This is the text that will appear in this years annual report due out in December.

“Be wise in the way you act towards outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” Colossians 5: 5-6

With this as our goal, this years Light Force emphasis is equipping our Christian students to minister to their peers. Our vision for Light Force is that we desire to love God and love others by intentionally modeling a life devoted to becoming disciples of Jesus Christ.

For the year to come, here are some areas of concentration that we have either launched already or will launch soon. We call them Key Result Areas:

Adults/student leaders intentionally modeling

Priority of prayer partners

Involvement in Home Bible Studies (Inductive methodology)

Amplified adult leader contact ministry

Worship arts development

Begin equipping students for peer-to-peer ministry.

I have the tremendous benefit of a loving, thoughtful, and dedicated group of adult leaders. Without them, we would not exist. Robert Bonetti, Fran Dashe, Kristen McLane, and Dave Whitten have all been responsible for making Sunday school relevant and fresh for our students. On Wednesday nights, Barb Brinker, Fran Dashe, Beth Fisher, Kristen McLane, Gary Shell, Dawn Wrobleski, and Dave Whitten not only serve the youth group and make Light Force happen but each one also invests in the lives of our students outside of the walls of the church. I praise God for them and consider it a pleasure to work alongside each one of them.

There were many highlights to the past 12 months. Some of them include a Chicago Mission trip, a whitewater rafting trip to West Virginia, the Word of Life Superbowl, attending the EQUIP conference in Sarnia, ON, and college visits to Cornerstone University, Moody Bible Institute, and Wheaton College.

The true measure of student ministry comes with two questions. Are lives being changed currently? Are students faithful to the Lord as they enter adulthood? I could spend lots of time sharing stories of changed lives. Let’s sum it up by saying; many students have grown greatly in the past year as we’ve instructed them from Scripture. [Not my work, but God’s work through me!] God’s work is alive and active in our midst. As for the second question, this is what drives us to daily challenge our students.

Personally, three things have made this a fun and challenging year.

Without a senior pastor, I have been involved in areas of church ministry that are new to me. I’ve made some mistakes and I’ve learned a lot. I don’t regret this time as it has only galvanized my long-term desire to continue to serve here at Romeo.

I’ve just completed my second year as a volunteer assistant golf coach at Romeo High School. It is a pleasure to serve our community in a way that fits so well with my natural talents and hobby! It was an awesome season of investing in the lives of students whom we normally wouldn’t have contact with.

This fall I’ve begun my Masters degree in Youth Ministry at Huntington College’s Graduate School of Christian Ministry in Huntington, Indiana. This is an exciting opportunity for me as I am studying under one of the great minds in the field. It is an honor to be a part of the program there and it is already paying dividends in my ministry at Romeo.

Respectfully submitted

You will notice a new skin on all blogs. Overall, I think it’s a cleaner look. Let me highlight a couple of other changes. (Blogger has been ultra-funny today… Since I’m having problems getting on to gmail too, I’m wondering if google’s servers are getting attacked.)

1. Fewer ads!
2. More links on the sidebars.

Feedback is always appreciated.

p.s. The problem with the small blogger navbar has nothing to do with my code. The best I can tell that code comes from blogger directly… I can’t edit it. I’m thinking it has something to do with all this google slow down.

p.p.s. I’ll be updated the ad color scheme to match the new look in a few days. I’m having problems even logging on to Google Adsense right now. 🙁

I received a rather odd comment in an e-mail the other day. One which I am contemplating addressing since it’s a potentially divisive issue.

A student wrote:

So, its not as bad as my last email made it sound, but sometimes I still do feel like Adam doesn’t like me, and its quite obvious that he has his favorites (x,x, x, and especially x) but its not always that I feel this way, I mean I know that x and x and x and x are his favorites, but that doesn’t always bug me.

A few thoughts along these lines.

1. Is it OK for a pastor to play favorites?
2. If yes, then aren’t I responsible to find someone to play favorites with the other students? Or is it OK that some people just don’t have someone who is their favorite… afterall there is no way that every personality or individual can be “special.”
3. If no, then how are you supposed to respond to people who you genuinely like being around and who are responsible to your leading them. People like to bring up this comment, but they also fail to look in the mirror long enough to see that those people who are “favorites of Adam” are actually the most dedicated and reliable people.
4. Didn’t the disciples play this game? The disciples were often upset that Jesus invested in John the most… Especially Peter who wanted to be the favorite. In Mark 10:41 Jesus deals with a little jealousy about John and James. “When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with James and John.” His answer to this cry was a call to the others to be like John and James, servants.
5. Is this just a result of students developmental stage? The writer of this e-mail is in the middle of my “inside group.” To everyone else, she would be one of my favorites. But her insinuation tells me a lot about where she is developmentally. Doesn’t she see that I’m invested in a lot of people who aren’t her? Do young adolescent students have any ability to see beyond their nose and look at life from the perspective of others?
6. What role is this just hormones? I mean, we are talking about a high school female! They have more ups and downs than a Lions game.
7. From my perspective I’m not showing favorites so much as I’m purposefully investing in students who have expressed interest in growing to become multiplying disciples. It’s only natural for it to look like I’m favoring

At the end of this whole bit of frustration I am happy to see that a 15 year old girl can still make me think so much! Even though I am tired of dealing with stuff like this it does reaffirm that I actually like dealing with it. Is that an oxymoron comment or am I some kind of masochist?

An interesting map was sent to me the other day. This is a county by county break down of the election last week. 

Today and tonight is a massively huge LF tradition. The Word of Life Superbowl.

We are taking 20 students to the Palace of Auburn Hils for a day of fun, crazy games, followed by the Pistons vs. the Sixers game. It should be an interesting day.

I know there is some level of disappointment because this isn’t the exact same Superbowl that everyone wants. Previous to this year it has always been an all-nighter with loads of wackiness spread all over the city of Saginaw. I echo their disappointment but since we aren’t really any more than guests of Word of Life, I don’t have much of a voice. Plus, I don’t really like all-nighters anyway. They wear me out. I’ll give an update on this event later this weekend.

You read the title of this topic correctly.

I love high school students. I must because I have put up with my fair share of garbage in the last few months. But in the last few weeks I’ve had a little more than I like to deal with. I think I need a few days off.

Now that’s I’ve surpassed the initial stages of “to blog or not to blog” I often wonder two things about my blog. (I’ve got over 1000 hits, all of them can’t be mine!)

1. Should I go public? Should I ever let people who I know in on my blog? Should I include the link on my e-mail signature? It’s not that I hide the blog from anyone it’s just that I don’t publicize it too much. (YS Forums is the only place I’ve ever linked to.)
2. Should I rename the blog something less conspicuous? Right now the URL is just my name. I’m not 100% sure that I’m cool with being that up front. When all is well it’s no big deal but I often wonder if there is some way someone will come back to use my words against me.

All for this starts with the YS boards. I do enjoy the anonymity of going by drew. It provides a certain amount of security that I think I like.

Last night we had a pretty good youth group night. We’ve been having students bring friends lately, which is cool since I haven’t pushed that at all. The talk part went OK and the games were funny.

My lost sheep did come and he expressed how much he wanted to be part of our group again. So, we’ll need to be finding him a ride to get here. He was like, “I don’t get my license for another year and my parents can’t drive me… So I only need a ride for a year.” I thought that was pretty cute.

The big work problem of the day is trying to scrounge up 2 tickets to the WOL Superbowl. One ticket I’ll be in huge trouble if I don’t come up with since I made a mistake in not buying one, the other one I want to add since that student accepted the Lord at the Superbowl last year.

In other news, I’m dealing with some pretty hard core sin issues with a couple of students. There’s some conflict brewing and I need to come up with a strategy for dealing with it to reunify LF.

Relationships are messy. I like relationships. So I guess that makes me kind of sick.

(AP Photo) Standing at his desk in the Oval Office, President George W. Bush receives a phone call from Democratic nominee John Kerry, in which the Senator conceded defeat in the 2004 presidential election on November 3, 2004. Kerry’s concession squashed prospects of a lengthy legal challenge and endless ballot counting in Ohio, where the election had been too close to call and delayed the final outcome for hours.