to him why I am able to trust at all. “Because I put my trust in Jesus,” I said, “I no longer need to lean on my own understanding. He fills my heart, and he is more than I could ever imagine or desire. When Jesus directs my path and I trust Him, He multiplies my ability to extend trust to others and be vulnerable.” Martzi nodded, and we continued talking about his experience in the Christian community. It was such a special conversation stemming from shared trust in one another.
Another example of a memorable conversation happened about a week before we left to return home. In Slovenia, I became friends with a girl named Anna (pronounced like Anna in Disney’s Frozen) who is a fairly new believer. We met on the first day of the camp and after a few days she came up to me and said, “I know we’ve been joking around a lot, but I would really love to be real friends and get to know each other better!” This was so encouraging to my heart. Trust had been built. From that day on, we spent lots of time together. We talked about many things, including the importance of having Christian friendship and community. A few days before I left Hungary, I asked her what she thought of our team coming into her community and then leaving after only a month. “It just seems strange to be here, make friends, and leave,” I said. She looked at me and said something I won’t ever forget. She said, “Just because someone is in your life for a short period of time does not mean that you can’t make a difference to them.” She continued, saying, “It’s like if the people in your life were beads on a necklace. Just like each bead makes some sort of change to your necklace, every person you meet makes some sort of change to you. Even if you only spend one week with someone, you have the ability to make an impact. The bead that represents you on their necklace will never be unthreaded. Therefore, every interaction you have with another person, for however long, is special and important.”
Just because someone is in your life for a short period of time does not mean that you can’t make a difference to them.
I thought about what she said the whole way home. Every interaction I have is an opportunity: an opportunity to impact lives for Jesus. We know the good news of the gospel. In Christ, the joy of Jesus should pour out of us to everyone that we come in contact with. He can and will use us to be the bead in someone's life that makes a difference for the kingdom when we surrender everything to Him.
The best part about this is that you don’t have to travel halfway across the world to do relational ministry! Though I highly recommend that Rockbridge students consider short term missions work, it is first vital that we as Christians and as the Rockbridge community start by focusing on the way we interact with those we see every day. Faithfully showing Jesus to those around us is such a beautiful way to glorify God and enjoy Him. I urge you to think about the way you can share Jesus with those around you. Not just once, but faithfully. Not to build yourself up, but to humbly serve the Lord and build His kingdom.
If any student is interested in learning more about short term missions or what the Navigators ministry looks like on a college campus, my email is sarahkwilliams17@gmail.com. Please feel free to reach out with any questions! I would love to have a conversation with you.
Sarah Williams, '20, is in her third year at Clemson University. She is studying psychology and business management and is planning on pursuing Biblical counseling. She is thankful for the Lord's providence in allowing her to have such beautiful communities both in Maryland and South Carolina.
Posted in
Worship
Path to Full-Time Ministry
January 12, 2022
This past semester, I began working with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship as campus minister at Berklee College of Music in Boston. From when I accepted the job in March to ending this first semester of full-time ministry, I’ve been amazed how tailor-made this job is for me, a gift from God combining three of my deepest passions: music, college ministry, and Jesus.
My passion for music has only grown in more recent years, but back when I was at Rockbridge, you could catch me in musicals, choir, and quartets (I even made it into the orchestra as a late-addition percussionist my senior year). Since then, my love for music has grown, both as a listener/appreciator and as a performer.
My passion for college ministry developed right before I began seminary. I was working as a camp counselor at Summer’s Best 2 Weeks in PA, and in my final term, I was co-counseling a cabin of high school guys. During the day, we’d play sports, race boats, goof off in the mess hall, but then after lights out, my co-counselor and I would invite anyone who wanted prayer or to process life to come out on the porch to chat. A different camper accepted our invitation nearly every night, sharing the weight of social pressures, addictions, anxiety, and more. We would chat and pray, sharing the love of Jesus with each one. Right after that experience, I sensed that God was calling me to college ministry—who’s there on the porch when individuals like these head to college, where those pressures, questions, and fears will only grow? As I worked through my degree at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, I did some ministry with students at Gordon College and then interned with InterVarsity at Endicott College in Beverly, MA, for a year. I knew God was calling me to stay in Boston and that pastoral ministry was in the cards down the road, but college ministry was the call for now.
My passion for Jesus was especially sparked in two classes at Rockbridge. In 7th grade Christ in the Old Testament class I was hooked by Mr. [Nathan] Northup’s vivid teachings on how the Bible was all connected with Jesus shining through all of it, as well as his fantastic illustrations and stories. In 11th grade New Testament class, we worked from Luke through Romans paragraph by paragraph; I didn’t even take notes, I just wanted to listen as we discussed the depths in the pages in front of us (and laughed at Mr. [Tim] Feeney’s jokes). Both of those classes contributed to a desire to dive deeper into Scripture that led me to an undergraduate degree in Biblical Studies and then to seminary. (As a cool bookend, my final work in seminary was presenting a message on Christ in the Old Testament to the Endicott InterVarsity chapter.)
As much as I love the academic stuff, that is not what has kept me going. From high school onward, I’ve wrestled with doubts, mental health, fears. I have questioned my love for Jesus and his love for me plenty of times. I’ve experienced loss, ache, and silence. Yet even in all of this, Jesus has shown himself to be the Shepherd of my soul, even when he reveals himself as faithful Surgeon. This is what ultimately motivates me to be a minister at Berklee and wherever I am in the future. I’ve experienced Jesus alone as the light in the darkness and injustice of this world and as the healer of what is broken, lost, and wounded in myself and the world. And I want students to know his grace and easy yoke and to share it on their campus and in our city, bringing his light to the lost. The Holy Spirit has already been doing exciting and powerful work on Berklee's campus. It’s an honor to witness and be a part of it.
If you’d be interested in hearing more about my ministry at Berklee and partnership opportunities (prayer/financial), please reach out to me at sskitchin96@gmail.com and/or follow my monthly newsletter at https://sskitchin.wordpress.com/.
Posted in
Worship