Black said that statistics show that a high percentage of Bible-believing, church-attending teenagers decide to walk away from their faith during that period of time.
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“So we said, what if you could not just survive your college years, but thrive in your college years,” Black said, adding that college campuses, which are highly diverse, are a great mission fields.
Black shared a story of what inspired him to start an eight-week intensive discipleship program called Life School:
I was out surfing one day with a kid that I had mentored throughout high school, because [I’ve] also been a student pastor at our church for the past 10 years. This particular student had gone off to the military, and he came back a different person. And we’re out surfing in the water, and a random stranger, looks at him and goes, “That guy’s been in the military, hasn’t he?” And I was like. “Wait, how do you know?” And then he said something that shifted my perspective. He said, “You know, all those military guys got a similar DNA.” And it hit me like a ton of bricks where I was like, they kind of do. And I realized that if the United States government, through the means of basic training, can take a civilian and turn them into a soldier in eight weeks, then why not the church? And not everybody likes the idea of civilian to soldier, although the Bible uses it—but that’s okay—this idea of a new DNA of love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness and faithfulness and self-control. What Galatians says is the fruit of the Spirit. And so a person would be forever recognizable by the fruit of their life, which is a result of the root of their life who is Christ. And so that birthed what we call Life School, an eight-week missions, discipleship intensive. We chose Santa Cruz, California, because it’s one of the least churched areas in America, right next to San Francisco—a progressive area. So we wanted to immerse ourselves in the Word of God, but then also to immerse ourselves in the world in order to share the life of God. We bring students from all over the world to come and come to Santa Cruz to live this eight-week, intensive. And we say our our tagline is, “We want to raise up the next generation of missionaries regardless of vocation.” What if the next doctor, lawyer, accountant teacher, or politician were to see their vocation as a calling from God to live on mission to represent the resurrected Jesus Christ in the public schools as a teacher? Or in the business world as an accountant, or a businessman, or woman in politics? So our heart is to get students after they graduate high school, take a summer to raise them up, and dive into what we call ‘habits of grace.’ Rhythms, if you will, that the church has practiced since its inception. Rhythms of prayer and fasting and Bible reading and memorizing—spiritual disciplines essentially.
Black said that he describes spiritual disciplines as habits of grace because “it is by his grace that God does a work in us, and it’s by his grace that he does that through us.”
“So we wanna help students create those rhythms so that, after our program, they launch out into the world as a representatives of the resurrected life of Christ,” he added.
Life School 2025 will take place June 11-Aug. 9 and space is limited to 24 students. More information is available here.
Black is currently sharing the gospel to thousands of people every weekend on the Winter Jam Tour. The tour features Skillet, Anne Wilson, Colton Dixon, KB, Micah Tyler, SEU Worship, The Band Table, and We Are Vessel.
