OK, I had a weird day. But it has ended exceedingly well.
The weird part of the day was meeting with this guy who showed up at our church Sunday morning. As I was clearing the sanctuary after church (shaking hands and kissing babies) this guy walked up and asked me if he could talk to me for a minute. Long story short, he was interested in applying here and wanted to get together. So today I drove down to where he lived and had lunch on his turf. It was a good meeting and I really liked him. But knowing how the process goes I’m not sure he’ll ever get talked to. A shame!
Tonight at LF we did our monthly concert of prayer. It went very well. LisaB led all of it. If I haven’t said this lately, that girl is growing! I don’t mean physically, she has matured spiritually a great deal in a short period of time. Of course she is still an adolescent and makes mistakes… but it is clear to see God working on her. The students really responded well to the COP. They happily participated and even each contributed well. Another area that I feel pretty good about is the attendence. We had a total of 135 people on Sunday at church… so I could expect about 13, right? Wrong… we had 35. That’s 26% of Sunday AM attendence. Too cool.
Here are some things I shared on the YS site that show how good I am feeling about life and ministry now.
– My Tuesday bible study group is going great! We just finished Daniel last week and it was incredible to see students really wrestle with those prophesies and learn to ask good text based Q’s.
– Youth group was fantastic tonight. 3 students completely led a concert of prayer and it was fantastic. I can’t even begin to describe how much one of my 11th grade students has grown in the past year. She led all of the prayer and contemplative stuff tonight. Wow. At the same time we are taking this big emotional step of introducing monthly COPs (3rd one) we’ve actually seen God use them. I’d forgotten how cool that is to see.
– My students are influencing their friends for Christ. We are equipping them with skills on how to introduce their friends to Christ through their testimonies… and they are actually doing it. We’re on the verge of a massive milestone of one of our students leading a peer to Christ.
– Even though our church is hemrogging adults (long story) the youth group is growing! That’s not supposed to happen.- An adult actually got up at a business meeting and nominated me to be the senior pastor. (We don’t have one now) Of course, I would never want that… but it was flattering and an powerful reflection of how God is using me to work here.
– My adult leaders are truly graspoing ahold of our vision. They are getting trained and are now asking hte right questions. Phew!- I help coach a HS golf team. Our season just ended and at our banquet students openly shared in front of their parents and their friends how much it meant to them that I’ve been a part of their lives and that I have had an impact in them maturing as young men. They even insisted that they have their pictures taken… in front of the church van they call “Big Sexy.”
Hope that paints a good picture for how good things are going.
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