Easter is this Sunday. But resurrection isn’t limited to a single Sunday. I’ve watched God resurrect things that looked completely gone. And one of the most unexpected places I’ve seen it happen… is in the middle of summer.
I want to tell you about two boys I met while working at Youth Works.
I met Blake and Ivan in 8th grade (not their real names). They came from similar backgrounds and carried similar histories. They were doing well in school. They were the kind of friends who lived at each other’s houses—always together, day or night. You rarely saw one without the other.
They came to our events, ate our food, and gave us a hard time in the best way possible. I loved those two boys.
That summer, I took them to camp. They asked deep spiritual questions. Curious, skeptical, thoughtful. It was a good season. They were engaged, connected—and their futures felt open.
As they moved into high school, I kept doing what this work requires: showing up, checking in, staying connected. But toward the end of freshman year, something shifted with Blake.
The texts stopped getting answered. Invitations went ignored. He stopped showing up to the things he used to love. I kept reaching out, because that’s what you do—but the door that had been open slowly closed. I don’t know exactly what pulled him away. It’s rarely just one thing.
But that summer, when school ended and the long, unstructured days stretched out in front of him, Blake drifted. He drifted toward chaos that felt familiar. Toward patterns that were already written into his story. Ivan stepped into that same summer… and found something different. Because of a change in plans, we ended up at a different camp—Faith Chapel. And something happened there. He found real friends. The kind that stick. He got connected to a youth group and a Bible study—people who kept showing up for him, week after week. People who didn’t disappear when summer ended.
Ivan graduated from high school. Today, he’s working a great job and building something on the side, buying and selling cars and motorcycles. He’s still connected to the same guys he met that summer.
Blake’s story went another direction. He was severely injured in a gang fight, and his life has been altered in ways that are hard to put into words.
Two boys. Same neighborhood. Same starting point. Similar histories.
One summer that began to tell two very different stories.
I’m not sharing this to be dramatic. I’m sharing it because I lived it—and I never want to forget what it taught me. The difference between those two roads wasn’t talent or intelligence or even family background.
It was proximity.
Proximity to consistent, caring, gospel-centered people—especially in the moments when the chaos inside was loudest.
I want to say this clearly: Ivan’s story is God’s story. The Lord pursued him. We were simply one small part of how that pursuit showed up in a critical season. All glory belongs to Him. But I also believe this with everything in me:
God uses people who are willing to show up. He uses communities that stay. He uses ordinary, faithful presence to do something extraordinary over time.
And Blake’s story? It’s not over. Resurrection is still possible. It is always possible.
But I carry the weight of that summer. I think about what might have been different if he had stayed connected—even in the middle of everything pulling at him. That weight is why I believe so deeply in what happens every summer on the South Side.
Because summer is not neutral. It’s a turning point.
Every child is, in some way, a Blake or an Ivan in the making.
And the people who show up—the ones who stay, who keep knocking even when the door goes quiet—they are stepping into something sacred. They are making space for resurrection. Not always in big, dramatic moments. But in small, faithful ones.
Again and again.
All summer long.
Will you consider making a way financially for more Blake’s and Ivan’s to join us this summer? You can give here!
