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Hey, ladies of faith, I'm Jenny Peckl. I am the host of our new podcast. It's a podcast we hope will make the community of women at faith feel smaller and more connected.

We'll be releasing them periodically over the next several months. So if you don't want to miss even one episode, hit that subscribe button and I hope you'll join me. Thanks for listening.

Hey, I'm glad you're joining me today. This morning, I'm sitting down with Amy Boyle, and some of you know her and some of you don't, and some of you watched her grow up and watched her toddle around the gym and grow up through the years. So we're going to get to know Amy a little bit better and hear about what she's doing.

And I think it'll be interesting for some younger people and older people, some fun stories and things that God has done in and through her at Faith Church. So Amy, why don't you, we'll take a couple minutes, let you introduce yourself, who you are, who your family is, and then we'll go from there. All right.

Sounds like a plan. Well, for those of you that are listening who I haven't gotten the chance to meet, my name's Amy Boyle. I am the third child of Tom and Tammy.

And so my, yeah, my, I guess membership in an informal way to Faith Church has spanned decades. My parents met in the singles group here at Faith in 1995, so over 30 years ago. And this is where they met.

They got married and had my two older brothers. And when they adopted me at around 10 months old, this is the only church family that I had known growing up. And so I've been here pretty much my whole life.

I've gone through Faith Kids and student ministry here and am currently in a season of being back as a young adult. Okay, great. Well, we're happy to have you back because I know those college years are come and go and some people fly the coop and some come back and some come back and fly the coop and back and forth.

But we are glad to have you back here. Well, tell me a little bit about what it was like to grow up at Faith Church and what people, places or things had impact in your life. Maybe you've got some stories about different people at Faith Church who really poured into you or spoke to you about, challenged you, prayed for you.

We'd love to hear some of those stories. Yeah, I would love to share. Initially, there are two people that come to my mind when I think about my experience here at Faith.

One of those people is Erin Kossler. She's my small group leader through most of my time in the student ministry. She became my small group leader in seventh grade after several different transitions with small group leaders during my first year in the youth ministry.

I remember just being a really jaded little teenager, having negative attitudes about everything and not really wanting to be involved in very much at all. I think a huge part of that just had to do with being insecure as a kid who's going through a lot of changes and wanting to be resistant to a lot of things. I remember being a bit off-put by Erin's relentless kindness in different ways.

She was like, no way someone is this positive. It's got to be a show. Something's here that I'm not seeing.

Over the course of years, I just got to witness her dedication, not just to our small group, but to showing up and to being a faithful presence in our church community. In ways that I'm sure I've told her and maybe ways that I haven't, she's been a presence that I've been really grateful for, having grown up in a formative season. She's someone who, despite not having, for me, always a great experience of what belonging looks like and feeling the reality of church being a family, she's someone that dug in and was willing to be curious and willing to not be intimidated by someone who seems a bit standoffish.

I'm grateful for her presence here and in my life and the way in which her leadership was an encouragement to me growing up. As we talked earlier, you talked about how she invited you into something. What was that? Tell us a little bit about it.

I had never been on a mission trip, had never been on a serve and learn trip with Faith Church and Erin, for several years, was entrusted with leading the team to support our mission's partners, the Dodgels and the Stowwes. The summer before my senior year of high school, I think it was 2019, she invited me in my junior year to consider whether or not I would want or be interested in joining that team. I think it was a really breakthrough experience for me, going, wow, I'd never considered doing anything like that, much less thinking that other people would consider me as someone that would be beneficial to have on the team.

She just had this I see in you conversation that, for the first time, made me feel like I had someone who saw something in me that I didn't even see in myself. She invited me to join what was probably the smallest team in Spain's history. Really? How many were on your team? There were four people, including me and her.

It was Erin, myself, Rachel Schlonegger, and Darlene Sinise. Yeah, so she invited me to be on that serve and learn trip, and that was my first experience leaving the country since my parents had brought me here in 03, and it was a huge turning point is something that I was sharing with you previously in another conversation, just, yeah, getting to be exposed to other cultures and other ways of life, and also just coming alive to a world that's bigger than what we've experienced, and what it is to own our faith and to share it with other people. That trip was the first time that I had ever publicly shared any version of a testimony or a life story of who God's been in my life, and that was a really powerful experience.

Very significant, yeah. So, did they prepare you for that part, or you were there, and you're like, oh, wow, I need to verbalize my faith? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it had happened informally in different ways leading up to, because when you spend a ton of time with teenagers, inevitably you have conversations about your life, but I don't remember if Erin had warned me ahead of time, or if someone pulled me aside and had a conversation during the week, earlier in the week, maybe, but about halfway through, they invited me to, yeah, share part of my testimony at one of the student nights in the tent, and we did have some practice.

We got a little run through, maybe it was like an hour in the morning of the evening that we ended up spending time doing that, and I couldn't even tell you how much it did or did not prepare me, but it was just one of those things where you learn by doing, and... Amen. Yeah, yeah, that's great. What, are there other specific situations or stories that happened on that trip that you still remember impacted you? Yeah.

One of the most, I think, profound experiences for me is a little bit humorous. It was one of the first times that I've really experienced needing God in a powerful way, is this five-year-old approached me after dinner one of the evenings toward the beginning of the week that we were there, and she is asking me in Spanish for permission to have seconds on melon, and I remember just being so confused by what she was asking. I had taken two years of Spanish in high school, but it did not help me at all, and I just remember being confronted with feeling so powerless.

I think that one of the ways that God's gifted me is with communication and words, and so for the first time to be in another culture and another context where I can't rely on my own ability to communicate, I think it was a really tangible way of learning how to trust God when I feel helpless. And so, yeah, that was a really powerful experience, even though it seems really simple and kind of embarrassing in the moment. God used it to show me how to lean on Him in ways that I hadn't before, to be what helps me connect with other people, to understand people, to listen to them, and then to also be able to share in a way that honors Him and is encouraging to other people.

If you had to describe that Spain trip with just one word or a phrase, what would it be? The word would probably be awakening. Yeah, I think I admittedly had a harder time sitting down reflecting on it. What is the word that I would use to describe everything that that week was? So much jam-packed into such a short amount of time, but I think God used the trip and the experience to awaken me to ways that He's made me passionate about things that I didn't realize before I went on that trip.

Connecting with people across different cultures, learning how to embody and to also share good news with people. And so I think I had a bit of like discontentment and restlessness growing up in student ministry and wondering like, okay, but how do I actually make this faith something real and something tangible? And so the trip was an opportunity for me in a real physical way for the first time, like experience needing God and also the helplessness of learning how to trust Him when I can't do something in my own strength. And just realizing that, yeah, that God desires a kingdom that's full of so many different languages, so many different value systems and ways of life.

So that was after your junior year in high school. So you come back from the trip, it's your senior year in high school. What happened? Like as you're a senior going into high school, you're thinking, okay, where am I going to go to college? What am I going to do with my... Everyone's asking you, what are you going to do with your life? What's your major? Where are you going? So how did that Spain trip, maybe it did or didn't, lead into what your next step was? Yeah.

I don't think the question ever stops of people asking you what you're doing next or where you're going. I think that's pretty common and universal, whether you're graduating from high school or college. Well, I will say it happens more when you're younger.

That's fair. My age, I don't get that much, but every once in a while I do. Every once in a while.

They like to keep you on your toes. Yeah. Yeah.

I thought most of the way through high school and even when I was in university that I wanted to study social work. And I think having the experience of engaging with other cultures in Spain and learning the importance of bridging gaps in different ways across language barriers, yeah, it gave me a different lens and a different perspective for volunteering as a mentor to middle school students here at FIAC with the English classes. I think I had more empathy and I had more patience, more willingness to listen to students and to maybe understand a little bit more of how to relate in different ways.

And it also just opened my eyes up to a reality where, yeah, maybe God would call me into ministry and invite me to follow him in that way. And so that was something that I still wrestled with through college, like, okay, but is it social work? Is it not? I think that whatever our vocation is, I think God is so present and so near whether you're a missionary overseas, whether you're a missionary in the States or whether you're in or outside of the church working for it or in it. And so that's been a journey and I think that Spain kind of like set in motion a willingness for me to actually listen and wonder, like, God, would you actually call me to be a part of the church in this way? And I ended up making the decision because I sensed that he was leading me in that direction to study ministry at a Christian university.

And that wasn't something that I expected growing up, but it was something that he led me to and now something that looking back on my four years of undergrad, I couldn't imagine going anywhere else or doing anything else. So you studied social work. Is that what you... I actually didn't.

You actually didn't study it. Yeah, I actually know I actually didn't. I ended up studying community development and Christian ministry at Indiana Wesleyan.

And then I thought that that would make a great foundation for going back and getting a master's in social work. I'm saying I thought based on conversations that I had with peers and with professors that community development, which was actually in the School of Theology and Ministry at Indiana Wesleyan where I went, I thought that that would be a great like pre-social work kind of major. And yeah, I mean, no regrets, but the program didn't go as I thought.

But I still even like up to most of my time at Indiana Wesleyan was thinking in the back of my mind, maybe I'll eventually go back to grad school and study social work. So yeah, I didn't end up studying social work. God led me down a different path.

And I ended up working for a local church right after I graduated for a period of time and working for a church denomination, neither of which were things that I was expecting as a high schooler. If you were to have told 17-year-old me on a trip in Spain that that would have been what I would be doing after I graduated college, I would have had a hard time imagining it. Yeah.

I love that about God. He just surprises us and does amazing things that we never would dream. I agree.

Okay, so what I'm hoping we have high school kids, or I shouldn't say kids, high schoolers or college people listening and even parents. So what kinds of words of wisdom would you have if a high school student was listening to this or even a parent is listening to this and they're watching their kids kind of wrestle through and figure it out? There's a worship leader. Her name's Rita Springer.

I got the chance to listen to a workshop that she gave a year ago, and I love how she describes encouragement as throwing courage on people. It sounds like when you just close your eyes and you imagine throwing courage on someone, it just sounds like a kind of like a violent, aggressive kind of action, but encouragement isn't just flattering people or complimenting them, it's pushing them toward and stirring them up toward doing what God has designed and created them to do. And so if I were to throw some courage on some teenagers who are in a season of life where they're wondering what's next or maybe they know and they have discerned and now they're just being obedient to what God's spoken to them, it would just be, yeah, to dream big and to not be afraid of wrestling with God, whether it's related to what you're studying or the relationships that he would invite you to form or the communities that you're a part of and the spaces that he opens for you to step into to wrestle and to ask questions of God and to let him ask you questions back, to be bold in that, to dream.

And then I think my courage to throw on parents in the process of that is just to hold fast to your children. I mean, they're navigating independence and freedom and new seasons and spaces, but also to let your children have the permission to wrestle through and process their upbringing in ways that they're really grateful for having the parents that they had and the life that they had growing up, but also the grief of growing up in a family that wasn't perfect and experienced brokenness, brokenness that looks different from each person. So yeah, I think that would be the courage I would throw on parents and children.

All right. So when we were talking before too, you said a phrase that makes me think definitely of high school students, but I think people in all stages of life, you said, you're not going to miss God. Pray or press into the ways he's opening up to you.

So I remember different times in my life thinking, yeah, did I miss God? Did I not go the right way? What's happening? So is that something that you dealt with or how was that oppressed upon you? Yeah, I think it's something that I still deal with every day. I don't, and it's, I don't know, it's a good reminder to write on our foreheads or our hands or whatever it is, whatever the phrase is, to remember how present God is. That if, yeah, that if we have a relationship with the living God, that his spirit lives in us.

And so we don't have to live in fear of missing out on whatever plans he has for us. I think there's a Psalm that says that God withholds no good thing from those he loves. And that's just a truth that we have to hold onto because there are a lot of insecurities and accusations that'll try to rob or distort us from remembering the truth that God is near always, even if we don't feel it.

And so, yeah, it's still something that I'm trying to remember to see written on my forehead and my hands in every season. But especially when, when you're in periods of waiting or periods where you're confronted with choices that need to be made. Yeah, different times in our life, definitely.

Okay, so I'm going to back up a little bit because you said there were two people from faith who, I mean, I'm sure there's more than two, but two that came to mind who have really impacted you. And I love this other story about someone because it is a story of God's faithfulness and bringing things full circle and just his goodness. So Aaron Costler was one who impacted you.

You said you first felt seen when she invited you to that Spain trip. And then who else was it that came to mind? Yeah, the other person that came to mind is, it's someone that I feel like, even in the present season of life, we, we walk together, it looks different. But I remember when Sarah Cockerham invited me to watch her kids for the first time.

I was like 12 years old and I'm thinking, what the heck am I doing watching these kids? Who let me out? Like, I had to babysit like this. But what was really beautiful about her invitation for me to watch her kids, her willingness to trust me in that way is that it goes back a generation. Sarah's mom invited my mom to watch Sarah when Sarah was growing up.

And so it's kind of just this continuation, like you said, of the Lord's faithfulness. But even so now, as I've gotten older and we're now 10 years beyond me being in middle school, I still feel as though Sarah is someone who's an incredible encouragement in my life. And I love getting to witness, yeah, how she does motherhood, how she does raising her kids up to to be fearless and how they follow Jesus.

And she's one of those people that just actually prays when they say that they will and remembers things at random times and doesn't feel insecure about reaching out and sending you a random emoji or, hey, I'm thinking about this or that. And so I really admired just getting to witness her obedience to God, even though I'm not married and I don't have kids. But I felt, yeah, really inspired by her and feel really, really grateful to be part of a church family that is full of people in very different, yeah, ages and stages of life.

And as you've grown up, that relationship has turned into more of a friendship. Yeah, I would say so. And I think she would say so, too.

I remember a couple of weeks ago, she came to a dinner that I was hosting to share a bit about my recent experience overseas. And she was sitting. I couldn't imagine a better person to be sitting in the front row.

Yeah, I just felt like I was having a conversation with a friend the whole time. And sometimes you can have nerves when you're presenting something to a large group of a large group of people. But just seeing her there just sitting, smiling and nodding along was, yeah, something that felt like a breath of fresh air.

Like, I can breathe. This is actually chill. Like, I'm just here with a friend talking about an experience that she wants to hear about, wants to listen to.

And so, yeah, even now, like from Friday to Friday, occasionally, maybe it's once or twice a month, like I'll get to go on a walk with her in the morning and and then sometimes even bounce on the trampoline with her kids afterward. Well, very fun. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the reasons we do this podcast is connecting women with women. 

And your story just shows through generations what a richness we can have here at Faith Church. I feel like it's a unique size church and a unique situation. Where, yeah, we can enjoy that goodness of God through the friendships and generations and things. 

So thank you for sharing that. I love hearing those stories. And I've had some of those experiences of my own of God bringing things full circle.

All right, let's go back to you graduated from Indiana Wesleyan and you took a job after that. And so start me off there. You took a job after graduation.

And what was that and what did that lead to? Yeah, shortly after I graduated at Indiana Wesleyan, I accepted a yearlong residency with the church here in Indianapolis. It's called Trinity Wesleyan Church. They have three locations, but my main focus was their south side downtown location that had an emphasis on outreach, especially to the unhoused community downtown.

And so I was charged with helping manage and coordinate some of the clothing closet ministry pieces and volunteers and different things. But, yeah, I got to be part of behind the scenes staff in a different way of a local church. And I also got a lot of exposure to a vulnerable group of people who have been living in my backyard my whole life that I think I grew up never knowing how to look in the face of. 

And through that role that I've honestly wondered sometimes, like, Lord, why did you have me do that for a year? He has just been so kind to provide it as a space and an opportunity where even now, though it's a year past when the residency ended, my mom and my oldest brother are still with me, like serving in that community and volunteering and sitting at the table with people who are housing insecure, job insecure. And I feel really grateful for the opportunity to do ministry alongside my family. And while I was doing that part time role here in Indianapolis, I was also working remote for the Wesleyan Church denomination, doing some admin and planning and coordination for youth conventions across the country.

And so a lot of travel, but a lot more sending of emails and sitting behind screens. I don't see you as much as an email person. No, I mean, I think I'm really good at email and maybe that's a flex, but yeah, yeah.

But I think email likes me, but I don't like email. I think we have a love-hate relationship. But I love my email signatures.

I think that they're my pride and joy, like signing off. Oh, do you have some like key? I think, shalomi homie, it's like my favorite. It's my favorite universally.

People know me by it, so it's good. I got to use that one. Yes, please do.

Please do. And so, yeah, I held the two of those different roles for a season and eventually when one of them naturally came to a close, it left me having a role that was mostly exclusively remote. And after a season of months doing that, communications and marketing and different things, it didn't feel like the pace of life was conducive to how I felt God was calling me to live as someone who's just a human being who's part of my community in a, in an incarnate way.

And so I ended up quitting those jobs. But before I quit at my last, at the last event that I was putting on, God introduced me to someone who, yeah, would later introduce me to the next step along the journey. And so I quit, I quit my jobs and my last day was in mid-November.

And then in January through the end of March of this year, 2026, I was volunteering with an organization called Euro Relief overseas. They do humanitarian aid for refugees and asylum seekers abroad on about five different islands in the eastern region of Greece. And so that was an incredibly eye-opening experience and exposure to a different vulnerable group of people.

And when I was there, I knew getting on that plane that I had no plan for what I was going to come home to. And it was trusting that God would provide whatever the next assignment was. And halfway through my time, after about, yeah, a month and a half, two months, I got a call from this woman that I met at the event that I was putting on right before I quit my jobs.

And her organization offered me a role. And so for this summer and the upcoming season, I'm just preparing for the next yes. I'll be getting to lead a team of young adults that are going to be traveling across the country, meeting with middle school and high school students and sharing the gospel with them and also teaching them how to disciple their peers.

But more than that, too, just connecting them to the local church in their neighborhood and their community who will continue the work of sowing seeds and discipling and maturing them. But I'm super excited for that. And I, at this point, can't fully imagine what's to come.

What's to come. Yeah, I love what you said, the next yes. Maybe we should call this podcast version the next yes, because you've been having a lot of what's the next yes.

Yeah. So that's awesome. So but I also know.

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