Kyle Lake is our Youth Director at Crossroads Church. He does an awesome job leading our youth group of around 30 teens, most of whom are from the inner city and whose parents don’t attend church with them. He also leads our summer park ministries. There are two of these each week, at two different parks, with each park bringing in around 40-70 youth per week (over 350 unique youth over the summer). (Check out photos here)
Kyle is called to go to seminary. He’s found an awesome program at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary called the Urban Cohort. It is a once-a-week program for urban ministers only, with a majority of the tuition coming from a GRTS scholarship. It takes 3 years, doing one class per semester and you graduate with a master’s degree. Kyle never finished his bachelor’s degree at Wayne State University, but GRTS/Cornerstone has made arrangements for him to get his bachelor’s equivalency through their adult degree program on the undergrad side so he can be official for his accredited master’s degree! Kyle can start these classes in October and begin seminary course work in January, but here’s the hang-up:
It will cost $3367.74 to get Kyle’s transcripts from Wayne State. This is tuition and fee bills from Kyle’s time there. Did I mention that Kyle took a HUGE pay cut to work as Youth Director at Crossroads? He was making a great salary with benefits working for Apple and now makes $30,000/year with no benefits at Crossroads. (We’d pay him more if we could!)
Will you help us raise the $3367.74 needed to get Kyle’s transcripts from Wayne State so he can start seminary???
Blog Nation, we can do this! Rather than using GoFundMe, which takes a large percentage of your gift, you can give directly to Crossroads Church on our PayPal button below. Write “Kyle’s seminary” in the “Add special instructions to the seller” line (this will appear after you log in). We will mail you a year-end tax deductible receipt (PayPal takes a 2.4 – 2.8% fee out of your gift, vs. GoFundMe’s 5% fee). You can use the PayPal button below OR you can do it the old fashioned way and mail a check to Crossroads Church, 105 W. Allegan St., Lansing MI 48912. Write your check out to Crossroads Church and write Kyle’s seminary in the memo line.
Update: 100% of the $3367.74 has come in! Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, here we come!!! Thank you to everyone who gave!!!!
Thank you to those who have given. Here’s an important update about the need for this money that I didn’t know before–which is why Kyle has these fees in the first place. Kyle enrolled for the winter 2014 semester then had a severe fire accident where he was out from work and had a lengthy hospital stay. When Wayne State was sending him bills to pay for the 4 classes he enrolled in, he appealed it with doctor documentation. Wayne State took away some of the tuition (around $6000) but kept on the administration fees, kept $1500 of tuition on, and other fees (late payment, fitness center, registration fee, and collection fee). We still have $2600 more to raise!
Let’s get this Ninja Turtle into seminary!
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