Youth Story

Today I spent so much time working on STUFF . I started the day sharing with my Co-Workers what Bible Verse Guides My Life. We talked about our insecurities and what we believe. Lately I have been thinking about what really matters to me in this world. I keep focusing on getting ahead, when I am not even sure what that means anymore. Its like this: Even if I get the dream home for my wife. I can put my baby girl in the best school and save up tons of money for her to go to college. I can make it so that my wife and I can retire without a care in the world. What do I really have? Why is it so important to me to get to the finish line? I'm tired. I mean it. I am tired of letting my goals in life get in front of what God wants to do . Come On , do I really believe that God wants nothing more than for me to have a great 401k plan? Tonight I talked with my teen group about being authentic.   Tonight I challenge myself to stop being selfish. What Really Matte...

Hello, It's been a hot minute since I've updated the ministry journal. Lets jump right into it then. :) Kari and I settled into our new house. We love owning a home and we absolutely love living in Franklin. We did indeed get a little puppy who is growing bigger and bigger everyday. I have grown to love him in a father puppy sort of way. One major change for us was the massive church switch this summer. We had been praying for months about the whole situation. It was definitely the hardest decision I have ever had to make. There is so much that goes along with quitting your job as a youth pastor. The hardest part is obviously having to tell your teens goodbye. There have been other issues though. We had to figure out how to replace the income so that we could afford to pay the bills, especially since I am starting classes this fall. Yup I'm finishing up that degree in case you were wondering if I would ever try to finish it. Most people I run into just assume I h...

If you want to see the new church website: http://www.franklinnaz.com/ If you want to see my grandmother's writing http://thewhiterobe.blogspot.com/

Click Here To See My Kittens! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mab3C_6IK9E

This weekend we held our district extravaganza for sports. I was working table tennis for the weekend, which is pretty standard for me these days because I spent so much time doing it for TNT. Overall it was a very fun weekend. I really missed spending time with the district because I missed out on camp and the convention this year. It is neat to see how the teens are growing up and becoming leaders at their churches. One of the things I am looking forward to now is the Nearly New Years event this December. I got everything planned out and the word has been spread. I have made a few changes to the event this year including adding a new location and forms. It has become an official district event which takes some pressure off of me, but I still want to work hard to make sure it is a success. I have been working three jobs lately and Kari and I are saving up to buy our first house. I am hopeful that we are able to find one in Williamson county that we like but the reality is t...

This week my buddy Jason and I took our youth groups to West Virginia for an annual Ski Trip. He decided to theme our worship service lessons on a phrase that he heard in a North Face commercial. "Never Stop Exploring" was the phrase. We took this idea and each developed a couple of sermons to use in our worship service times on the trip. I decided to take this catchy little phrase "Never Stop Exploring" and use it to talk about the Kingdom of Heaven. It took me days of searching through my bible before I was absolutely sure which scripture I was going to use. After much debate I finally ended up deciding on Matthew 13:44   44  “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.    I started off my first sermon by talking about what I look like trying to play golf. I went on to say that most of the time I step up to the tee box I drive the ba...

For the past six years I have been privileged to be involved with an event called Nearly New Years. It is a long standing tradition that started way before I was working out in Brentwood. A few churches would get together at the end of the year and have a fun night together to celebrate the New Years. The event has been growing and last year we reached about 350 which overcrowded the Brentwood Nazarene Church. In February I took a job at the Franklin Nazarene church just down the road from the Brentwood church. This gave us the perfect location to host this year's Nearly New Years. This was also the first time I was to host the event without my dear friend Jason Underwood. This made me nervous, but I absolutely love this event so I was excited at the same time. I went through all the planning sessions with Derek and Jason, and even brought Daniel our speaker in for one of the planning sessions and yet I was still nervous. It wasn't until the morning of the event that I fina...

Hey, it has been a while since I have posted an actual journal update for my ministry: SORRY.... Let me first say in the spirit of the season, that I am very thankful for my ministry, church and friends. God has really blessed me with so much and I can't give thanks enough for that. This month or so has been quite busy. Kari has been very sick lately but another praise is that the doctors finally found out what was wrong with her and she has been getting better every day. The youth ministry has been doing great. We have had a bunch of new faces become regulars on Wednesday nights, making for fun times and great discussions. We just finished with Extravaganza Athletics last week which was a blast. I had two girls compete in table tennis and they had a Williams sisters moment when they had to play each other late in the tournament. The loser walks and the winner heads straight to the championship match. This was tough to see twins compete against each other because no matter what ...

Normally I am submerged in the culture of youth pastors or even of teens themselves, or at least I had been for many years. These days I find life is full of sick family, a new wife (who is also sick), a college that has lost all appeal to me, Housework, pets, business, Church. I spend all my time on those things and still there is my job as a youth pastor. Tonight I took a break from everything to hit the internet and check some of the blogs that I used to enjoy reading. One of the first posts I came to was an anonymous art blog, that I am sure many people read because it is one of the most popular blogs in the world. On today's blog there was a post that I have copied and pasted here below: Now at first glance if you read it slowly, you assume that there is a troubled teenager in a youth group somewhere. Then however, you notice the line at the bottom, "I'm the youth pastor.". I remember one night in youth group a few years ago as a teenager stood up following a...

The past month I have been in a series called "To the Garden". I turned our youth room into an actual garden with real life plants and a few fountains. It even had a makeshift waterfall made of stacked television sets. We started the series in the most obvious place which was Genesis. From there however the students were surprised to find that we had made our way out of the garden and Genesis. We took a pit stop in Ezekiel and then on to the New Testament. We found ourselves back in a garden so to speak with each lesson. The neat idea behind this was: that we are invited to be co-creators with God. This played out in two very real ways for our teenagers. First they had the opportunity to plant in our youth room some seeds. They did this the first week of the series. This obviously symbolized being a co-creator, but it had a deeper double meaning. We talked about the seeds that we as Christians are planting in other peoples' lives around us. The students watered the seed...

Today Mac, Christian and I decided to begin trading our NYC 2011 Swag! At the end of the night we decided to post here a picture of the items that we acquired! We have many multiples but it is important to note that we each only started out with our Tennessee Swag bags which include: a bag, a fan that lights up, a flash light, a Tennessee shirt, a regional shirt, a horn (The annoying ones), A Trevecca Lanyard, a towel, sunglasses and a headband. From there we acquired an amazing amount of items for which we have developed a point system and we want to share it with you. Here is the Official NYC TRADING POST! The Yum Cup: 20 Points Available in the Yum Center for $5.50 d Hawaiian Beaded Necklace: 100 Points (Took forever to get one) Trevecca Lanyard: 25 Points SNU VIP Lanyard: 50 Points West Virginia South Lanyard: 40 Points Tennessee Horn: 100 Points SWO Light-up Key-chain: 55 Points TNU Staff Beach Party T-Shirt Butler High School All Purpose Tool: 100 Points School giveaway from c...