PDYM - Wednesday
So, after a night of sharing a slightly small hotel room with 3 other dudes and a bed with one other dude, I was ready to hit the first full day of the conference. I skipped a big chunk of the first session and spent some good time with my friend and former boss, Kurt Johnston. It was time well spent. I always come away from talking to Kurt feeling very filled up. Love that guy.
Spent some time actually going to the session and it was good, but not too much to comment on there. Went to two different breakouts in the afternoon. The first one was called something like "10 mistakes I made in my first decade of youth ministry" with Brian Berry. I have a couple weird connections to Brian through two different people I interned with at two different churches. But that was the first day I'd met him. Cool dude. Some good stuff to say. Nothing earth-shattering but some good reminders in areas like keeping my family the first priority. He talked about how you have to be able to go to bed at night and rest peacefully even though there's always more people to minister to and another task to be done. I resonated with that because in ministry, there's always something else to be done. I'm getting better at being ok with that, but it takes awhile.
The second breakout I went to was on parent-friendly ministry with Jim Burns. Actually I came in late and only caught a few minutes of it, but got some great practical ideas on some ways to resource and equip parents. I also got to play sound guy for a couple minutes when the DVD sound didn't work.
Got to connect with Brent Deffenbacher and some of his team from Northwest Church in Fresno that night over a delicious BBQ dinner. I've known Brent for several years now and always enjoy hanging with him.
The last session that night was a worship night with Becky Tirabassi speaking. It was a cool time. She's one of those very outgoing, quirky, slightly ADD speakers, but she had some great things to say about revival, prayer, and the confession of sin. She called people to confession from some of the junk in their lives and it was cool to see literally hundreds of youth pastors flood the front just to talk to someone about what's going on. It's amazing how quiet we feel we have to be about our struggles in the church sometimes. So, when an atmosphere of freedom finally happens, God works. We cruised by the worship center an hour or two later and there were still 5 or 6 people there waiting to talk to and pray with Becky. Very cool night.
Wrapped it up with some HALO 2 in which I dominated one game against some youth workers, but then some church had brought some high school students who played us and kicked our butts. That was my cue to leave. We bailed, got some late night In-n-Out, and went back to our cozy room.
Spent some time actually going to the session and it was good, but not too much to comment on there. Went to two different breakouts in the afternoon. The first one was called something like "10 mistakes I made in my first decade of youth ministry" with Brian Berry. I have a couple weird connections to Brian through two different people I interned with at two different churches. But that was the first day I'd met him. Cool dude. Some good stuff to say. Nothing earth-shattering but some good reminders in areas like keeping my family the first priority. He talked about how you have to be able to go to bed at night and rest peacefully even though there's always more people to minister to and another task to be done. I resonated with that because in ministry, there's always something else to be done. I'm getting better at being ok with that, but it takes awhile.
The second breakout I went to was on parent-friendly ministry with Jim Burns. Actually I came in late and only caught a few minutes of it, but got some great practical ideas on some ways to resource and equip parents. I also got to play sound guy for a couple minutes when the DVD sound didn't work.
Got to connect with Brent Deffenbacher and some of his team from Northwest Church in Fresno that night over a delicious BBQ dinner. I've known Brent for several years now and always enjoy hanging with him.
The last session that night was a worship night with Becky Tirabassi speaking. It was a cool time. She's one of those very outgoing, quirky, slightly ADD speakers, but she had some great things to say about revival, prayer, and the confession of sin. She called people to confession from some of the junk in their lives and it was cool to see literally hundreds of youth pastors flood the front just to talk to someone about what's going on. It's amazing how quiet we feel we have to be about our struggles in the church sometimes. So, when an atmosphere of freedom finally happens, God works. We cruised by the worship center an hour or two later and there were still 5 or 6 people there waiting to talk to and pray with Becky. Very cool night.
Wrapped it up with some HALO 2 in which I dominated one game against some youth workers, but then some church had brought some high school students who played us and kicked our butts. That was my cue to leave. We bailed, got some late night In-n-Out, and went back to our cozy room.
This entry was posted by Mike Lovato, on
Sunday, March 26, 2006.
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