Every other Thursday, a group of students leave their ACE classes and head to room 110 to participate in a meeting. While meeting, students talk about their beliefs while eating a provided snack
Science teacher JD Hand runs the school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) program, also known by the nickname Snacks and Jesus. Hand brought the program to the school in 1997 hoping it would give Christian students the ability to talk about their beliefs with other students who were also of the same religion.
“Some people are willing to help them to know that there are other Christian kids around them so they can be a little bit more comfortable in sharing their faith,” Hand said.
The club nickname was created to advertise what happened during the meetings.
“A lot of people don’t know what Fellowship of Christian Athletes really is all about,” Hand said. “The essence is we eat snacks and we talk about Jesus.”
Junior Elijah Quiring stepped up to the role of the club president. He wanted to make FCA a better place for club members, and Hand agreed.
“I proposed to Mr. Hand that I run FCA because I noticed last year, my sophomore year, that FCA was a little desolate, it was boring, and I had ideas for FCA to make it fun,” Quiring said. “I was like, I can run the club and he was down for it.”
Quiring has several changes he wants to enact for the club. He wants to make the advertising more prominent and permanent. Currently, advertising only happens for specific meetings.
“I want to put up permanent posters around the school that represent FCA as a whole that talks about it. It might get a conversation started, and then people ask,” Quiring said. “Then other posters are going to be put up to promote certain meetings when we have them.”
Quiring is not the only person in FCA who wants to make changes to the club. Junior Dalton Pankratz would rather have meetings happen every week rather than every other week.
“I know that it’d be kind of a struggle and people kind of struggle to get that time, but I think it’d be awesome,” Pankratz said.
Pankratz recently shared his testimony, a story about how someone became a Christian, at a club meeting.
“There was a lot of anxiety building up to begin with, it’s kind of like I’ll screw up,” Pankratz said. “Once I was actually out there, it was actually kind of enjoyable because you’re kind of just speaking from your heart.”
