YOUTHINTHECORNER

As Pointe North ventures into becoming more focused on Family Ministries I wanted to take a moment to introduce you to our team.  I have the pleasure of guiding these talented people into the next phase of ministry for Pointe North.

I oversee the overall Family ministry and its direction/resource and vision.  I also run Alive Youth Ministries which is comprised of the Alive Worship Experience, Huddle Groups and the discipleship venues, Pulse and Triage.

Hope Murphy is our Children’s pastor and oversees the spiritual development of our K4-5th graders.  She produces Planet Changers, Kids Corner and our Royal Rangers/MPact Girls ministries.

Tiffany Hill is our Nursery director and she oversees Tots Landing our Nursery program at Pointe North.  She directs her team and is growing into a full fledged resource for parents.

Bobby Webster is our Campus pastor for Student Ministries.  He visits area High School and Middle School campuses spending time connecting with students where they are.  Bobby is also vital in our parent connections ministry.

Nancy Webster is the Ministry Assistant for Family Ministries.  She holds the whole thing together.  She is the administrative arm to all of our ministries and makes us look quite honestly much better than we really are.

Coming soon:  Intern for Middle School Ministries.

I am blessed to work with this team and cannot wait to see what God has in store in 2010 for the families in Berkeley County.

We are a long way off from being what I believe God wants us to be as a “Family Ministry”  here at Pointe North but I feel like we are heading towards some exciting things.  Yesterday, Bobby Webster (our Campus Pastor) and I went to the Rethink Youth Ministry network in Columbia South Carolina.  Steve Wright, author of “reThink” was the speaker and posed some startling insight into the future of Youth Ministry and its transition into a family ministry model.  Now with most conference speakers I don’t buy totally into everything they say but he did give me some baseline to start with as we adapt our version of a family ministry.  Here are some thoughts that I took away from yesterday that will be helpful to you parents from every background.

• As a youth pastor rather than mentor I/we need to do a better job of teaching parents to mentor
• The best way to get kids involved in their faith is to get their parents involved in their faith
• We need to establish an intentional plan of discipleship for families
• We need to pray for our families…HARD
• When this thing is fleshed out we will 1) Resource = we will provide whatever you need to assist you in being the primary discipler of your kid 2) Train = we will train you in multiple venues, in multiple ways 3) Involve = we want you involved primarily in discipling your kids then, we want you involved in the ministries that are supporting the spiritual development…staffing Alive, KidsPointe and TotsLanding.

I am excited about what God is doing in this ministry and I beg you to pray for me that God grants me wisdom and knowledge and patience.  This is a process that will take years to flesh out and I am not usually a man of patience.

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.

I had the priveledge of sitting in on a creative meeting with Ricsha and Hope today finalizing some details for the Christmas Program and I have to tell you it is gonna be pretty exciting.  Get you tickets now!  Yes, this year you will need a tickets!  Some people think that is pretensious but it is actually mathematics.  400 butts cannot fit into 350 seats and overflow will not work in this program.  So, get your tickets…tell your friends to get their tickets and get ready for an experience of a lifetime.  Go to www.pointenorth.org for more info on times and come Sunday or drop by the office to get your tix.  Oh and Merry Christmas.