A summer leadership training program is an artificial structure – it’s not “real life”.
I told the students that in Wisconsin Dells as we kicked off the Dells LT. We live in very close quarters, meet daily for prayer, music, sharing the word and all eat together for breakfast and dinner. Many people even work together and reach out to their coworkers together. During college, summers afford us these sorts of opportunities. The opportunity to enter a greenhouse to encourage spiritual growth, to push ourselves outside of our comfort zones and to build new relationships across regional lines.
In Acts when 3,000 people were added in a day God used an artificial structure in order to establish his young Church. They met together daily in the temple courts and from house to house, devoting themselves to the apostles teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread and the prayers.
In “real life” we simply cannot maintain this lifestyle and as we see in Acts they didn’t either, they got chased out of Jerusalem and went about living out the lifestyle of disciples and disciple-makers.
Our goal with the Dells LT is to spend this summer in a greenhouse growing together and then head back to real life in the fall as disciples and disciple-makers.