Maybe that's a bit of an over-dramatization...but going to a church that is made up of 90%+ college students, it's sure starting to feel that way.
Let me rewind for a little history, for the past year I've been working here, Hill Country Bible Church UT. I absolutely love it, they're my extended family of 500 or so and I couldn't imagine my budding adult life without them. My job title was technically a "connections intern," but it should have been called "best-job-ever" or "meet-with-freshman-girls-and-talk-about Jesus." Seriously, I loved it. In that time however, I noticed a pattern--and this is when we come to now. Weddings.
Weddings, weddings, WEDDINGS! In the past year at HCBC UT, there have been no shortage of these galas, which is absolutely fine by me because each one is like a mini-prom because it's all my favorite people in one place, add fancy clothes, and celebrating the lives of two of our own--it's great! Off the top of my head, I can specifically remember 13 weddings that have budded from romances at Hill Country. Thirteen. Now if that number doesn't seem daunting enough, each one of those weddings was to someone who attended HCBC. So bump that list up to 26 people. That's quite a chunk of Austin-Wedding-Change that is driven by a congregation where each graduating class only has roughly 100 people. To sum it up, we are graduating and marrying off 25% of our seniors when they leave our little family.
Dang.
So where's the pattern: Getting your bachelor's degree and your MRS degree in the same same weekend. Take 2 cases: The McArthurs and The Schwartzs.
Meet Candace and Eric McArthur.
Candace, 22 and Eric, 31, were married this past December. The 12th to be exact. Only a handful of days earlier, Candace graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in social work. Since then, Candace has returned to school for her master's in social work, while husband Eric stays busy as the Connections Pastor at HCBCUT. One thing Candace said she was looking forward to after marriage was being the gourmet cook she was going to magically turn into.
Okay that seems like a stressful week. Not enough to deter another Hill Country couple for doing the exact same thing.
Meet Eric and Kaity Schwartz
Eric and Kaity, both 22, were married on May 22nd this year--only days after both of them graduated from UT, Eric with a degree in engineering and Kaity with a communications degree.
So why would one do this to oneself? Why not enjoy the wonderful, stress-free world of graduating, marriage, job-searching, and subsequent where-I'm-going to live searching? Well for the Schwartzs, it was all of these things wrapped up into about a months time. Eric landed a job in Houston and that meant marriage, moving, and work all wrapped up into one. Phew, talk about a busy summer!
So now that you have the facts, where do I stand on this? While you may be thinking, "why subject yourself to so much stress?" or "spread out these huge milestones in your life," I couldn't disagree more. In my opinion, these years are the most exciting time of your life--why would you not want to start them with the love of your life?! So, now that the bachelors+MRS degree weekend fun has become a 2-time occurance for HCBCUT, my only question is--"has this become the norm?"
Look out wedding industry, Hill Country Bible Church is about to blow you up!
aHm
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