recommended reading

I just finished reading the book "Presence-Centered Youth Ministry" by a guy I know, Mike King. It's a great book and I'd highly recommend it to youth leaders looking for something fresh for their youth ministries. Youth ministry typically consists of fun stuff, big events, worships bands, etc..., but Mike King throws a new wrench into the works - ancient Christian practices. I never thought these things could be part of youth ministry, but then again, I had never heard of a lot of these ideas from believers in ages past.

I also just finished listening to a cd from the Youth Specialties convention by the Dare 2 Share guy, Greg Stier. Man, that was good stuff. He's got a new book out now which his talk on the cd was based on - Ministry Mutiny. I think I'll be getting that one.

i love it when a plan comes together

I had the privilege of speaking at my friend Frank Audia's youth group tonight about students living for Christ at their schools (based on the book of Daniel). It was a lot of fun worshiping with those guys. As a great bonus, another youth pastor friend, Brent Squires, joined me and we tag-teamed the meeting. He gave a great application challenge at the end. I love seeing youth pastors connect with each other! We were really excited about the great worship time those guys had.

We had the Murrysville Youth Network meeting this morning at 9am at Eat N Park in Murrysville (those are so much fun!). They are going to start doing a monthly youth worship night together beginning in January. Then we had the Mon Valley Youth Network meeting at noon at Little Bamboo in Belle Vernon. Tomorrow youth pastors in Penn Trafford and Greensburg are having their monthly network lunches. The Greensburg guys are still talking about bringing "The Seven Project" school assemblies. I'm praying that God will lead that way if it is His will.

article published!

Something cool happened this week - I got an article published in "The Network Magazine" published by NNYM. It's called "From Competing to Completing" and it's about how churches relate to each other. I have to thank Pete Malik, my partner in TFC, and my wife Judy for encouraging me to send this in. Also, my good friend, Mark Kovscek, from Brownsville, contributed a significant idea which became the whole structure for the writing of the article. So thanks Mark! Anyway, it's at www.youthworkers.net. My hope is that this might help the body of Christ become better connected. Other people, who are way more qualified than me, have written much better stuff on this topic, but I hope this helps. I pray that God will be glorified.

Youth Specialties Convention in Cincinnati

Judy and I went out to Cincinnati for the Youth Specialties National Youth Workers Convention the weekend before Thanksgiving. I helped the National Network of Youth Ministries guys (which we - TFC - are a local chapter of) with the registration process (they do the orientation for first-timers and introduce them to the Network). These conventions are amazing. Imagine hanging out with 5000 youth leaders for 4 days!! It is fun and God is there. We ran into a lot of friends including Dave & Kelly Grimm from Harvest Assembly in Derry (Dave is our Latrobe/Derry network coordinator), Tom & Shannon Shrum from Armbrust Wesleyan in Greensburg (Tom is our Greensburg Network coordinator), and Roseann Sworts, Jason Freyer, and Abby Rissler from various presbyterian churches in Westmoreland County (Roseann is our Alle-Kiski area network coordinator). Judy and I are pictured on the left with Dave & Kelly Grimm and the picture on the right is of the main stage where the general sessions took place. If you are a youth leaders who has never been to one of these, you've got to do it sometime.

our "Epic" small group

Judy and I have been hosting a small group in our home with folks from Cherry Tree Alliance Church. We've been going through John Eldredge's video series "Epic" based on his book by the same title. It is so incredible to see the Scriptures as this great story that God is telling and to think that God invites us to be part of that story. We have one week left to go in this series and no one wants it to end. Anyone interested in Epic or other stuff by Eldredge should check out www.ransomedheart.com.

greensburg youth pastors lunch

We met with a group of youth pastors in Greensburg, PA this past Friday for lunch to talk about bringing a school assembly program, The Seven Project (www.thesevenproject.org) to the area. It was really exciting to see these guys connecting with each other and planning something exciting together - something bigger than any of them could pull off alone.

my mission

If there is one thing I really love, it's helping connect the body of Christ - I love helping believers work together to reach people for Christ.