High school class visits AMBS

Pastor organizes mini-term class on pastoral ministry

A mini-term class at Central Christian High School, Kidron, Ohio, created an opportunity for several high school students to explore pastoral ministry during the first two weeks of January.

Four students at Central Christian participated in a nine-day class designed by Terry Shue, pastor of Kidron Mennonite Church, whose church building is located across the street from the school. “My passion is internships,” Shue explained. “I wanted to get pastors involved doing teaching and building relationships with the students.”

So Shue coordinated four mornings of classroom teaching involving local pastors working with themes of spiritual gifts, preaching, pastoral care and discerning a call to ministry. On the afternoons of those days, each student worked alongside one of the local pastors.

“I also wanted the students to see how pastoring is connected to the larger church,” Shue said, so he took the group on a road trip to Indiana. They stayed in a guest house on the AMBS campus and spent the first day visiting the Mennonite offices in Elkhart, seeing the structure of the larger church and how church agencies work. The next morning the group toured the AMBS campus, sat in on classes, attended a chapel service and ate lunch with students and faculty.

A final assignment for each of the students was to prepare a sermon for a chapel service at Central Christian and for their home congregations.

Students participating in the course were Andrew Eades, Jonathan Hershberger, Dustin Linder and Annali Murray. Also accompanying the group was Tim Zuercher, a college student who is doing an internship in the congregation.