Ep 4: This is my Testimony

My name is Landen Kuhn, age 14, and this is my testimony.

Welcome to NextGen, the podcast created for believers just like you, a space to hear powerful stories, grow in faith, and discover what it means to walk boldly with christ. This is NextGen new episodes every now, here is your host, Landon Kuhn.

Hey, what's up, NextGen? This is episode number five. This is my story. This is going to be me talking about my life and my journey with Christ. And I'm going to be honest, whenever I make a podcast episode, what I usually do is I mainly have a script in front of me, or not necessarily a script. I have talking points I go through. But this is raw, all right? Raw and real. And this is just off the top of my head. And we're just going to go through my life and my journey with Christ, and maybe this can relate to some of you or maybe for you non believers out there, maybe lead you more to Christ. So I want to start it pretty close to the beginning. So I've been pretty quiet about this for a while about where my church is, because, you know, the Internet can be a dangerous place. But I'm just going to say it. I go to Cross. A church. A church, look, located in the greater Cincinnati area, and it is a mega church. So I started going there in their Sunday school, as you might call it, but they call it Kids Club.

And you go there from when you're a baby to fifth grade. And through that time, Jesus always came up as like, almost like a Santa Claus, if that makes sense. Almost just like a magical person, but that's not really who he is. And you don't really understand the level of Christ until you have seen him in a light where what you're taking in is true. And Kids Club is great, but at the end of the day, it's more about, you know, just getting you introduced to the Bible and talking about Bible stories, which is fine, especially for younger kids. I wouldn't expect it anything less. But throughout that time, Jesus has always been a hard concept for me. I'm a very logical person, which sometimes it's hard for me to wrap my head around stuff, and it's really hard for me to just have faith sometimes. So basically, there's nothing much to cover before fifth grade, but sixth grade is when everything really came together for me. So basically, Crossroads, my church, I started volunteering there July 2021. And basically it was after this camp that they had called Worship you. Now it's not worshiping you.

It's a interesting Name, and they probably should change it because it actually sounds like Worship you, but it's. But it's like a capital U. It's supposed to be Worship University. So basically what you do is whether you're in a band or if you're on the production side of things, which at crosswords prediction is huge. They have one of the best, you know, screens in the world. They have some of the best cameras in the world. They have a lot of people that they try to connect with. So. So basically I started volunteering right after that camp. But that camp is something that will change my life forever. That is where I met Jesus for the first time in my life. We. So basically we start out the day with worship for, I think it's the campus, like three or five days. I'm not too sure. And basically all that we do is. Is worship Jesus. And there was a song where they told us to. To do something that we haven't done ever and worship. So. And at this point, I never really put my hands up during worship, you know, just being scared of what everyone around me would think.

But that is the first time that I realized, especially at Crossroads, it's okay. It's. It's okay to show your faith and you don't have to feel bad about it, and you don't have to feel awkward or anxious about it. It's very raw and real. And what they call middle school through high school services, it's called crossroad students. And basically what they do is. It's basically just that middle ground between like a adult service and a kids club service. We're not necessarily learning about the Bible anymore, but we're more learning about the lessons that Jesus tried to teach within the Bible. Now in. Every week, we study a verse or something, and we tried to really dig into what that really means and worship you. We did that too. We had a. So basically we would do worship and then we would have a guest speaker come on stage and then, you know, give like a mini sermon. And basically that's where I found Jesus was through worship. I was. I'm a volunteer now at Crossroads Lawrence. And what I do can vary from doing slides on a screen, like the lyrics that they played during worship.

Two cameras there. You know, you mess around a little bit of sound and lights. So, yeah, it's been a great, great experience. Probably the best one that I've ever had in my life is working and volunteering for Crossroads and their production team. It is just amazing environment to be in as well as just amazing people that you get to meet. Amazing people. Crossroads has one of the best worship teams in the world. You know, just incredible, incredible people. But, you know, not all things in life are good. That same year, I met. I met some of my friends I'm still with today as a freshman in high school. And yeah, it's. It's been a great experience, but like I said, not all roads are pretty. Actually, most roads aren't pretty. You know, there's a lot of crap that goes on in the world that can't be explained or, you know, why certain things happen. I met one of my friends that, you know, we're starting to hit it back off again. But for a while, I felt very. An outcast almost. You know, during middle school, all I thought about was being popular and trying to be the most popular person possible.

That's not how to live life, really. It's. It's not how you should live. Life is always chasing that, you know, that better group of friends or. Now, I'm not saying like a better group of friends, like, I'm saying like more of popular group. You should always chase better friends. Like if you're smoking or something with friends or you have seen them, you know, just back away from that. But what I'm trying to say is how challenging it is sometimes to have a friend that leaves you for nothing. Right? When a friend leaves you to be more popular, it can be like a stab in the back because, you know.