In case you don’t know much about football, let me explain a little further.  Ethan is 6’1” and around 175 pounds.  The positions he’s played prior to this year require that he either run with the ball, or catch someone else who’s trying to run with the ball.  He’s pretty fast, and pretty light as football players go.  

The center, on the other hand, is the guy who hikes the ball to the quarterback and then blocks the other team’s largest players.  It’s one of several offensive line positions typically occupied by young men heftier than our son.  

I won’t try to enumerate the sequence of events that led to this reassignment.  As you can imagine, high school football players have a way of getting injured, speeding up, slowing down, and even moving away over the summer.  And it’s really a compliment to Ethan’s strength, speed and work ethic that he’s being given this opportunity.  Let’s just say that Ethan’s mother and I are swallowing hard, and praying even harder that our strong but medium-sized son will survive and even succeed, right in the center of all those big guys.  

Of course, one way or another, most students find themselves in that kind of a “position” as they go back to school this fall.  For many the return to campus means being thrust into an environment of both dangers and opportunities.  And as their families and church families, we dare not take those challenges too lightly.  

Now would be a great time to intensify your prayers for the students you know and for the ministries of our churches to those students.  Pray they will have strength to stand on the biblical truth they have learned this summer.  Pray the Holy Spirit will guide them to good decisions, and to peers who can reinforce their Christian commitments.

Pray for the students who received evangelism and leadership training this past summer at IBSA’s Super Summer, and for those who were mentored during IBSA’s All State Youth Choir mission trip to Pennsylvania.  Pray for the students who will gather this fall for “See You at the Pole” prayer meetings, and who will organize and attend Christian club meetings on campus.  Pray that hundreds, even thousands, of students from IBSA churches will boldly invite their friends to the December Youth Encounter in Springfield, and that many there will hear the gospel and respond with faith in Christ.

Pray for IBSA’s Student Evangelism Director Grant Medford and for the network of youth leaders throughout our churches he seeks to assist and equip.  Thank you for making this ministry and others possible through your church’s Cooperative Program and Illinois Mission Offering gifts.  When you give your Illinois Mission Offering gift through your church this month (or online at IBSA.org), ask God to use your gift to help welcome students into the Kingdom of God.  

Of course our mission to reach students doesn’t end with high school.  Pray also for Serena Butler, who directs IBSA’s collegiate ministries, and seeks to help churches and campus ministers evangelize and disciple college students, and mobilize them for missions and church planting.  IBSA’s goal this year is to start new campus ministries on at least ten college campuses.  That would bring the total to about 40, and yet 130 Illinois college campuses still have no Southern Baptist witness.  

As our students go back to school this fall, they are being thrust into the center of some pretty dangerous temptations, many of which they haven’t faced before.  But my son Ethan’s response to his new football position has encouraged me.  Instead of focusing on the size of his opponents or the immensity of his task, he speaks with excitement about the opportunity to be in the game, and to help his team win.  He reminds me with a twinkle in his eye that he touches the ball on every play, and that nothing happens unless he starts it.  

This fall let’s pray for the students and student leaders from our churches.  With the Lord’s help, who knows what they may start from right there in the center of things, no matter what the odds.