Tradition is something that I am thankful for and proud of.  Whether it is the traditions of my family, my church, or my faith I am thankful for the work, effort, and vision of those involved before me.  Some people have lost sight of what tradition is and what it means to be traditional.  Too many times I hear people reason that a dead church is dead because it is so “traditional.”  I disagree with that.  We should always remember, respect, and appreciate where we have been.  I would consider our church traditonal in many ways, but very much alive and growing.  The dangerous thing about tradition is when we convince ourselves that previous thoughts, processes, and systems are correct, relevant, and necessary because they have always been done a certain way.  I just hope that in church life we:

• look to scripture to see if something is correct (theology, ministry strategy, etc.)
• honestly look at a ministry, event, etc to see if it is necessary (do people come to the event, do they enjoy it, etc.)
• see if lifechange is taking place to check the relevance of a ministry (lifechange should be the goal of everything we do- Christ changing lives)

It is too easy to simply photocopy last years schedule, budget, and ministry plan.  When this happens the “well this is the way we’ve always done it” mindset takes over and the hard work it takes to truly be effective is sidetracked for the easy route.

The love of my life, my wife Carrie, is celebrating her birthday today!  Happy Birthday, in the words of our daughter- “wuv you”

http://www.stevenfurtick.com/uncategorized/the-value-of-a-relationship/ 
“You can measure the value that you place on a relationship by the level of discomfort you are willing to engage to make that relationship the best it can possibly be. ”

– Steven Furtick 

This Sunday I am speaking about something that most people hate preaching about.  I am excited about it because I know God is showing me what he wants.  In the mean time I’d appreciate your prayers because I believe God is going to change many lives this weekend! I’ll let you guess what I’m talking about, but you’ll have to come Sunday morning to find out!  Thank you all for your prayers. 

Two things a youth pastor hates to hear:

1.  We left billy at the gas station.
2.   It’s budget time.

This is the toughest one I’ve ever had to work on because our average number of attendees/participants has almost doubled in 8 months.  As you can probably guess, our budget won’t be doubling.  I am requesting an overall increase of about 7%.  It is a request that is praying for/hoping for some other youth donations and fundraising efforts.    It makes it tough though, doubling attendees and only having a 7% increase will make for a creative and innovative year in funding our ministry.  It’ll work though (my God owns some cows and land, we’re good.)

  for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills.Psalm 50:10  

I’m not going to attempt to try and tell you how busy last week was.  Honestly, you probably wouldn’t believe me anyway.  I tried to come up with how many hours I worked but gave up, Friday alone was 19 1/2 hours.  It was a crazy week, but alot of awesome things happened.  From Friday at 6:00p.m. several of our students (around 27) were apart of the D-now weekend.  They didn’t go home or rest until after church yesterday.  Because of this I canceled all evening youth services at church.  That meant Praise Band practice, creative ministries, small groups, etc.  Why did I do this?  Well because we always say the following things to students very often:

•  Family time is the most important time
•  Do your homework
• Get plenty of Rest

I just wanted to give our students an opportunity to succeed in these things.  I did get some complaints about canceling some of the programs, but ultimately the things mentioned above were more important than the things that were postponed a week.  If I had followed our existing schedule I probably would’ve gotten some complaints then too.  Complaints are a normal part of what I do, and I appreciate them as long as they are delivered respectfully.  At the end of the day I will make the decision that I feel is best for our students, our families, and our ministry.   As for me and my family the time off was a blessing.  We hadn’t been together since Thursday, so it was great to have some time to just rest and be a family.  Thanks to the following for making D-Now work:
Jamie S.
Jesse and Jamie H.
Loretta and Jerry B.
Lewis and Jackie C.
Tracy W.
Eric W.
Josh B.
 Edwina J. 

You guys rock.