Youth Story

First off I want to say thank you for reading the past three months. It has been pretty cool to start a blog about youth ministry. The short term success of the blog has allowed for us to purchase our own domain. From now on the blog can be found at youthstory.org I feel that this transition will help to promote the growth and reach of the conversation that we are having here. With the new name change will come some pretty neat content changes as well. When I first started this blog, I did it in hopes of chronicling my experiences of transitioning from being a youth intern to being a youth pastor. My hope is that youth workers who may be feeling a call to take on the role of youth pastor themselves will be able to look at what I did and be able to use it in some way to help them. Now as a youth pastor I feel there are enough blogs out there, that without the amateur feel, mine will just fade into the background noise. Honestly we are hoping to do something a little different here at ...

Ever Give someone a Fruit basket? I think God does. I am sure that you will get a ton of info from me these next two weeks about what happened at M11 Conference. Some of it will be very personal and some will be much more theological. Tonight however I am going to say what I should have been able to say on Tuesday night during the discussion. I remained silent the entire conversation listening to Students and Faculty from Nazarene Universities discuss. I did not feel comfortable saying anything because I had not seen the sermon yet. I have seen it since then. I recorded much of the conversation and listened to it before I wrote this article so that it would be fresh in my mind. Here is the Speaker and the Bio provided by M11 Conference: Dan Bohi is a lay person on whom a very special call to ministry has come to his life.  Dan says, "October 10, 2008 changed everything in my world. God's presence and direction confirmed a calling for my life. That call was to go wherever I ...

Today I was sitting in another extremely boring church administration class checking my twitter and stumbled upon a sermon from Gabe at Cat10 East. I slid my headphones into my sleeve and leaned against my hand to conceal the fact that I was listening to a sermon instead of listening to the "lecture". I got home tonight and watched the full sermon in its entirety again. Gabe has a few great points that just needed some more exposure. Today was the first free release of the full sermon . In here he touches on the idea that out of over six billion people on earth, and hundreds of different religions and belief systems, how can someone actually believe that they have the answer to all of life's problems? Now look I have been talking for some time about how globalization has created certain fractures in the American Culture's view and understanding of the Gospel. Most Americans don't want to be told that they are wrong about anything. It's not so much that we don...

A few weeks ago Kari and I had set out to find a place to eat after church on Sunday. Kari was craving.... you guessed it Chick-Fil-A. Of course being the great Fiancee that I am, I drove her to Chick-Fil-A. As we pulled into the parking-lot we quickly noticed that it wasn't open. This was a dead give-away because the lot was blocked off by little orange cones. We both realized at that moment, "Oh, it's Sunday". Everyone not living under a rock knows that Chick-Fil-A is closed on Sundays. What happened to us there? What were we thinking? I've known for years not to go to Chick-Fil-A on Sunday. Today there are more people on earth than there has ever been. (To our Knowledge) This has some dramatic effects on the way people live these days. Now there are seven billion people here that are all competing for the same things. One of those things is attention. Another one of those things is business. Even more importantly one of those things is Love. Unfortunately tod...

So I got hired at a new church recently. For the last four years I spent working with youth, I was at a church with the average age of a member being at about thirty-five. This new church which is the same denomination, in pretty much the same community (3.1 miles down the road) has an average age of about sixty-five. I started thinking lately about the major differences I am experiencing with the congregation at my new church. Why is the older generation so turned off by the younger one? Looking back on Craig's sermon a few months ago, gave me almost an instructional video on how to bridge the gap. The key being the older generation must "love and invest in the younger generation" and the younger generation must "Honor the older generation". This was seriously one powerful and healing message. If you would like to hear the entire thing click here! You do have to purchase it :( Well the first Wednesday night service in the new church was great! Can't wait ...

For this story to make any sense you must go read part 1 of the "Missional Journal" Today I set out for my last few hours of intentionally getting out of my comfort zone. I was focused on that as my goal today. Last time I realized that even though I went out into a world I knew nothing about and talked with people I never would have talked to, I managed to create again a new comfort zone. I could always leave when I wanted to or retreat to my book when there was nobody talking to me. I even used the game of chess as sort of a crutch to get conversations up and going. Today was going to be different. Today instead of being able to leave when I wanted I was going to walk. Walking was for a lot of reasons. First I didn’t want to interact with the homeless at an arm’s length. I didn’t want to drive in and drive away as if everything I just spent time doing was beneath me or as if I wasn’t one of them. Secondly walking would give me a better understanding of what it meant to be...