c’est la vie SELAHvie PAUSE Life.
Students reflect and grow at fourth annual Selah Vie retreat By Emily Holladay
“The first thing we did was build a house in 10 days,” said Phillip Davis, a student at Georgetown College in Kentucky who spent his summer working with the Kentucky Baptist Fellowship (KBF). As a summer intern for KBF, Phillip Davis hit the ground running through leadership with the McCreary County Extreme Build initiative. This summer marks the eighth house KBF partner churches have built in McCreary County, one of the 20 poorest counties in the United States sponsored by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s Together for Hope initiative. “Getting to the project the first day was like jumping into a pool for the first time and there’s no turning back. To be welcomed into that community with open arms by all the new faces who are so eager to bring you in and put you to work,
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discovering the assets that you have and combining them with their own was an amazing experience,” Davis said. Davis was one of 90 students who attended CBF’s Selah Vie conference, an endof-summer retreat for students who spent their summer serving with CBF field personnel and CBF partners, in local churches and other engagement opportunities. Selah Vie is intended to give students the time and space to reflect on their experiences and prepare for reentry into “the real world.” Students who served in ministry settings over the summer gathered in Clayton, Ga., for reflection, fellowship and worship at Selah Vie.
Like other Selah Vie participants, Davis engaged in new forms of ministry during the summer, without much downtime. With KBF, he spent his summer working on projects like Extreme Build, along with the administrative work of collecting information that will help the organization better serve its partner churches. “The most valuable experience of the summer has been getting to know all of the people involved in our organization and in our partner churches, because it really is a whole collection of people who come together with meager assets to produce something much larger than themselves.
October/November 2013
9/18/13 2:27:45 PM