YOUTHINTHECORNER

I am not claiming to have prophetic dreams.  However, the other night I had a dream that woke me up a bit shaken.  I was outside in my back yard with my girls and a large storm came in.  In the distance I saw 4 small tornadoes dropping down.  In an effort to protect my family I jumped in the truck and we went racing AWAY from the little tornadoes.  Feeling proud of my abilities to protect my family we took a right turn out of some woods only to come head first into a MAJOR tornado.  Our truck collided with the funnel, screams and I wake up.

Now, at first I just chocked it up as me watching too much weather channel.  Then, the Spirit wouldn’t allow me to let it go so I asked God to reveal to me any meaning.  This is what I came up with.  Now, admittedly it isn’t all that ground breaking but hey, neither am I.

I spend my life as a pastor putting out a lot of small storms.  A lot of little things occupy most of my energy.  However, the BIG thing is the thing that will kill me.  I allow myself to get stressed if the graphics for my sermon series isn’t the way I want them to be.  I allow myself to get stressed if there is any disruption to my schedule (which is laughable because we should all acknowledge it is God’s time not our own).  I allow myself to get stressed at the tiniest little things.  Then that stress keeps me from being sharp in my prayer life, Bible study life and doing the things of GOD not necessarily CHURCH.

What happens is I let the little storms decide where I go and it is the BIG storm that got me.  The BIG storms like lust, pride, laziness, greed and anger…those things should direct me.  Those are the things I should be watching out for.  Those are the things that will not only affect my life but can destroy it.

I need to do a better job of keeping the Main thing the Main thing.  I need to do a better job of keeping an eye out for the BIG storms and managing the LITTLE storms…not the other way around.

I am not an easy follower.  I have a hard time with authority.  It is not natural for me to follow.  I have heard the sermons and read the books on spiritual authority and I get it in my head but like so many things, it has a tough time dropping 12 inches into my heart.  These last few weeks God has been dealing with me in this area…when I say dealing with me I mean he has been kicking my butt all over the place.  That is the thing with shifting personality or perspective it takes time and often times is tough.  However, God is stretching me and in a way it is releasing me from some of the things that I have burdened myself with.  I serve with great pastors but I am simply ONE of them.  I answer to an Executive Pastor, Steve Stahl who oversees staff relations and volunteer coordination and ultimately I answer to Cal Woods, our senior pastor.  This church is a vision given by God to him and he in turn guides my vision for the youth ministry.  Now, where my issue is when I think I know everything or even simply more than that of those who lead me…I tend to get snippy and disrespectful.  That is something God is purging from my soul.  I answer to the staff and to God for what I have been called to do.

Cal is leading this church into some really special but significant changes in the coming months and I am behind him in prayer, vision but most importantly in followship.  I will follow him because he is my pastor and I am his associate.

I encourage all you youth pastors out there to pray and seek God’s heart in this issue because failure to do so will only lead to bitterness, anger and job changes every 2-4 years.

I am beginning a new series of blogs describing the many hats I wear as a youth pastor.  I am doing this for a few reasons…some cathartic others to encourage ministers that have to do so much with a finite amount of time.  As we unpack this hopefully it will help us honor God with our deeds, time and heart.  I think it will be fun.

Some of the hats I wear are….

son, dad, husband, friend, employee, employer, pastor, teacher, mentor, big brother, counselor, co-worker, citizen, civic leader, encourager, student, leader and follower of Christ.

Collide is a once a month combined service that focuses on creative prayer and worship.  If you have never seen 275 students worshiping God with intensity then you really are missing out.  The theme of the night was Forgiveness.  We had a forgiveness wall where students wrote the “stuff” that is on their heart.  We also had leaders and elders anoint and pray over students.  After some intense worship we all took communion together and Kristin Scull closed us out in a Spirit that was overwhelming.  It was a great night.

Pastor Cal called me into his office and offered me the job of youth pastor for Pointe North Church.  I thought I was out of youth ministry and I thought I was on to other things, yet here I was in an office and Cal making a compelling sales pitch (as only he can).  He gave me carte blanch to do whatever it takes to “rewrite the book in youth ministry”.  Since then we have been in 7 locations, gone on 5 breakaways, 2 mission trips (1 to Mexico), and gone from about 12 students to over 250.

That first year was hell.  I was an emotional mess, struggling with the whole idea of ministry and my place in it.  We had 3 people on the ministry team.  No access to the schools and my solid students went to a school 30 minutes away!  We had no identity, no purpose and no idea where we were going.  We stumbled around into the second year and then our mid week service began to take shape.  The team began to build and I got on at St Johns Academy (the local private school).  That changed the dynamic of the group, we built some solid student leaders.

Year three we began to take off and outgrew every building we went into.  We went after some solid volunteers and PNCC allowed me to hire my first assistant.  God revealed the “Half” campaign to me.

This past year has been monumentally awesome!  God has blown the hinges off the doors of my expectations.

I can’t wait to see what he has in store for the years to come.