If you didn’t know, I spent my entire summer interning with the awesome people at Gateway Church in Austin, Texas. Yes, this means that I had to deal with Kenny Conley every day. And other great people at Gateway like Cathy Harwick (the fantastic children’s pastor at Gateway), Corey Schwarz (the south campus children’s pastor who was never, ever mean to me), Linnea Danna (the wonderful Operations Director), and Wendy Justis (she’s the one with the orange hair up above). I also got really connected in Gateway College, the awesome-tastic college ministry at Gateway. I met lots of great people like Mattias, Sledge, David, Colin, and tons of others who are simply too awesome to name here.

I learned a lot of awesome stuff this summer. I met some really awesome people. Time is too short to share it all here. But I’ll share some of it below in blast-out bullet point form. If you want to know more, just talk to me. I’d be glad to tell you.

• Austin is amazing. It has the best food of I think anywhere on the planet.
• Kenny Conley loves movies. Cathy Harwick likes to get a little crazy. Corey Schwarz has a beard. (And it felt weird.)
• Small groups work.
• Trust is essential to a community and to a team.
• Leaders reproduce themselves in others. They work themselves out of a job.
• Dreamers need doers.
• Kids are hurting and broken. They need someone to love them.
• None of us are perfect. We’re all in process together, growing and becoming more like Christ.
• Community is critical to growth.
• Christ shows up in a whole lot of places you’d never expect.
• We all have something to contribute to the conversation. Listen.
• Story changes lives.

That’s just a little spurt of some of the things I took home with me. It was an awesome summer. I’m hoping to go back next summer. Maybe sooner. It was good stuff.