On the week of June 30 through July 6, we had six students (Betsy K., Laila K., Kaitlyn L., Luke P., Renea P. and Adrienne S.) and four leaders (Pastor Chuck, Beth and Brent Simpson, and Ben Waninger) attend the “Community Live-In: 2024” Discipleship trip. If you remember, this trip was put together for this summer because 1) we did not have enough students available to attend the Unite Conference with the Covenant denomination this summer, and 2) because of the HUGE success of the CLI trip from last summer. It turns out, it was once again a fantastic trip in so many ways.

For this recap, I intend to give a very high-view look of the trip while sharing some pictures. But I do not plan on going into much detail, as I really hope you will be able to attend the worship service on Sunday, July 28, when the CLI team will give a live report of the trip during the Mission Spotlight. 

That said, I want to set-up this mission spotlight by sharing about the process leading up to the trip, and then walk through the weeks schedule. As mentioned, the original plan beginning last fall was to get a group to attend the Unite Conference. We had our first fundraiser in November, which was the Soup Luncheon and Dessert Auction that took place the Sunday before Thanksgiving. We had great attendance to that and were so thankful for all the generous support by families and friends that helped us raise over $2,000 toward our summer trip. 

After having our first informational meeting about Unite though, it began to become obvious that it would be very difficult to get all the students that were invested in the youth group to be able to attend because of the timing of the conference in late July. We held on as long as we could, but by the time we got to the beginning of March, the Student Ministry Leadership team knew it was time to pivot. And while we could have explored a completely new idea, we decided to revisit the incredible success of the first CLI trip in 2023 by creating a new CLI trip

in a new location. 

Ultimately, it didn’t take long to settle on West Chicago as a prime location.  We didn’t want to do Florida again, as we wanted the trip to have a fresh take, especially for those that didn’t go last year. But the challenge was housing. To fulfill the goal of having everyone “live together” in community, we needed to find a big enough house to rent, and that really limited our options. Luckily, we found the perfect house in West Chicago, Illinois that could easily accommodate a group of our size. We prayed about it and chose to book it, only to find out soon after that we had a connection to the owner of the house. As I began to pursue the next step, which was to find places to serve together on the trip, I spoke with my friend and colleague, Eric Landin, who is the lead pastor at Batavia Covenant Church, and it turns out that he actually knew the owner of the house we were renting, as he was actually a former pastor of an Anglican church in the community. So this connection felt like God confirming that this would be a good fit for our team.

After another successful fundraiser with the sponsored Car wash, plus generous contributions from ECC’s Mission Commission and a few anonymous donors, we were fully funded and set to go!  

We left on Sunday, June 30 in the afternoon and drove our two mini-vans to the rental house. We got settled for the evening and played games while a few leaders shopped for groceries (a LOT of groceries… like they had three carts and it took two cashiers to check-out). We closed the night with our first devotional time, where we focused on our theme verse for the week, which was Micah 6:8 that says, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” On the first

night, focused on the theme of Justice and Restoration, talking about how all the services we would do this week center around restorative justice, both for God’s people and for God’s creation. And after a good first night sleep, we were off and running!

On Monday, we began the day by meeting staff and volunteers at our sister church, Batavia Covenant, where we would spend a few days during the week.  We took time that first morning to move some furniture in the church to get ready for the week’s events, as well as, work in their preschool playground to pull weeds and prepare it for fresh mulch.  After a quick lunch, we then drove over to Fermilab in Batavia to volunteer for their environmental protection work day. We’ll let the students share more about this, but the purpose of this service was to learn about restorative justice for God’s creation, of which we were called to steward and care for.