SUNDAY WAS AN AMAZING DAY FOR ME. 3 REASONS.

1. SHEER NUMBERS:

I’m not a big numbers guy as a means of success, so chalk it up to whatever you want, but last weekend set a new regular Sunday record in just people showing up to our high school program. There were 157 people in there! We had been hovering around 130 during our 10:45am service for about the last 4 weeks which was really good for us. But then yesterday, I spent most of the morning adding chairs. The first year I was here at Journey the attendance at this service hovered between 15 and 30! What a different feel. I had to ask kids to move over one and make room for more. I had some leaders sitting on the floor in the back. A visiting friend had to stand all morning.

Crazy I tell you. Crazy.

It’s been a long time coming. It was overwhelming in a good way. I was so proud of our team. They are so many who deserve the credit for this. Our students are in the band, the tech, the producers, sending visitor cards… our leaders are showing up. It was simply a great thing to watch.

2. VIBE.

There is a great vibe in Encounter right now. Not sure totally how to explain it, but it just feels right.

This was the second week in a series we’re doing on reaching out to your friends called “everyone matters”. Maybe it’s working. Yesterday I met one freshman who brought 3 friends with him. I met another gal who was visiting for the first time because she ran into one of ours students at the mall who invited her and she showed on her own! Amazing.

Then we had a great student leader meeting at my house after church. About 30 students showed up for a BBQ and a chance to dive into the behind the scenes leadership of our student ministries team. We had a pretty even mix of gender, grade, and school environments which was encouraging. We talked about our vision. We talked about our calendar. We made some new friends. Some of us even sorted cans and bottles we’ve been collecting from church to help sponsor world vision kids. I ended by telling these students that I was so proud and honored to be working with them. I really meant that.

3. COLLEGE STUFF.

Sunday capped off with the fall launch of New Format- our college ministry. In the 3 1/2 years I’ve been here, the college ministry has had 3 different part-time leaders, 2 group names, several logos, 2 rooms on campus, and at least 3 changes in “style”. So, as you can imagine, it’s been hard to build momentum.

Anyway, last May the church made some decisions to move Sarah Merk into the newest of the part-time leadership roles with college. That culminated last night with their first meeting. There was excitement and desire and passion and ownership and 65ish people. It was great. I loved seeing former students in leadership. I loved watching our college ministry get off to a good start this school year. I loved what God is doing and has done in this space. Oh… and Sarah’s message on our innate God made desire for community was spot on for my life too. I was so stoked for this team today. It was an encouragement to the leaders of today and a great thing for the history of those who helped it stay alive and breathed new life into it through the years.

We decided that a postcard is a great way to use some old school snail mail to tell students we value them. We’ve asked all our small group leaders to take advantage of them. I decided to order them in color. They came in this week. Here’s the 3 I made that we’ll be sharing this week:

A BIRTHDAY CARD.

A “WHERE YOU BEEN?” CARD.

AN ENCOURAGEMENT CARD.

Ok, if you’re a youth pastor who reads this blog, my one piece of solid advice for you is, get a youth tracker.net account.

We have all our students in an online database they host. It is therefore password accessible anywhere in the world that I can get internet access. We have middle school, high school, and college in it.

I can enter tons of custom fields, tracks event attendance, write mentor notes, and all in an extremely user friendly format. Next week we start adding photos.

In about 20 seconds, I can send a text to our entire youth group database or any individual group I choose for 8.5 cents per text and I don’t have to know their cell carrier like a lot of texting programs. For me that means that I can remind our entire student leadership team or all our guys small groups of a meeting via cell for less than $4 and it even tells me who saw it and who did not. I can send out a text advertisement for an upcoming outreach event to the entire list of regulars and visitors for about $40! You can’t beat that in a day and age where texting rules with students.

Even our volunteer adults have access to their students by a special login. I’ve tried a lot of databases but none that I have found can compare with the usability, versatility, and simplicity of this program. I cannot recommend a better tool to manage students than this one. They even uploaded ALL our data from a previous pain in the butt management system we were using. We just exported it in excel and for a dismal $25 fee- whalla, instant online data.

And no… I don’t get bonus points and I can’t offer a discount if you mention my name.

I go to church on Friday nights at Journey.

Tonight was the second week in a series called, “the other Joseph”. It’s on the Joseph of the OT, not the NT spouse of Mary we often think of with Joseph.

Anyway, some of the best preaching I’ve ever heard has been on the life of Joseph. One of my favorite messages of all time was a teaching on the life of Joseph and enduring tough times given by Andy Stanley at Catalyst several years back. It was absolutely amazing. This series has made we want to track it down. (I’m pretty sure it’s a message called, “in the meantime”. If so, it’s here if you want to get it.)

Anyway, tonight Ed lived up to the Joseph tradition in my life. There were two quotes I wrote down that rang true for me.

“Do the right work, regardless of the job you do… Your faithfulness in your work will come back to you”

“Be the guy that you boss can trust. The one he can give a job to and walk away with a confidence that when you say, ‘I got it’, you mean it. It’s as good as done.”

I want to be both of those things. I want to be the kind of guy that works hard, regardless of the job, out of pure integrity and devotion to worship Jesus. I want to be the guy that when I tell you, “I got it”- you can walk away and check it off on the to do list as done.

I believe, that like Joseph, that is the kind of work God blesses, regardless of what miserable circumstances life may throw at you. I believe that is the kind of man or woman that God chooses to entrust more and more to. It’s the kind of leader and volunteer that are far too few and far between in the church. I want to be this. I want to work and spend time with others who desire this too.

These two insights are so hard to find today. I’d say they are an endangered species in some contexts. I often tell students, if you do the following three things…. I don’t care where you start in your company, you’ll eventually end up in upper management. Probably sooner than later.

1. Do an honest days work. Show up on time and actually work the hours your paid for.
2. Don’t steal from your employer.
3. Follow through with your commitments. Be a man or woman of your word.

One final thought: The Quakers had a phrase they would say regarding work. It was this, “Hands to work, hearts to God.” It meant that they saw how they worked as an extension of their connection with God. So they valued a simple excellence in all they did. It’s why we still have near perfect Quaker furniture from the 1860’s in antique stores. When my heart is in the right place, my work will reflect it. Joseph’s work history is Case #1 evidence this is true.

A while back, our church asked me to oversee student ministries, where it included the oversight of not just middles school and high school, but also that of college as well. One of the first things I did was set up some monthly meetings with the middle school, high school, and college coordinators so that we could come up with a collective vision statement.

We did, and today I added it to our brainstorming / weekend planning room wall. We ordered a custom prose from Blik. It’s a giant sticker thing. Turned out sweet. Here it is on our wall.

Now if it can just get beyond words on a wall and into our hearts. We’re going to go over it every time we meet to plan in there, which is at least weekly with some of our student leadership team.

We are all doing a series called “re-generation” where we are teaching on it together in our respective ministry weekend services for 4 weeks in October/November too. Should be sweet.