Amazon Epic Fail?

Sometimes I forget I have a blog...

Almost 1 month ago, I ordered Tom Wright's New Testament for Everyone Gospel set to help in the doing of the Matthew book for our Mexico mission this year. I still have not received the book. This is quite disheartening because it was at a great price (maybe explaining the book's disappearance from the face of the universe). Not sure if I should buy a copy to use and return later or just deal for now until the end of April... Probably going with the former!

Parent Ministry

One of my big goals is to get parents ministry running for middle and high school teens' parents. I'm not really sure where to start. My guess would be to offer an informational class for parents. I'm thinking of starting with a social networking class like "Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter... OH MY!" Does anyone else have ideas of topics on which parents might like hear the perspective of a 22 (almost 23!) year old guy with crazy hair?

WHOA!

It's been a couple of busy weeks with the winter retreat and Youth Sunday back to back, but it was fun while it lasted. Now that it's over, I have a little time to focus on cleaning my desk and computer a bit. I've got some old download files that I don't remember...

Both the winter retreat and Youth Sunday went superbly. Thanks for all the prayers!

I attended the IGNITE leader's conference at Blackhawk Saturday (3/7). It was very informative. I took the Discovering Your Leadership Style workshop. It was great to know that I have very little leadership when it comes to detail. I'm more of a visionary/entrepreneurial leader with team-building, shepherding, and bridge-building elements in that. Good to know for future use. Now to brainstorm how I can use that to enact discipline in youth group. It could be interesting.

Green

I'm so green at this "doing youth ministry" thing...

Father,
Give me the patience to be shaped by you, even if it hurts sometimes.

Thomas

A Fine Line...

I feel like I am walking a fine line with my future. On the one hand, I want to see the church grow and expand like Jesus wanted. On the other hand, I have a deep love for youth ministry. I want to stay in youth ministry, but for some reason sense a small call to more than "youth ministry" (i.e. college ministry, church planting, etc.) The Church is my third love (after God and my wife, of course) and tied with (but not exclusive from) missions. I think I should journal more about this...

Thomas

YM explosion

Things are getting really hairy around here. Before you say anything, yes, I'm shaving still. I'm simply becoming a smidge overwhelmed with the retreat at the end of the month, Youth Sunday coming up, Mexico on the horizon, and Confirmation looming. There's lots to plan for. Hopefully, I'll have a jumpstart for next year when this summer comes around. Watch out for me... I might start looking like a Sasquatch or something.

Thomas

WINTER XTREME!!!

Jan. 16-18, we took a group of 8 middle schoolers to Timber-lee Christian Center for the annual Winter Xtreme. We had a blast! Jess and I went tubing and tobogganing, the group played broomball, we heard great music from Remedy Drive, and got a good word from Bill Allison.

It was definitely a challenging weekend. Middle school boys are often very high energy, but we made the best of it by throwing snowballs and swinging from trees. I'm super glad we got to go on this weekend. We had six students respond to wanting to become Christians. I'm definitely looking forward to next year!