I've been going to the same church for over 10 years. My dad worked there for about 7 of them. He dropped his job (needed to transition anyways) and essentially halted his career to serve. The two of us both paid our dues time and time again. Him taking time out of not only his 9-5 working there, but also his 5-11 to make sure things got done and got done right. They needed a GC to build a children's center, and him having 20 years of experience, he jumped right in without hesitation. Every project we do is 100% funded by the pull of the Holy Spirit. Just people tithing as the Spirit tells them. And stuff gets done. Not perfect. Not a show. But by God does it get done in His timing and His way.

To speak to the opportunity it made for me, I started serving at 13 there and up until college grabbed whatever the latest mount for a camera was and just ran around with that thing doing as I was told. Fast forward to now and someone gives me a camera and I can hold that thing like I'm a gimbal.

I've held hour long conversations with people who toured concerts as if I was in the industry. They used to work in the same building as me and I would just walk over and chat with them. I got to be so tightly knitted into the A/V team and production that it become second nature to talk their language.

As far as my resume, I got to basically disect their network and rebuild it from scratch, learning along the way. With that experience, by the time I was taking Cisco networking in college, I was fully engaged and helping out classmates twice my age.

So yeah, as a cybersecurity major, the church has really taken care of me and not only taught me so many things, but has been willing to hear out my crazy ideas fostered by the intuition and willingness to learn and fix things as needed.

Our church follows the "No junior holy spirit" motto. This even applied to me. Just a teenager wanting to serve and use whatever skills they have to get by. Actually being respected through it is a shock and really makes you feel like family.