Welcome to my Journey

Hello dear friends,

This summer was one of immense stretching and growing. Somewhere toward the end of July, God completely altered my life plans and called me to be a youth minister (this story will be told in the next entry, I promise). Although I have finally come to peace with this upcoming chapter of my life, and though I am excited about it and comfortable with it, I really haven’t spent a lot of time reflecting on this calling, its implications, my precise desires, what led me here, and other various facets of youth ministry and its role in my life. Therefore, I have begun this blog. I am using it partly to give my friends and family insight into my mindset in all this, but I am also using it largely for selfish reasons. This is my chance to sort things out in my mind, to reflect on God’s calling, to more readily hear His voice and align His will to me life, and to create for myself in image of my future.

Since I have so recently set out on this journey, it is likely that others will see changes occur in my writings over time. I am fine with this, even to the point where I will warn you that perhaps my ideas in later entries will disagree entirely with things I write early on. That is all part of the process, and I am comfortable with it, or at least I will try to be.

A few statements on organization: I tried to work out the best way to order my entries. I thought about doing this chronologically by beginning with my past (what led to where I am), moving to my present (my emotions, fears, and such), and finishing with my future (how I envision my ministry, what the next steps are, my long-term personal goals, etc). However, I find this limiting because there are many ideas that are better explained by covering all three parts at one time, and there are others facets that cannot be placed in a specific location in time yet are important for me to discuss with myself.
I also thought about organizing these entries according to broad topic: I would devote many entries to emotions, many to my calling, many to physical aspects of youth ministry, many to my reactions to others’ ministries, and so on. Yet I fear I would think of another aspect of something I had discussed after I have moved on, and would not be able to add this entry without disrupting the flow.
Therefore, after some consideration, I have decided just to write things as they come. This does not mean that these entries will be haphazardly thrown together or that there will be no logical from one to the next. It simply means that I am not going to attempt at the outset to order things so precisely that I am limited in what I will say each time I sit down to reflect on my ministry. Hopefully everything I say will be easy to follow. Also know that I am always open to questions, comments, suggestions, and the like.

Thank you for listening, for rejoicing, for following, and for shouting.


Today I turn around
Stop running away from Him.

Today I listen
And run toward.