First, let me remind you of a little history of this trip: I first developed this experience back in 2012 while serving as the youth pastor at the Covenant Church in Princeton, Illinois. As I worked with the late Millennials and early Gen Z’ers, I noticed a few key challenges: First, this was an incredibly lonely generation, primarily because of social media in a fast-changing world. Second, their view of the church and service was limited to an old model of evangelism that made it seem like serving Jesus was only about walking up to strangers to talk about Jesus. And lastly, I noticed that they were so overwhelmed with all the demands from all the other activities they were committed to, they were exhausted. So, a few of my youth ministry colleagues and I developed the idea of a Community Live-In experience to confront these challenges.

Originally, the idea was to live at the church for a week to discover what Christian community and service together could look like. The experience was… good? But it was not as good as it could have been! Being at home in our own church didn’t allow for the sort of detachment from all those challenges that was needed. So, several years later, and after the experience of COVID made these challenges of loneliness and exhaustion worse, I decided to reinvent the experience to bring us to a new location. The biggest challenge was that we were living in those earlier post-COVID days, and there weren’t many places that were open for us to go. But one place that DID have the means to open to the public early in a safe and healthy way was the hospitality industry in the world's vacation capital… ORLANDO! And even better, I had already had a long and great friendship with the pastor of the Covenant Church down there, Sarah Robinson, as we had served together in summer camping ministry many years before. Thus, the new version of the CLI trip was born!

Since then, I have been in my current role as Pastor of Young Adults here in Lafayette, and the rest is history! We went on a CLI: Orlando trip again in 2023, and then again to Chicago in 2024. Much of how we lead those trips even influenced the way we did our Alaska mission trip last summer, too! Each time we have done this, it amazes me how the simple format of sharing a living space together, serving alongside one another, reflecting and responding together in small groups, and then having fun, memorable experiences together deeply affects the spiritual growth and bonds of our youth group community.

In preparation for this year’s trip, the format is roughly the same. We will LIVE in Christian community together for a week in a very LARGE rental house down in Orlando. We will SERVE together in unique ways through ministries and non-profit organizations our friends at Audubon Park Covenant Church are already partnering with. And we will PLAY: taking every opportunity (including two days at the “most magical place on earth”) to make memories and have an unforgettable experience. And it will all be done together in Community.

And before we leave, we want to give you a quick run-down of what the schedule will look like, so you can follow along and pray for us from home:

Wed., June 24 – We will fly from Indianapolis to Orlando and get settled into our home for the week. Pray for good weather and safe travels, and that all the details work out as they have been planned. (You may remember we had an issue with our rental house the first time and had to make several last-minute changes. Pray that doesn’t happen this time). We will be staying at a rental home that we discovered is owned by a couple who were formerly youth leaders at their church, and they are very excited that a group like ours is able to use their home for this trip.

Thurs., June 24 – We will serve with an organization called “The WASH Foundation”, which was formally known as “Clean the World”. This is an organization we were able to serve with last time, and they work with the hospitality industry to recycle cleaning products normally wasted and thrown out by hotels and resorts, and repurposes them to provide clean soup and hygiene products to homeless shelters in cities around the country and around the world.

Fri., June 25 – We will be serving at Audubon Park Covenant Church to help them prepare their facilities for a new ministry opportunity that is taking up residence in their building that focuses on providing food and shelter for those living in poverty.

Sat., June 26 – We will spend this day at one of the Disney parks.

Sun., June 27 – We will join in worship at APCC and spend the afternoon/evening resting.

Mon., June 28 – This day’s service projects are still being formalized, but the hope is that we will be working with a non-profit called A ROCHA that we’ve worked with before to do some cleanup projects on the waterways that head out to the ocean, as we learn about the important work being done to help the environment, water systems and animal life overcome the effects we have on them in the region.

Tues., June 29 – We will celebrate the end of the trip with one last day at the Disney parks.

Wed., July 1 – We fly home. Again, please pray for good weather and safe travels.

We look forward to all that this trip has to offer, and we can’t wait to bring this experience home and share it with all of you here at The Grove! We know how much this church has done to support this ministry, through fundraising, prayer, and more… and we plan on sharing a glimpse of it during a ministry spotlight in late July or early August.

Please keep our team in your prayers. Pray for our leaders: Myself, Ben Teninty, Britt Teninty, Darci Church, and Heather Potts. And pray for our students: Adrienne Stanfield, Betsy Kallok, Carter Riley, Caleb Ungaro, Emma Hatke, Laila Kincade, and Rachel Burgeson.