Pretty soon I’ll be packing up the rental car and heading back home. It’s been a wild ride and I have a lot of mixed emotions. My biggest emotion right now is that I’m exhausted.
I feel like I went as "all in" as I could here. In time, in preparation, and in other ways. I think that coming here, vending here, hanging with my crew from YMX, and meeting thousands of folks who have a heart for people in student ministry was all "right" for where I am right now.
I’m happy for YMX. This was a big weekend for us and it went pretty well. It exposed some things that we need to work on, but it was an amazing step forward as we ventured out of purely word of mouth land and into real exposure land.
Here’s a few nuggets of things I’ve learned/thinking about:
- We’re a niche thing. I had a conversation with someone last night about how our community doesn’t appeal to everyone. That’s true by design and I’m comfortable with it. An online community isn’t going to appeal to people who are looking for quick fixes and isn’t going to appeal to people who don’t feel like they need a community. YMX does appeal to thousands of people! That’s the nature of being a niche. If we appealed to the masses we wouldn’t be who we are. Online communities aren’t a thing of the past, they are just now emerging.
- It’s a different ballgame to vend at YS. As I look back on the last few days, my time wasn’t my own. As much as I love the break out sessions… as a vendor it just wasn’t possible for me to go to a single break out session. I even intended on going to church yesterday. But the schedule for the booth made that impossible even when I kept saying it was going to happen. I was happy to make it to a few general sessions!
- I have a lot more networking to do. I can’t believe my time here is up. There are so many more people I didn’t get to meet that I wanted to meet. I know this is our first year, but still.
- My team rocked! Patti, Todd, and Amy worked their butts off. I wish we one of these big companies that could properly thank the team… but they worked hard and sacrificed much to get here to tell people about a community that they are passionate about. I have nothing but respect for the work they did this weekend. For all of us, it was like the first day of classes.
- As Patti wrote about last night, we have a lot of questions to answer about Derek. If anyone has any questions about what Patti wrote, please contact me. It’s sad to know that people won’t even talk to me about it as they think I did something wrong.
- The YS team did an amazing job. I think they make it look too easy. I know they’ve done it for a long time so some things "just happen." Yet anyone who knows anything about how this thing happens knows that YS is king of pulling it off. To quote Tic (YS events dude) "awesome job."
- I am so much more than just "the ymx guy." If there was one thing that I struggled with while here… it’s that having the exhibitor label on my nametag branded me as not being a real youth pastor. I think a lot of people assume that my main deal is the site. It isn’t. My heart burns for the students of Romeo. While this was something I needed to do, my mind is thinking of how we need to move forward to reach the dead and dying students of my town.
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