Youth Leaders Summit Finally

Well the amish era at tNC is over for now. But I'm sure technology demons will return. Let's pray that God will protect us from those oppressive spirits. But with the amish era over I finally am in a place to process some of the stuff that I picked up from leader's summit. First of all I think that Jeffrey Portman is the man Every year summit is one of the highlights fo the year. And This year was no different. I really appreciate Jeffrey's heart for the leaders he leads. He closed out the conference with a call for all the leaders of the Northwest Ministry Network to pray. Prayer is our greatest tool to reach students. More powerful than any game, outreach, illustrated message, or anything is prayer, and I needed to hear that. But Let's go back to the beginning. Earl Creps was one of the key speakers for this weekend. This is my take on Earl. He loves God, Church and leaders, and he wants those leaders to stop huddling and get out into the culture and reach people. I had heard of Earl before but I didn't understand why everyone was in love with him. But know having heard from him myself I understand why. One of the things that really stuck out from one of his talks was this statement:

You have to know who your are or others will try to make you who you aren't.

I thouhg that was really interesting. I think my ministry experience so far has really helped me to understand this principle, but he solidified it quite nicely. He was talking about Paul and Timothy, and how Paul was trying to reach both the Jews and the Greeks and timothy was both jewish and greek. He was equating youth ministry to timothy, this kind of inbetween person, and youth pastor today are between generations. And how Timothy had to make sacrifices for greater effectiveness. We need to ask ourselves what kind of sacrifices are we willing to give, what kind are we willing to be. Very informative. I was really challenged by his talk. I went to a break out session with Earl and he talked about what youth pastors would only say to other youth pastors, he blogged about it here. I was very encouraged by a lot of what he had to say. And challenged as well. It was quite good. The other featured speaker was a Scottie Gibbons the youth pastor or ReaLife Ministries. He was very inspiring. He has been in the same ministry for something like 13 years. I hope that I can have that kind of longevity. I really was challenged to think big picture of the right now, not just stuff that I think God might be calling me to some time. I don't know if that makes any sense to anyone reading this but it makes clear sense to me (deal with it). Scottie talked about Prayer on the closing day, but he also talked about running. and How we need to know our goals and be disciplined. Don't look away but run and work hard. So that was good to hear as well. Portman brought up quite a scary thought in his main session. We are one generation away from being biblically illiterate in our nation. Crazy. I really want to do my part to help equip students with a working understanding and love for the Bible. I hope that I can reach a lot of kids with the message of the Gospel and show them how to get the WORD into their lives. The breakout sesssions were really great as well. Where I was really inspired and what made this whole weekend worth it was that the leaders that I brought with me were inspired to make our ministry great. Two of my leaders sat in a session where they learned about Aaron and Hur and how they helped Moses hold up his arms when they were fighting the Amalekites and as long as Moseses Arms were up the Israelites were winning, but whenever Moses' arms fell they lost. So they are trying to organize our leaders to help me to hold my arms up. And this was totally their own idea. They are going to run with it. And I just can't thank them enough for it. Youth Leaders Summit is worth it every year for me and my team and I am so grateful that I work in a network of leaders who care about equipping and strengthening their leaders.