Evan Hughes

Evan Hughes Testimony & Call to Eldership

 It’s a continual blessing to take time and consider the work that God has done in your life. The older you get, the richer the practice becomes. 

To share my testimony in brief is difficult because there are so many small details that stand out to me now concerning God’s drawing of me to Himself that I didn’t consider in the past. 

But I believe the most poignant season in my life where I really got acquainted with the Lord was at bible camp (summers from ages 12 through 16). 

I use the word “acquainted” because up until my final year attending the camp, reflecting on it now, I don’t believe I had truly understood the gospel in a way that produced fruit. I knew of Jesus, His death on the cross, and that if I believed in Him my sins were paid for. But the reality of those things had no effect on me until my last year there. 

I had been cabin leading that last year (which I probably shouldn’t have been in retrospect, given the state of my heart) and one evening a bunch of our campers decided to confess Christ as their Lord and Saviour. 

I’m still puzzled by this, but I have a high degree of certainty that it was during that evening that I truly wrestled with God and eventually confessed Christ as my Saviour. 

Something about being a fly on the wall and seeing God at work in the lives of others stuck with me and made me consider His work in my own life. It led to deep conviction of wearing the name Christian but not living that name out. Christ died for my sins, the reality of that began to set in my heart and I knew I couldn’t continue life the way I had been. I left camp that year a different person. 

I remember vividly having a fear of going home because my friend circles at school and my life at home were not going to help me grow in this newfound faith. I reflect fondly on this fear because I see it clearly now for what it was. God was rearranging my heart and placing a desire for growth in me I never had before. And knowing how my life outside of camp was, I feared losing this great gift once I returned home. 

Now that’s not all to say my family is awful or that I had a troubled childhood; in fact, I have a lovely family that instilled good morals in me, but we were not church-going folk, we didn’t know Christ. The morals I had growing up were to do good for good’s sake and church was something you only did at Christmas because that was tradition. But that summer, my foundation had completely changed and the prospect of coming home a different person scared me . But God was kind to me in that my family has always been supportive of me, even following that summer as I pursued a church and began to go about life differently than before. A few years later they would even attend my baptism where I had a chance to share a lot of what I’m sharing now with them and the church body. I’ll always be grateful for God’s kindness to me through them even though they don’t share my convictions. It’s my prayer that one day they might come to share those convictions and know Christ as He has allowed me to know Him. 

And so with all of that said, FWBC is where God led me after that summer. And even though that season marked a major shift in my life and will always hold a special place in my heart, I could say equally high things about the faithful preaching and fellowship I’ve received for over a decade at FWBC where I have been able to grow and mature in the faith. The Lord is kind. 

Call to Eldership