Lauren Stribling King - summer 1999

 

During my second year of college, I began to encounter deep theological questions regarding the ideas about God I had held for many years. I was raised in a Christian home and was baptized at the age of ten. Active in the youth group, I was in Sunday School every weekend and never missed a chance at church camp in the summers. During that year of college, I started to learn about the Focus Leadership Institute, formerly the Focus on the Family Institute, and wondered if it might be the place for me to start exploring my questions deeply and seriously. To be honest, I arrived a bit worried that I might be the only one having these thoughts and skeptical that I was in the right place to deal with them. Within two days, I realized that I was indeed in the right place as God began to mold our group of forty students together into a community that I had never (and have never since) experienced so strongly. In a word, I would describe my experience as ‘freedom.’ I was free to ask questions, free to have doubts, free to confide in my brothers and sisters, and free to be fully myself. There was a confidence that I gained in my relationship with Christ and in my relationship with the community. There was safety in our relationships with one another and, in turn, in the risen Lord.