Well, Tuesday has finally arrived and I have adjusted back into my office. As I walked through the church doors this morning I couldn’t help but think of all that I had heard and seen while in Louisville, KY this weekend. Jana and I had the opportunity to travel to Louisville and attend Simply Youth Ministry Conference and I am so glad we did! Minus the tornadoes and snow, but other than that, it was a great weekend filled with God’s word, great music and some wonderful teaching. Hearing Francis Chan in person was beyond amazing for me and watching Jana have the opportunity to meet Jamie Grace was quite amusing. I will post a picture of the two later on. We also heard some great teaching from Jim Burns in two of his classes, I even got thrown under the bus by him in one of the classes, quite hilarious!
But as amazing and wonderful as the conference was, I’m even more glad that I had the opportunity to attend the conference with my wife! We had time to hang out with one another and just sit back and take it all in without having Gracie, our youth or any of her students. I am so privileged to have a wife that actually enjoys serving and doing ministry with me. To see her passion and love for our youth energizes me at times and I never take for granite how blesses I am to have her in my life! I am blessed to be part of a church that gives the time to go and invest in a conference and classes. But more than that, I am blessed to have wonderful leaders and workers who are willing to step in when I am away! My leaders are the one’s who make our youth ministry run smoothly, because without them my life would be chaotic!
Another way that God has blessed us, is by having a pastor who is understanding, teaches the Bible and is a friend! The only time I really got discouraged was when they would make jokes or bash there senior pastor’s. It was actually devastating for me to listen to that! I even heard one fellow say that he had just been hired at the church and was glad that he didn’t have to “wear” so many hats, because they hired just as the youth pastor, not making him an associate pastor. We heard talks like “We don’t get paid enough for what we do!” Again, I am extremely blessed to have my pastor as my boss, my mentor, my Paul, and my friend. I may not always fill my title well as associate pastor, but I try everyday to grow into the pastor that God has called me to be at West Hickory Baptist Church. Jana and I are excited to be members at our church and coming alongside our family and doing ministry together! It’s a great feeling and a true blessing!
And finally, the thing that impacted us the most this weekend was the awareness of God’s word and love around the globe. We saw the need to be involved with helping girls freed from human trafficking, we saw the need to be involved with helping to fight poverty and hunger around the globe. It was really cool, because we had just finished doing the 30 Hour Famine with our youth the weekend before and everything was still fresh on our hearts and minds about social injustice and poverty around the globe. We had the opportunity to watch a movie called “Love Costs Everything” and it was about Christian persecution all around the globe and how we can be involved. It was one of those movies that you watch and when it ends, their aren’t any words you can say because you don’t know what to say! It is definitely a movie that “sticks” in your mind and one that I hope I will get to show to our youth later on! Overall, it was a wonderful experience, we met some new friends, new ministries and even better, we got refreshed in God’s word! Looking forward to next years conference already!
Coffee Conversations 