CHS alumnus helps high schoolers look at life's tough questions

What’s the meaning of life?

Amy Crocker asked Caronport High School (CHS) students that question this week during their Spiritual Emphasis chapels. Using the book of Ecclesiastes, the guest speaker asked questions that the biblical author asked hundreds of years ago, and that are still pertinent today.

Why in the world am I here? What’s the point? What about death?

She wasn’t giving the students easy answers.

“If I just tell them the Sunday school answers, they don’t develop,” she insisted.

Crocker believes good fruit will come from “having (students) struggle through those (questions) for themselves and then bringing it back to the cross and saying ‘Yeah, everything is meaningless until God enters the scene and then He changes everything.’”

Crocker, who grew up in Caronport, has a passion for mentoring high school kids. That passion started during her Grade 12 year at CHS.

“I was student body president and I felt like I needed to start a mentoring program here,” she said. “I had a lot of mentors in my life, but a lot of my friends didn’t. Now, looking back, a lot of them aren’t even walking with the Lord. I wouldn’t be the same person I am today if people hadn’t invested in me.”

After she graduated from CHS she enroled in Briercrest College and Seminary and began designing a program for college students to mentor high schoolers.

“I saw there was a huge disconnect,” she said. “My first year, I just kind of laid the foundation. Then the second year I was here we implemented it.”

The two years at Briercrest benefitted Crocker.

“My time at college was really good,” she exclaimed. “Some of the classes just taught me to keep learning after I left, which has been huge in my life – very instrumental. A lot of the profs – I feel so supported – I still email some of them . . . and ask them questions.”

Crocker also received some specialized coaching in leadership development from Wayne Durksen, who was Briercrest’s vice-president of Development.

“That was one of the best things ever for me,” she explained. “I got to learn from him and I wouldn’t be able to do the job I have today if I had not done that back then.”

Crocker is currently a ministries coordinator at Living Stones Church in Red Deer, Alta. She also continues to find opportunities to mentor young people.

“I take a couple of weeks in the summer and go to Bible camps and speak which has been awesome,” she exclaimed. “I’m trying to get more opportunities because I do love to share. . . every now and then I’ll lead a youth group night for youth leaders. The Lord keeps placing opportunities in my lap.”

There’s an impact that Crocker hopes to leave with students who hear her message.

“That the learning wouldn’t stop,” she said. “That they wouldn’t just be satisfied with where they’re at today. That they’d keep pressing on – that the hunger would continue throughout the year. If we do it in our own strength it will (dwindle), but if the Lord’s behind it, who knows what can happen?”