The annual Day of Faith was held on Wednesday at Central Square and is a day for local students to come together to “set the stage for inspiration, growth and connections” that spans across generational and denominational lines. 

“This was the second year of stepping into this adventure together and it was an amazing and seamless experience in how it all flowed together for the 173 individuals (made up of 26 adults who hosted 147 fifth through twelfth graders),” stated Pastor Kelly Mahoney.

The theme that resonated with the pastors who planned the event this year was, “We’re all meant to live our story as part of a much bigger story in which Jesus is the main character,”  Mahoney explained.

Setting aside “our desire for the main role, so that we can let Jesus be the main character of our stories,” was the theme of the two inspirational talks given by Pastor Micah and Pastor Jeff as well as through the team-building activity. 

This year’s activity involved all fifteen “family groups” (twelve or less students led by a caring adult) who were each assigned to create a 30-second video based on a pre-assigned storyline. After completing their assignment, they were surprised by revealing that each of their stories were part of a bigger story that moved from “life is all about me” to “life is about coming together because of Him.” The creativity of our local young people is inspirational and quite entertaining, Mahoney explained.    

This same theme is the core value that made this event possible in that eight local pastors worked with four local ministry leaders to plan this area wide event. “When we come together in this way, we agree that we will leave behind our logos and our egos for His name to be made great,” it was stated. 

The overall experience has been that it’s quite easy to get local students from various churches to come together to lead everyone in worship. In the same way, recruiting caring adults to sign-up to give a half-day was a snap because so many local adults are eager to pass on the grace they have freely received to the next generation. 

“God gave free, and so do we” is what has made it so easy to cover the cost because church leaders simply speak up at meetings to say “our church will take care of it” to cover items like facility rental, busing, pizza and pop for lunch, and supplies for group activities, according to Mahoney. This year, Central Square donated half the rental cost to make funding even easier.

The original vision for this day was born out of a ministerial meeting hosted by local superintendent and principals where we had been invited as local ministry leaders to collaborate with others who care for local students, it was stated.  “Our school hosts this collaborative meeting annually because our school administration values investing in these supportive relationships so that we are ready to come together whenever our combined support is needed by our young people,” Mahoney explained.  “When the idea of churches coming together to build relationships with local students was mentioned by Chip Rankin, multiple pastors stepped forward to say ‘I’m in.’ 

Like most everything else of significance in our area, the decisions were made over meals shared by friends. In this case, it was local pastors and ministry leaders putting their differences aside to make a difference for the next generation, Mahoney explained.