I’m Cedar Springs Weekday School Assistant Director Annie McDaniel. Here’s how I’m living deeply.

“I was babysitting before I could drive, volunteering in the nursery at church in middle school, watching siblings of teammates while my brother played baseball. I always had a pull toward kids, even before I knew what to do with it. Even knowing this about myself when it came time for college, I didn’t really sense a calling. I just knew I hated math. So I got a communications degree because it required the fewest math classes. It wasn’t until I became a Young Life leader that something clicked. Their tagline is ‘You were made for this.’ And for the first time, I felt like I had a place I truly belonged. Ministry, people, kids, fun- I was made for all of that. I learned a great deal from Scott & Brooke McMinn, Lakeway YL area directors, about loving Jesus, loving kids & loving myself. After college, I spent 3 years on ministry staff with Young Life. Then in 2014, life changed in about four different directions at once. I found myself moving to Knoxville and needing to find a new work path. Relationally, my boyfriend, now husband, was relocated to California for work. In the midst of the sea of changes, I interviewed for an Administrative Assistant position at Cedar Springs Weekday School and after the interview process, it was a privilege to get hired. I felt at home immediately. I shared an office with Rachel King, who took me under her wing and patiently taught me how the school operates. The teachers were extremely welcoming and encouraging. I was good at the organization part of the job and I loved the relational parts- getting to know the parents, the kids, the staff. It poured so much life into me during a season of great uncertainty. While I was there, I also got pulled into a small Bible study at [CSPC Associate Director of Women’s Ministry] Rebekah Peterson’s apartment. Rebekah had tremendous spiritual influence over my walk with Christ over the next few years. There were days I’d end up in her office just unloading everything, and she reshaped some bad theology I didn’t even know I was carrying.

I look back now, and I think of each sequential step of what CSPC has been for me. Every piece connected to the next, long before I could see why. Not long after this season, Matthew returned to Tennessee from California. This relocation allowed us to continue our relationship, but he was in Morristown, not Knoxville, requiring me to find a new job there. After a couple years in Morristown, we got married and moved back to Knoxville. This move allowed me to return to the Weekday School- this time as an assistant teacher, teaching four-year-olds.  That same year, the church started a new young adults Sunday school class. (Someone once told me, ‘Every class at CSPC starts as the young adults class until you age out of it!’) Ours is called The Gathering. Little did we know what this class would mean to us. Around this time, we also found out we were pregnant with our first son, so I stepped away from the classroom to stay home with him. I still longed to serve in some capacity at Cedar Springs, so I joined PEP Moms (Parents Encouraging Parents), CSPC’s ministry for moms of infants through elementary-aged kids. Then, a couple years later, right before COVID hit, I was asked to become a co-director of the program. The other co-director Sarah Young and I met constantly that summer of COVID, trying to figure out how a ministry that had run for over 30 years in-person could survive a pandemic. We landed on outdoor, evening meetups for the people comfortable with it, and Zoom for others. We told ourselves, ‘This has been a ministry of this church for decades, and we are not going to let COVID kill it.’ And we didn’t! An unexpected blessing was that the shift to evenings meant working moms -who’d never been able to make a morning meeting- could finally join for the first time. One of my closest friends, Emily Robbins, is a mom I met that year, someone who never would’ve found PEP Moms if the pandemic hadn’t forced us to change. Having something to build and steward during a season that felt so out of control was, honestly, a blessing from God.

Our son faced a serious health crisis that shook our family in the Summer of 2023, and the friendships we’d built at CSPC, and especially in The Gathering, helped carry us through it. Those are the people who speak life into our marriage. Those are the people we want speaking into our kids, too- not just hearing the Gospel from Matthew and me, but watching other godly men and women live it out in front of them. Returning from COVID, The Gathering felt a new closeness as we were able to meet in person again. Shortly after returning to class in person, we elected to go through Jennie Allen’s study Find Your People one summer and after that, something seemed to shift in us. The study was all about the importance of real, committed Christian community and the intentionality it takes to form that. With each passing year, we have become more of a tight-knit community group that happens to meet on Sunday mornings. I think about a line from It’s a Wonderful Life- Clarence the angel telling George Bailey that every person’s life touches so many others… when that life is missing, it leaves a hole nothing else can fill. That’s what The Gathering has been for our family. I don’t know what our hardest seasons would have looked like without those people standing with us.

Every time I ran into old friends from the Weekday School over the years, they’d ask the same question: ‘When are you coming back?’ My answer was always, ‘Someday, I hope.’ It turned out someday was now when a new opportunity to serve arose. The school’s longtime director Karen Witcher was retiring, and an Assistant Director role opened up. It was the exact kind of impactful work I’d loved the most. I pursued the interview process and was fortunate to land the job. I walked back into an office with Rachel King, more than a decade after the first time. Most mornings you can find me opening the school- I get there by 7:30, turn on worship music in the hallway, and get to be one of the first faces our students see every day. I love seeing kids first thing in the morning. There is something about the start of a day, calling kids by name, speaking life into them before they’ve even had breakfast. These kids are being told who they are by so many voices, all the time. My hope is that when they walk through our doors at the Weekday School, they hear a different one: a voice saying that they matter, that they’re part of God’s story, that somebody here is rooting for them. Planting seeds to lead them to Jesus. Sometimes that seed takes root right away. Sometimes it’s 20 years later, when they’re grown and someone tells you they’re leading a church somewhere and you had no idea it started here. So, why have I shared all of this with you- Young Life, that first office job, Rebekah’s Bible study, PEP Moms during COVID, The Gathering, our son’s hardest season, this new role? Because honestly, I don’t feel like the author of any of it. I feel like a character out of Scripture: someone God keeps placing in the specific circumstances to be caught up in Kingdom purposes that are much bigger than me. And it isn’t just my story- if you’re a Christ-follower, it’s your story, too. So, live it out. Be curious, hopeful, and grateful about the path He has for you in advancing His Kingdom. This is the sort of hope I’m excited to be passing along every day at the Weekday School.”