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?
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.