Nick the Camp Guy

The very first time I went to Bible Camp I was a speaker.  That is pretty crazy.  I would guess  good number of youth pastor would not be able to say that.

Last night my friend Nick, who is the program guy at Covenant Pines Bible Camp came I got our junior high students excited about going to camp.  He did a great job.  He didn’t get up there and give short little prep talk and leave.  He gave our students a great taste of what camp is like.  He led our game, put on a sweet promo video, and then gave away some prizes. I sort of figured that he was doing this special for our group because our church is his home church.  He let me know that he goes personally to every church that the camp supports and does the same thing.  I was impressed. Nice work Nick!

With never going to camp before I used to be a bit skeptical about how influential camp is  in the lives of students.  However, I would say that countless numbers of our students have given their life to Jesus at camp and grow closer in their walk with Him.

I heard this story on NPR today. “Juno”, not for teens?

What I liked about many  of the interviews is that parents are using the movie to start conversations about teenage pregnancy, which I think is a good thing. 

Read it here.

Happy New Year, more changes on the way!

Welcome 2008. 2007 proved to be a year of change and transition, at least the last part. In the next two months, we are going to embark on some crazy stuff. We should be moving to Burnsville sometime in the next 8 weeks. We are pretty excited but have lots of work to do with packing. We found a house we are negotiating on and it looks like we will get it. It will be great to finally live in the place that I am serving. I have found it difficult to be an effective minister when you live an hour and a half away. Someone from the church in Burnsville is bought our house down here so we can move sooner — these people are gems!! Thank you Lord!

If you are reading this, please pray that Tammy and the children transition well and find their place in this “new land”.

In 10 days, Tammy and I are heading on the biggest vacation of our lives to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary. We were blessed by someone from our former church that gave us time share points to go.

These past 4 months, Burnsville has been truly transitional in ministry. With 2008 approaching, I am excited to forge ahead in new territory. We have the team assembled– Jeremy Berg is our high school director and is doing a great job leading our high school ministry. We will work well as a cohesive team. I pray that God gives me the strength and the courage to lead boldly as we take the student ministry to new places this year.

Learning to ride a bike all over again.

On Monday it will be two weeks since starting at my new church. There has been quite a bit of a learning curve these past few weeks. Being that I have been 9 years in one ministry and have never transitioned to a new church I am discovering can be a bit tricky.
I believe things and going well, however I will really get a grasp of things when I know the people better and begin to fuse in my own leading style into the ministry. We are also without a High School director which makes things a little more stressful as it feels like I am doing double duty. We have more interviews this week which is promising.
My commute home is about 75 miles. It really feels like I am living in two different worlds. Tomorrow Tammy and the fam will head up to church together for the first time. We need to leave around 5:45am. Ouch.

Prayer request for those that read this:

1. House sells
2. That I transition well, and that we are able to hire a high school director asap.

thank you friends.

I (heart) Famous Daves

Last staff meal. Loved it!

Staff Meeting #435

Just finished my final staff meeting. I figure we average about 48 staff meetings a year. So that means as a today this was my 435 staff meeting at my current church. Wow, that is a lot of time doodling in my notebook. It is going to be strange going back to staff meeting #1.