Walking alongside students is a gift.
Yesterday at The Next Door, I had one of those moments that remind me why this work matters so much.
We were outside, just shooting baskets like any normal day. The gym was full, so a few of us took things out to the hoop, talking, laughing, nothing out of the ordinary. I was playing with a student—I’ll call him Dylan—when I remembered a conversation we had a couple of months ago at Club. Back then, he had shared that he was practicing Buddhism, but was genuinely curious about the life of Jesus. There was an openness there, so I gave him a Bible and told him he could explore it at his own pace.
Time passed. Life at the Next Door moves quickly, and while I’d checked in here and there, we hadn’t gone deep on it again—until yesterday.
As we kept shooting, I casually asked him how reading the Bible had been going. He paused for a second, then said he found parts of it interesting, but some of it didn’t fully make sense. It wasn’t resistance—it was more like he was trying to piece things together and didn’t quite have the full picture yet.
That simple answer opened the door to something deeper.
He started asking questions—about the Bible itself, about my faith, about how I came to believe what I believe. It turned into this really thoughtful, back-and-forth conversation. I got to hear more about his perspective, why Buddhism resonated with him, and what he was searching for. At the same time, I had the chance to share my own story—how I came to trust Jesus, what that’s looked like in my life, and why it matters to me.
It wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t forced. It was just two people talking honestly while a basketball bounced between us.
He didn’t walk away declaring faith in Jesus—and that wasn’t the point of the moment. What mattered was that he heard something true: that Jesus is intentional in His love. Not just in a general, distant way, but personally—toward him, toward me, toward all of us.
As we wrapped up and started heading our separate ways, he asked if I had any resources he could look into. That alone felt significant. I shared a couple of passages with him—John 3:16, to highlight the heart of God’s love, and John 14:6, to give context to what Jesus claimed about Himself as the way, the truth, and the life.
And that was it. No big moment, no dramatic ending—just a seed planted in the middle of an ordinary day.
I don’t know what will come from that conversation. I don’t know what his next steps will be. But I do know this: it’s always a gift to walk alongside students in their questions, and it’s always a blessing to share the hope of the gospel, even in the simplest moments—like shooting baskets on an ordinary afternoon.
Denzel Samuel
Poulsbo Area Director