The Youth Vision column will continue with new experiences and new lessons worth sharing.
In these seasons of Advent and Christmas, we celebrate the God of new beginnings. The arrival of Christ on earth, in the form of a babe in a manger, marked a new beginning for humanity. When a person responds to God’s open arms and follows Christ, that person becomes a new creation. When Jesus returns in glory, the old will pass away and be replaced by a new heaven and new earth. We serve a God who can make everything new.
This will be the last Youth Vision article I write as the GenMin National Coordinator. My tenure in this role will end with GenMin at the conclusion of 2023. Given the circumstances, it would be natural for me to focus on endings. Normally, I would talk about finishing races and fighting good fights. However, I feel my attention being drawn to beginnings and what God may be doing in this moment.
GCI has been leaning into our vision of healthy church for more than five years. We have been wrestling with how to make our congregations resemble Jesus in as many ways as possible. This wrestling includes the ways in which our congregations disciple children and youth. With our denomination’s increasing experience with trinitarian children’s ministry and neighborhood camps, perhaps God is preparing us to participate in a new way of cultivating relationships between young people and Jesus. Perhaps a phenomenon like the revival at the Asbury Theological Seminary is a signal that we are at the beginning of a movement that will see young people playing a vital role in helping reimagine what the church can be. Perhaps GCI is being equipped to participate in this new thing that God is doing.
While I will no longer be the GenMin Coordinator, I will continue to write the Youth Vision column. Up until this point, I have been writing this column drawing on my experiences as a youth development professional, youth minister, and regional camp director. However, as I move to having 100% of my time dedicated to being a pastor — a pastor with children and youth as key members, and a pastor who is actively seeking to engage the young people in the neighborhood — I will be writing as one proactively trying to discern what God is doing in the lives of the young people that my team and I will be working with. I hope to be an active participant in the movement that I believe is emerging. And I hope to write articles that will let you see how God is forming me (and maybe us) into that new thing.
As Generations Ministry ends, let us mourn as those with hope. Let us honor what an amazing ministry it was and feel the sadness that comes with saying goodbye. But let us also lift up our eyes and pay attention because we serve the God of new beginnings. We do not want to miss a moment of what God will do next.
Till next year in a new role, 
Dishon Mills
Generations Ministry Coordinator
