This Weekend

Well, this weekend was just too busy to really unpack everything that happened.  But I want to share some thoughts here briefly.

The first is that Sunday October 16th officially marked 1 year of my relationship with Renee.  It has been a wonderful year with a wonderful friend, the first of many many more for the two of us.  June 3rd 2006… Sometimes God works things out in marvelous ways that honestly, if you tried to plan it out, you'd never even think of a brilliant plan like God will.  That's the case with Renee and I, and it's worked out better than I ever expected.

The second is an anonymous thank you.  A friend of mine is a youth director and has just been having a heck of time handling a very difficult situation.  I've talked with him/her quite a bit about it to be honest, he/she is doing a marvelous job in my opinion.  At the National Youth Workers Convention I heard a lot about how youth workers are called to pour out their lives into their students, and he/she is modeling for me what that really means.  You see, I'm a theoretician, which means I love to sit and think about how to do youth ministry.  It's part of my personality really, being a TJ (thinking-judgment type person).  I love analyzing books like Purpose-Driven Youth Ministry and Postmodern Youth Ministry.  I love thinking about how I can related the work of Andrew Purves in Pastoral Theology specifically to the context of youth ministry.  While all this is essential to youth ministry (because there is no proper praxis without proper theology) the praxis is equally as important, but in many ways far more time consuming, difficult, and draining.  But that is exactly what he/she is doing; pouring out his/her life his/her kids, and it remarkable to watch.  So, thank you for all that you're doing in these kids lives, because you are making a difference.