Student Leaders Attend Spiritual Retreat

Story by V. Michelle Bernard and Monica Zill / Photos by Zill

This fall student leaders (Pine Forge Academy students pictured) from all of the Columbia Union Conference’s junior and senior academies gathered with union and academy leadership in Edgewater, Md., for the annual Spiritual Academy Leadership Training (SALT) weekend.

“We want our student leaders to gain a better sense of their leadership responsibilities and how to meet them,” says Jaqueline Messenger, event coordinator and the Columbia Union’s associate director for secondary education. “We are also wanting to support their spiritual leadership on campus as well.”

Speaker Paul Graham encouraged the students during talks throughout the weekend. “Their purpose is simply obedience to their calling,” said the Potomac Conference’s pastor of both the Restoration Praise Center in Bowie, Md., and the Pennsylvania Avenue church in Capitol Heights, Md., “What better way to live out your true meaning by being obedient to the call on their lives.”

Summer Dekle (pictured right, with Parkersburg Adventist Academy student Alaina Zill), a first time attendee and junior class treasurer at Pennsylvania Conference's Blue Mountain Academy in Hamburg, Pa., added, “This weekend has really helped me believe that I CAN step up and be a leader in my school.”