It’s been a while since I last updated. A lot’s been going on, but here’s the Cliff Notes version:

Youth group lock-in
The youth group lock-in last weekend took a lot of time to prepare and coordinate, but overall it was a success even though I’m still recovering from the lack of sleep. The video of the event is available if anyone wants to see. Sometime soon I’ll add all my lock-in materials to my free resources page in case anyone else can make use of them.

Bird died
When I returned to my apartment on Saturday morning after the lock-in, I found one of my birds on the floor of the cage with a limp leg. It eventually started twitching pretty badly and by the end of the day he was dead. I have no idea what happened, but at least the other bird is doing fine and seems to enjoy spending more time with people now.

Increased ministry hours
As most of you know, I started working at my current church while I finished up my education at Dallas Seminary. The position was offered as part-time, which was fine with me because of school hours. Shortly before school ended, I picked up another part-time job doing IT Administration for a company in Dallas since the church could not afford to increase my hours at the time. Well, apparently someone recently donated a sum of money to the church specifically for the purpose of increasing my hours from part-time to three-quarters time (20 hours per week to 30 hours per week), so I now have increased hours for youth ministry. :D My IT position will remain the same for now, but I’ll be shuffling my time around in order to be available for students after school more often.

Relationship growing with Dana
Dana and I continue to grow together and appreciate each other more and more. She lives less than a mile away, which has allowed us to see each other every day since her student teaching started. We weren’t quite sure at first how that would affect our relationship, but now we both agree that we’ve enjoyed the time spent together and appreciate living so close to each other. I’m looking forward to seeing how God continues to grow us and challenge us as we become the best individuals we can for each other. :)

Leadership lessons from Guild Wars
Most people will probably laugh at me for this, but seriously, I’ve probably learned more about leadership this year from playing Guild Wars than almost anything else. Being the leader of a guild that plays with people on different levels who come and go has certainly challenged me to lead by holding to a vision and accomplishing the goals therein by making decisions that are sometimes difficult to make. I don’t expect anyone else understand this, but just trust me, I’ve learned a lot and already see it making a positive impact on my real-life leadership over the youth ministry at church. Sounds corny maybe, but oh well. :P Maybe one day I’ll make a list of everything I’ve learned so far about leadership from the game Guild Wars and how it affects ministry. ;)

Posted on January 27, 2006