LukeDooley.com

My thoughts on life, ministry, and other things that are not so serious.

Archive for January, 2006

01-23-06

Sophomore Sunday

Posted by luke

What can I say? Words simply cannot describe how cool it was to be at Journey Church yesterday. None of us were really too sure what to expect on week 2. (For those of you who don’t know, we had our Grand Opening last week (15th), and celebrated with 347 people). We were all on such a high all week from the after effects of our Launch Sunday. We told stories all week, we talked about how wonderful it was, we did follow up, the buzz never died down! Then yesterday around 10:00 the first cars began pulling into the parking lot at Lakota East High School. It was like Deja Vu’. People started pouring in; they were greeted with a smile and a handshake, they got their coffee, they started new conversations, and continued old ones from last week. It was simply incredible to watch happen!

Following a wonderful time of worship, and a hilarious cover of Frank Sinatra’s “Love & Marriage” by the Journey House Band, Tom shared some amazing thoughts on “Desperate Marriages”. To summarize what was said, I’ll give you the essential point of the message: “You can’t shape the right person, you’ve got to be the right person”. Referring to the fact that in our relationships/marriages, most of the problems we have are what Tom called “I” problems. I want it to be about me, my needs, my wants, my feelings, my satisfaction… therein lies the problem. Powerful words that I, along with dozens of others needed to hear.

In addition to all of this, I had the opportunity to meet some really cool students before and after service, including the likes of: Jonathan, Sarah, Lindsay, Michelle and Alyssa. It was great meeting new students, as well as seeing some return from last week! Hopefully most of you will be able to attend the House Party this Saturday…. If you don’t know what that is, or need more information, shoot me out an e-mail!

01-19-06

Friends and Thoughts….

Posted by luke

Today I had a couple of appointments with a couple of great guys and great ministry leaders.

1.) Mikey Conrad and I hooked up at Beef’O'Bradys to talk about some Student Ministry stuff. It’s always good to hook up with anyone from the ministry team and share stories, swap ideas, and eat curly fries (Beef’s specialty). We were able to lay some additional tracks down for the upcoming Big Student Ministries House Party on January 28th. We are pumped about the first ever student ministry activity for Journey Church .

2.) Upon leaving Beef’s, I headed straight to Panera (office #2), to meet up with Justin Lett. Justin is the NextGen pastor at Liberty Heights Church. Justin and I bumped into each other for the first time a couple of weeks ago at Panera and got to talking, and decided that we would hook up sometime after launch Sunday and share stories. We ended up talking fairly in depth about the challenges and pitfalls of doing student ministry in the 2000′s. Justin asked me what I thought the two biggest challenges of doing student ministry today were. I shared the following:

a.) Busy-ness…. We live in an extremely active day in age. Students’ calendars are packed! Whether it is with school activities, extra curricular activities, family time, or just trying to have a few minutes for free time. It is often difficult to get students and/or their families to dedicate another evening of their week to anything. The challenge then is to use your time wisely, to have a purpose for any event or gathering that you do. This is something that I will always strive to do in Student Ministry: DON’T WASTE TIME!

b.) Tolerance… This could be a heavy issue, and could make this post extremely long. I’ll make sure that neither happens here. By tolerance I simply mean that we can not allow what we see on TV, or in culture around us to shape who we are, or what we believe in. We must have a higher calling in our lives than to look/act/dress just like the Laguna Beach kids!

What about you? What are the biggest challenges that face you in your life and/or ministry?

01-17-06

New Beginnings

Posted by luke

I have had a lot of new beginnings in my life over the past 12 months…. consider this blog one of them. My blog has evolved into a new creature. It formerly existed to journal my life and happenings as a college student. It will now exist to document the stories and adventures as Student Pastor at Journey Church . In case you are new to this place, or haven’t been around in a while, allow me to close by listing a few of my recent life changes. Hope to see some visitors around here soon!

1.) Graduated College May 5th, 2005

2.) Began work at Journey Church June 1st, 2005

3.) Married my life’s love on November 26th, 2005

4.) Planted a Church on Janary 15th, 2006

Welcome to my blog, thanks for stopping by. You'll find all kinds of interesting stuff here... I hope you'll stick around for a while and jump into the conversation by leaving a comment.