by Matt Wilson

You would expect that after finishing the last final exam, most students would avoid anything having further to do with school. But on the first day of this past summer, the rising senior class of King’s Ridge Christian School gathered together with something in mind. To be fair, it involved planning a certain trip. But not the kind you might expect from teenagers.

Meeting with the school’s director of Christian life, Glenn Archer, at Starbucks, the students shared something that truly amazed him. “They told me if they could do anything this year together as a class it would be a mission trip,” Archer explains. “That’s what they wanted to prioritize as their senior experience—ahead of homecoming, prom and everything else.”

The root of that desire can be traced to the overall mission of the private Alpharetta school, which is to be a community “providing a college preparatory education and equipping students to know, to serve and to believe.” The equipping component has been the theme for this academic school year: “Take Action with a Servant’s Heart,” and those acts of service have included numerous mission trips to share hope and love in places such as rural Kentucky, the Lighthouse Family Retreat Center for families of cancer patients, Jamaica and Africa, where hurt, neglect, disease and despair occupy the lives of many.

“In the Bible, 1 Timothy 6:18 tells us to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share, so it’s our great desire to create a heart for serving God and others in our students—to have them actually participate in the effort rather than just making a donation,” Archer states. “It also creates an opportunity for our students to not just serve alongside each other, but also with staff and family members who accompany them.”

This past summer, 60 members of the King’s Ridge community traveled to Swaziland in Africa for a 10-day mission trip. The goals were to help improve the New Hope Children’s Center that houses 45 orphans victimized by the AIDS pandemic, build relationships with those in the community and plant gardens to help provide sources of ongoing nourishment.

Heather Watry, a ninth grader, and her sixth-grade sister Jenna were part of the group that also included their parents Carl and Lisa. The experience impacted not only the area where they served, but their own lives as well. “Although we went to Africa to make a difference in the lives of the children and the community, we didn’t expect the huge gift they gave us in return,” Lisa explains. “We truly feel blessed, and will never be the same.”

With several school-sponsored trips already completed in recent years, and more planned for this year, students are getting experiences that extend well beyond anything the classroom setting could provide. “Whether serving locally, regionally or globally, these opportunities are opening a whole new window for our King’s Ridge students, showing them that Alpharetta, Ga. is not the real world,” explains Lisa McGuire, direction of admissions and marketing for the school. “They realize the people they’re serving may have very different circumstances, but they’re not much different from us—we’re all God’s children.”

“Christ told us that to become great, you must become a servant—that’s how we’ll truly be recognized by others and is where we’ll get our joy,” Archer adds.

While the college preparatory education will carry King’s Ridge students through the next four years after high school, the experience of these mission trips will undoubtedly carry them through the rest of their lives.

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To learn more about King’s Ridge Christian School and its acts of service, visit www.kingsridgecs.org Matt Wilson is local freelance writer who can be reached at matt@inkforhire.com