YAVALUMNI
Jason Cashing (MDiv’06) Pastor, Franklinville Presbyterian Church, New York YAV: Petersburg, Alaska, 2000-2001 & West Yellowstone, Montana, 2001-2002
AYAVA House members, including Kat Rendson and Liz Pfaff, have made gardening part of their communal life on the Austin Seminary campus.
reflection, and vocational discernment are nurtured through a commitment to a life of faith through spiritual practice and simple living. Liz Pfaff, a current AYAVA resident from Seattle, Washington, shared her reason for seeking out this community, saying, “I find comfort in people of faith after having worked in a church-run community center last year. I wanted to have a faith-based community in which I could participate since my work is secular.” Austin Seminary, through AYAVA House, meets their housing need, and in so doing provides an intentional space and place for young adult volunteers to explore service, vocation, and faith. Meeting this need, creating this space and place, blesses the Seminary with an opportunity to build relationships with these young adults who are seeking to connect their passion with the world’s need.
M
y spiritual journey is richer for this program, and that has a direct effect on my ministry where I am now. This is perhaps the most concrete and visible outcome of spending time between my undergraduate and graduate academic work. During these two brief years, I spent time in small, rural churches (very similar to where I am now), learning by experience (trial-and-error) what it is to live in relationship with the people that comprise these communities, walking with them through good and bad, sharing the exciting and mundane of life. But most of all, I learned to simply be present with them. I used to think that ministry was all about finding the right combination of programming to meet the needs of the people, and that once you put those pieces of programming together correctly—viola! You had successful ministry! It took living through failure in this model (more than once) to learn that ministry has almost nothing to do with programming, and almost everything to do with relationship—sharing Christ with one another, walking with one another, recognizing that you impact others and are impacted by others. I would not realize this now had I not been a YAV.
Allie Utley is a middler student who served as a YAV in New Orleans in 2009-2010. Her father, Carl Utley (MDiv’84) is an Austin Seminary graduate. Winter 2012 | 13