19 Jun 2019, 08:28Don Roberts
Teens, Wednesday - Camp Meeting 2019
Samuel Elias Reyes’ astonishing personal testimony was the highlight of Wednesday’s Teens’ Programme. The guest speaker had the teens’ full attention, as he shared with a silent audience his personal spiritual journey, from ‘poster boy pastor’, to one who stopped believing in God, and then found Him again.
He recounted how as a pastor of a thriving congregation in Miami, he became a closet agnostic with a crisis of faith and identity, ‘tired of Adventist people, and tired of God’. Depressed, broken in soul and spirit, and away from church for several years, finally ‘the light came in’. He described how he was able to find ‘love, beauty, and mystery in Jesus’, not just believing, but experiencing Him.
Earlier in the day the teens tackled the subject of depression. SEC Teens Director, Pastor Juan Carlos Patrick set out various challenging scenarios which were used as a framework for discussion.
Illustrating the statistic, that 1 in 3 teenagers suffers from some form of depression, Pastor Sam Gungaloo asked every third teen in the room to stand as he prayed for the groups mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. He concluded “Thank you Jesus for loving us, even when we don’t love ourselves.”
Samuel Elias Reyes’ astonishing personal testimony was the highlight of Wednesday’s Teens’ Programme. The guest speaker had the teens’ full attention, as he shared with a silent audience his personal spiritual journey, from ‘poster boy pastor’, to one who stopped believing in God, and then found Him again.
He recounted how as a pastor of a thriving congregation in Miami, he became a closet agnostic with a crisis of faith and identity, ‘tired of Adventist people, and tired of God’. Depressed, broken in soul and spirit, and away from church for several years, finally ‘the light came in’. He described how he was able to find ‘love, beauty, and mystery in Jesus’, not just believing, but experiencing Him.
Earlier in the day the teens tackled the subject of depression. SEC Teens Director, Pastor Juan Carlos Patrick set out various challenging scenarios which were used as a framework for discussion.
Illustrating the statistic, that 1 in 3 teenagers suffers from some form of depression, Pastor Sam Gungaloo asked every third teen in the room to stand as he prayed for the groups mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. He concluded “Thank you Jesus for loving us, even when we don’t love ourselves.”
