Diapers, wipes, and rooftop nights; a ministry challenge with heart

At Christ the King Catholic school, they are all about ministry projects, but their latest service project came with some challenges.

"My name is Jonathan Gillis, and I am the music teacher campus ministry person here at Christ the King Catholic School,” said Gillis.

“He brings a lot of joy to this school; he’s a very talented musician,” said Christ The King School principal Dr. Jenny Richard. 

When Gillis isn’t teaching music, he’s leading ministry initiatives.

“He came up with this whole idea of the Matthew 25 service organization and wanting to give back to the community,” said Dr. Richard.

His latest ministry project was collecting diapers and wipes to take to The Infant Crisis Center.

“Well, Jonathan has a lot of great ideas and concepts and some of them take wings and some of them crash,” said Father Rex Arnold, Pastor of Christ the King Parish.

As the diapers and wipes came in, Gillis ramped up the stakes.

“I told them, if they did twenty-five thousand individual diapers and fifty thousand wipes, I would sleep on the roof of the school,” said Gillis.

“Toward the end of the goal, it really started to come in and we started promoting it through the parish and it just took on a lot of great energy,” said Father Arnold.

“Not only did we meet our goal, we exceeded it. We had we had thirty thousand individual diapers and seventy-two thousand individual wipes,” said Gillis.

There was, however, still one minor problem.

“It was his idea to sleep on the roof as a challenge last year, which I did not approve. He wore me down throughout the school year this year and I approved it, and now he will be sleeping on the roof,” said Dr. Richard.

With all the excitement of exceeding the goal, it really didn’t hit Gillis until he was driving back to the school in an empty U-Haul

“We’ll at first I was really excited and then I realized, I rather enjoy sleep, and I don’t know how I’m going to sleep on top of the school,” said Gillis.

He feels completely prepared for his campout, with his tent, air mattress, and movies on his iPad.

“I’m glamping, I’m not camping,” said Gillis. 

He hopes his students will take away one message from the entire campaign.

“Sometimes, whenever you’re serving God, it’s ok to have a little fun,” said Gillis.