A Day in the Life of a Youth Pastor

Why We Work Together #9: Because sometimes we need a good laugh!

Sometimes you just need a good laugh - there's no better place for a youth pastor to get that than when they are with a group of youth pastors who need to vent a little bit. Well, at our Murrysville/Monroeville Youth Network meeting today, Pastor Lu had us laughing our heads off. Unfortunately what happens at network meetings stays at network meetings! Just believe me when I say, youth pastors are funny guys!

Why We Work Together #8: Because We Are One Body

Our last Fayette County Youth Network meeting was our largest one ever! And we had United Methodists, Baptists, Non-denominationals, Pentecostals, Free Methodists, and C&MA people all in the same room - but talking about one thing: helping teenagers know and grow in Jesus. This group is planning to do six or seven events together over the course of the upcoming school year. Why?

1) To help reinforce the spiritual truths that all of us want to hammer home to our students

2) To reach out to students with the Gospel in ways that no one church could do on their own

3) To help connect our students so that when they see each other at school there is encouragement and accountability

Although we have many theological and methodological differences, we all have the same ultimate goal - to see God transforming young people's lives and to see the body of Christ grow. We ARE one body and it is always exciting to see that spiritual truth actually happening. I'm looking forward to a great year with these great friends.

Why We Work Together #7: Because It Unleashes Creativity!

Pictured Above: The Greensburg Youth Network

For five years our Westmoreland County Youth Network has done a student evangelism conference each August to equip and inspire students to share Christ with their friends at school. This year's conference needed revamping on several levels, so we approached a different group of youth pastors in the area and asked them what they would want to see a conference of this type look like for their students. The part of the brainstorming that excited me the most was when we went around the room and asked, "If you could share one concept related to evangelism with students for 15 minutes, in one word what would that be?". The words that came out were: service, confidence, love, culture, individuality, dialogue, and party. So these words are going to be our workshop topics for this conference on August 21st - a few of them seem obviously important, but several of those are unclear enough that I think students' curiosity will get the best of them and they'll go just to find out "What's that all about?". The different youth pastors in the group contributed not only content ideas, but resources that I believe will make this one of the best student evangelism conferences we've ever had. I'm always amazed to see what comes about when God's people put their minds and hearts together!

Visit www.wcyn.org if you're interested in bringing students to this conference!