Goin’ Camping

June 11, 2013 — Leave a comment

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We’re taking a break from the J-Blog for a few days, as I’ll be headed out on one of my favorite trips of the year, our youth group backpacking trip to the Allegheny National Forest. I like this trip for a few reasons (In no particular order):

1) Creation. I think we were meant to spend more time in God’s creation than we usually do. It is possible for someone with the right combination of parking garages to go their entire day without ever stepping foot outside. This makes me sad. A backpacking trip forces you to be outside, in nature, the whole time. You get a chance to worship God for all that he’s made, and to enjoy it the way he intended to enjoy it. Hopefully we can invite our students into that state of worship as well. But being outside is critical. It’s so very good for the soul.

2) Play. There are so many opportunities to be an absolute goofball in the woods. I’m really pumped about the group of kids that are coming on this trip with us, as their level of play is already “elevated.” I always look forward to those moments when there are tears streaming down our faces because we’re laughing so hard at the stories we’re telling, or at the new stories we’re making. And this trip is sure to see a few tears rolling down. 

3) Presence. For a lot of us in youth ministry, if we’re too program centered we can easily forget the incarnational aspects of our ministries, that we are called to simply be with our students. I’m very excited this weekend to get to have conversations and interactions with students without any kind of agenda, without any program getting in the way, without anything beyond just hiking to the next spot and resting. We leave our cell phones behind (except for one for emergencies) and we are just with each other. That, if you ask me, is precisely what heaven is supposed to be like. 

We’ll have some more posts when we get back. Until then, stay classy San Diego. 

In Youth Ministry
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Ring the cowbell of victory!

June 11, 2013 — Leave a comment

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Greetings friends!

For the past few months, I’ve been raising money and training (not nearly as hard as I should have) for the MS 150, a ride of 150 miles over the course of 2 days to raise money for MS research/treatment. Today I want to share how it went, and encourage us to keep the fight alive. 

It all started on Friday, when I shaved the playoff beard (sad) in lou of my traditional MS 150 style: 

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Extremely handsome…

On Saturday I was up at 4:30 to get ready for the ride. That fact alone should have brought in $50 in fundraising. But my teammate Travis and I drove from Murrysville to Zelienople to the starting line. My goal had been to make sure I paced myself through the first half of the day, to make sure that I still had something left in the tank when we got near the finish line. The last year I had done this ride I basically crawled across the finish in pain from having pushed way too hard in the beginning. We cruised for a while, keeping a good 13 mph pace. When we made it to lunch, we had 25 miles left to go, and I felt amazing! I kept thinking to myself, this is the best ride I’ve ever done. The only thing I wanted more than anything was to conquer a hill that had vexed me on this ride all three years I’ve done it. It’s a big massive hill that doesn’t allow you to carry any momentum at all through it, and happens to be right after a rest stop, so most people are pretty zonked when they get there. I had never ever made it up that hill without stepping off and walking some of it. This year would be different. At the rest stop directly prior to this hill, the fine folks from Dicks Sporting Goods were handing out pom poms and little cowbells for spectators to cheer us on. Naturally, I stole one. I announced to my team that I would be ringing this cowbell of victory at the top of the hill once we were all together. 

My climb wasn’t pretty. Unlike the pros who would climb a hill like that in a straight line without breaking a sweat, I was darting and dodging all over the road like a drunk driver trying to keep my feet spinning. That was the only way to get there, just stare at the top of the hill and keep the feet moving in circles. I stared that summit down the whole way to the top. About 2/3 of the way up a smile creeped on my face. I was going to make it. Just keep the feet moving. Just keep them moving. Just keep them moving. 

I can’t explain what the feeling was to pull over at the rest stop at the top of that hill in victory. It was my own personal Tour de France victory, and it should have come with a yellow jersey. And having climbed the mountain first from our group, I was beyond happy to share my victory by ringing the cowbell at everyone else from the team as they finished the climb. It felt amazing. Victory was so so sweet. 

And yet, that’s not the victory we’re looking for. After the ride on Saturday I was sitting around with some of my team, including Rick, who rides with MS. He’s an absolute machine. He has MS and he absolutely DESTROYS me every year on this ride. Even with MS, his positive attitude is amazing, his drive is infectious. As we were sitting around waiting for our massage, he said we need to hurry up and find a cure for this thing. Amazingly, because he wants to get this whole MS thing out of the way and start riding for another cause. What a guy. 

That’s the victory we want. A world free of MS. Yes it was physically challenging. Yes I accomplished a lot personally this weekend. Yes I am probably a in a little bit better shape this morning. But we haven’t won yet. We don’t ride to overcome our own challenges. We don’t ride for the personal rewards. We ride because we want a cure. And I’m going to keep riding until we have one, I don’t care how many hills they put in my way. 

To those of you who donated to my ride, thank you from the bottom of my heart. It means the world to me to know that we’re working together to beat this thing. If you didn’t have a chance, there’s good news. We’re still accepting donations until the end of the month, so you still have time to click the bunny at the top of the page and make a donation today. So far I’ve raised $1000 (holy crap, some of the recent gifts are amazing!), and my team has raised over $56,000! Let’s do more! Let’s cure MS! Please make a donation today!

In Cycling
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A wild and crazy idea.

June 4, 2013 — Leave a comment

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Greetings friends,

I am writing this post as the Penguins are playing (horrible) hockey. Please don’t come back from the future and tell past me how it ends (though if things keep going this way, past me knows exactly how it’s going to end). 

I love vacations. When they’re done right, you come back having cleared the cob webs of everything that was on your to-do list, and you’ve given your brain room to play and dream and scheme. And scheme I have. I present before you a new crazy idea, and I need your help to keep me accountable. 

While we were in Toronto, it became abundantly clear that everyone gets everywhere by cycling. First of all, the city is built for it. Bike lanes everywhere, and it’s flatter than Pittsburgh could ever hope to be. Single speeds could rule the world in cities like Toronto. You’d never need anything else! Also, Sarah and I noted that there were noticeably less overweight people in Toronto. Could be that everyone cycles everywhere. Could also be because I didn’t see more than 2 McDonalds the whole time we’re up there. 

As I was sitting in the hotel room last night, I was looking at my calendar for the coming month, and realized that with two (potentially three) exceptions (that we’ll get to in a second) I could leave my car in my driveway and use only my bike. The entire month of June. Bike alone. No car. We at the J-Blog are extremely good at naming things. And so we’ve come up with Car-Free-June. Catchy, no?

Every day to work. Every trip down to the seminary. Every grocery run. Everything by bike. It will certainly be challenging. It will certainly add up some serious June miles. But I think it will also certainly be extremely fun. Sure, the benefits for me are great. Less money on gas. More (hopefully) weight loss. Of course the environmental benefits of not having emissions spew out of my car. But I think the biggest reason to get riding is because it’s a passion of mine that I have left far too ignored for far too long. 

So here’s where you the faithful readers of J-Blog come into play. If you’ve got yourself one of those twitter machines, make sure you’re following @jason_freyer and keep up to date with my Strava feed. It’ll show you where I’ve been that day, how hard I rode, and how many miles I’ve added up. With the exception of 1) the drive up to the MS 150 (which will be followed by, you know, 150 miles of riding), 2) if I need to bring my own car to Alive, or 3) the potential show that we’re working on booking, I should be on the bike each and every day. Keep me honest! And keep checking back here on the J-Blog for updates all month long. 

Adventure? You bet! Stay tuned for more information!

In Cycling
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I wish I’d handled that differently…

June 4, 2013 — Leave a comment

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Greetings friends,

One last tale from our adventures in the great white north, and sadly this one is a tale of woe. Then again, after watching this week’s Game of Thrones, it will probably sound like the happiest thing you’ve ever heard!

So Sarah and I stayed at a hotel which gave us a tremendous amount of coupons. We got money off of our dinners, free gifts, and other nice items to kind of make the trip feel a bit more homey. It was really nice! One of the coupons we were given was $50 in free slot play at one of three local casinos. Sarah and I aren’t gamblers, but we figured since someone was essentially handing us money and saying “go nuts,” then go nuts we shall! We saved the coupon until the end of the trip, and figured we’d hit the casino on the way home. 

One of the casinos was in Buffalo, so immediately after we crossed the border, we found our way to the casino. This proved more difficult than one would think, as every street in Buffalo is currently under some sort of construction. Seriously, it was amazing anyone gets anywhere in that town. We found the casino, and a parking lot adjacent that said “Free Parking for Casino.” Made in the shade. 

We went over to the Casino, where we were the youngest people by at LEAST 30 years. It was crowded, loud, and full of cigarette smoke, so Sarah and I agreed to get in, lose someone else’s money, and get out as quickly as possible. After giving the kind cashier our “junk” email addresses to get our 50 bucks, we began to play. 

We actually made out alright, coming away with roughly $30. When you consider that we went in with nothing of our own money, and came back out with $30, that’s a pretty good day at the Casino. We weren’t millionaires, but we decided we could at least treat each other to one last nice lunch on the way home to cap off our trip. As we were walking out to the car and discussing what we wanted to eat, Sarah said that someone had put a flyer on my car. I was immediately annoyed. Imagine how much more annoyed I was to discover that it wasn’t a flyer at all, but a sticker telling me that I had been booted for neglecting to pay for parking. 

Have you ever had a moment where your blood boils? 

The instructions on the flyer from hell said that we were to pay $100 at the pay station. After searching the parking lot high and low, we found a pay station on the other side of the lot. Angry angry angry. We followed the instructions on the sheet. Angry angry angry. I placed my credit card into the slot. Angry angry angry. The machine in question froze and wouldn’t accept my card. 

What level do you go to when you’re angry on top of your blood boiling? 

The flyer had phone numbers for support on it, but no area codes listed with any of the numbers. If it were my Jeep, we would have just left it there. But I kind of like this Subaru (despite my decision to not use it at all for the next month), so we hung in there. Eventually we got a hold of the manager of the place. I told him (as politely as I could muster) that the machine refused to take my money. He told me it had taken everybody else’s money all day. I reached through the phone and punched him in the mouth. No, I didn’t. I told him that for as much as I felt like I was being taken advantage of, that I would just love for someone to come take my money so that I could get on the road and go home. He told me he was dispatching one of his workers, who would be there in five minutes.

Fifteen minutes later I had resolved to punch whoever showed up in the mouth. I was as angry as I’ve been in a long long time. As I was contemplating just how hard it could be to pick the locks on a car boot, the service vehicle showed up, and out stepped…

…a teenager…

You know, that group of people I work with, defend, and try my best to shepherd spiritually? Yeah. One of those. At first it made me even more angry. You could tell by the shape of our phone conversation that this manager knew exactly what he was doing, how to get precious dollars out of the hands of casino visitors with confusing signage. And when I was finally hoping to take my anger out on someone, the manager hides behind a teenager. Lame. “Face me yourself coward” I thought. But no such luck. And so now I was left with a metric ton (still working through the metric system from Canada of course) of anger, and really really not wanting to take it out on this kid who had found a crappy job taking the punches for some jerk parking lot manager so he could go to college or at the least have some ice cream money. 

We starred at the pay machine for a while, and he realized it was frozen too. He called his manager and they talked for a bit before it finally worked, they had my money, and the teen and I started walking back to my car. In that moment I do what I always try to do when there’s no hope for me. I try to help the next “me” that comes along. I told the kid that they really need to get A) better signs and B) a better payment machine, so that I’m not so tempted to punch it in the mouth. The teen muttered something about how he isn’t in charge of all that. Sarah and I hoped in the car, and after about three more detours, got the heck out of Buffalo. 

As I was replaying the whole situation in my mind on the way home, I kept thinking that I wish I had handled it better. I was angry, and I think justifiably. I was taken advantage of. Signs that promised one thing delivered nothing of the sort. And so I was angry. And even though I held back with the teenager in question, I certainly didn’t show him the kind of love or generosity that I want to be known for. I certainly didn’t show him Christ. Sure, he was part of the establishment that was fleecing me, but Christ tells me that if someone asks for my shirt to give them my coat too. He had my shirt. I kept the coat. So I don’t know if I could have handled this situation any differently, but I know that I wish I had. I don’t know if I could have kept anger at bay, but I kind of wish I was the kind of person who could be loving, even in that situation. It’s something I’m going to have to work on, and I hope you will too. 

In Spiritual Development, Youth Ministry
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Three Stars of the Week

May 31, 2013 — Leave a comment

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Greetings friends!

It’s that time again. Who will be the three stars of the week? 

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3rd Star: Karl Hudson (Shown here with Clay Morgan, author and amazing dude. Karl has the beard)

Why is Karl Hudson the third star? Why the heck not! Karl has just begun a new gig in the youth ministry world with our friends down the street at Southminster Presbyterian Church, and is doing just a fantastic job! Plus he threw one heck of barbecue for Memorial Day. Plus he plays in Tree Anthem. 

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2nd Star: Canada

Particularly the people of this great maple leaf state. We were greeted by a border control guy who’s only real question for us was “What the heck, you live four hours away and this is the first time you’ve been to Canada? Hosers!” Maybe he didn’t say it exactly like that. But still. Everyone we meet up here is awesome. They’re super kind and welcoming. Plus, the street our hotel is on right now is Stanley street. Took me a while to be sure, but that’s freaking Lord Stanley, of Cup fame. Hockey is built in to this country’s very existence. Spectacular place! More photos to come later as I get around to it. 

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1st Star: Carlton Calvin

What? Who is this guy? Well actually he’s been on the three stars list the last two weeks, we just didn’t know it. Carlton Calvin is the owner of Razor, the company that produces these glorious things known as Ripstiks. Did Carlton actually invent the delightful device? Probably not. But he’s the boss man so he gets the credit. Also look how seriously he’s taking this interview right now! With the sticks in the background? Beautiful. Ripstick Soccer is an amazing game, and is absolutely going to end somebody’s life. But so amazing. And so much fun! We went shopping this week to get more sticks, and discovered that there is also A) a luxury model and B) some sort of shortie ripstik. Further investigation required. 

Who will unseat Carlton? Tune in Friday next week to find out!

In Uncategorized
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Vacation Post: Reading for Fun

May 31, 2013 — Leave a comment

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Greetings from the great white north! 

Sarah and I are taking some time off to visit America’s Hat, Canada. We’re currently at Niagara Falls, and we’ll be headed up to Toronto tomorrow to A) Watch the Penguins play in an authentic Hockey Bar IN CANADA and B) visit Lord Stanley’s Cup and get it ready for Sid to hold it. 

Vacations are a beautiful thing. I don’t think I was aware of how tense and tight I was through the school year. Or at least I didn’t realize how much stress and tension I was holding on to once school was over. There were a couple of times that I would come home to some down time, and wonder what was wrong with me that I was studying something or translating some passage or writing some paper. I felt like I was missing something. Maybe it’s like when you’re driving a boat, you punch the gas really hard, but when you cut the engines the boat keeps floating because there are no brakes. Or something like that. So we got in the car and escaped to Canada. It is worth mentioning that in high school one of my life goals was to get arrested by a mountie, so this could be the last post you see here for a while…

One of the things I’m trying my best to do on this vacation is to kick-start the kinds of life-giving activities I love so much. Writing for example. Not the school paper extremely well researched kind of writing. But stuff like the J-Blog. I’m also kicking around some ideas for a book, but I’ve done that a thousand times before, so don’t believe me until I show you a picture of me holding a book. I’m also super excited to be reading again. Way back when, I had set a goal of reading 25 non-seminary related books this year. As of today, I’m sitting at 10 books down, just slightly behind schedule. Which is fine, some of the books I’m reading right now are so funny I think I’ll get caught up and ahead a little bit in no time. 

What are you reading for fun right now? 

In Seminary
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Back to Basics: A recap of the Mystery Trip

May 28, 2013 — Leave a comment

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Greetings friends!

For the longest time, our ministry calendar here at Westminster had a gaping hole from about mid March until the summer time. We’re not even really sure why the gap was there, other than maybe it was our subtle way to try to give our bodies some rest. But as we were looking for more ways to involve more students in our ministry, we decided we wanted to do a one day event, something fun and easy that would allow students to invite their friends. We decided on a mystery trip. We kept the details of the trip under extreme secrecy. Seriously, more people know about the release of the iPhone 6 than knew about our plans for the mystery trip. What made this hilarious to me was the number of parents who signed their kids up for this event and never asked us where we were going or what we’d be doing. That’s trust friends. That’s trust. 

The trip started by loading everyone on to the bus, driving once around the church parking lot, and returning to the chapel. Hilarious. We got out and had a Mario Kart tournament in the chapel on our new big screen. We even broke out the handheld wireless mice and let some of the kids roam the stands and interview players while they were waiting for their turn. We learned quickly that our students aren’t exactly the best at Mario Kart, as most brackets ended with four of our students at the bottom of the standings. If only they could spend more of their working hours playing that game like their youth leaders. 

We loaded back up on the bus, and drove to the airport. The packing list, which had several items on it that students were absolutely not going to need, included a small carryon size duffle and a warning to not carry more than three ounces of liquid. You would think our students would catch on that a trip costing only $20 was probably not going to include a trip to Cancun or something like that. You’d be wrong. I think several of our students will no longer be speaking to me because of that fake out. We rounded through the parking lot and drove north to a Go Kart/Mini Golf/Bumper Boat/Arcade type place, where several “high” speed collisions took place on the race track that were ABSOLUTELY NOT MY FAULT (they were). We also spent a healthy amount of time in the batting cages, watching baseballs fly by at the speed of light and pretending we could hit them. 

From here we drove south in the city to a Quaker Steak and Lube, which is a wing restaurant around here that is race the meed. Another item on the packing list was formal dinner ware, which is amazing because Quaker Steak is the absolute last place you would expect to see someone show up in a prom dress. After watching Ed house a plate of Atomic wings without so much as a single tear (that man is a force of nature), we drove to our final destination, the whole point of the trip, the big enchilada. We went to the Motordrome speedway expecting to see a semi-professional NASCAR type event. What we saw instead was a locked gate, and a abandoned looking race track. Some quick thinking and nimble planning allowed us to come back to the church and play ripstick soccer and watch some movies. 

I absolutely loved this trip. It was the essentials of good ministry to youth, in that we were building up relationships. Did we have anything specifically biblically based? No. Did that stop us from having faith-based conversations with just about each of the students who joined us? Nope. We had fun, we enjoyed each other’s company, and we brought back a lot of great stories like holes in one on the mini golf course, RSS injuries, and that time we faked everybody out with the airport. I left wondering if we could somehow make more of our events this simple. I wonder if youth ministry, as they say, really is all about relationships. 

In Youth Ministry
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(Belated) Three Stars of the Week

May 28, 2013 — Leave a comment

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Good morning friends!

With a busy holiday weekend, combined with the slaying of the big bad Exegesis paper, I’m a bit behind on the J-Blog. The good news though is that as I am wrapping up final edits on this paper here today, we’re going to be able to J-Blog quite a bit more! But this week’s three stars had some pretty important characters on it, and so I wanted to make sure that we got this up. So even though it’s Tuesday, pretend you’re reading this post last Friday.

 

3rd Star: Jackie Freyer and Ed Helm

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Well would you look at that, our first ever repeat on the three stars page! Jackie and Ed have been rocking out to the big screen down at the Penguins games, and invited me to go along with them last Sunday. We may have lost in overtime, but we sure had a blast at the screen, and ate way too many cake pops. Rock on you soldiers of Penguin-ness!

2nd Star: The Guy Who Invented Ripsticks

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Oh my goodness, two repeats! It’s uncanny I tell ya! But this Ripstick soccer game is A) incredibly fun and B) probably going to kill somebody. And that’s just the kind of game we’ve come to value here at Veritas. So here’s to you dude who invented ripsticks!

1st Star: Rachel Held Evans

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I reviewed Rachel’s book A Year of Biblical Womanhood a while ago, and her work in that book is probably worthy of at least one star. But this week, Rachel claims the top spot for two blog posts she shared. The first dealing with Christian response to tragedies like, say, tornados in the midwest. The second though is really where she scored some points, in asking her readers for forgiveness. Writing a blog, or for that matter speaking in churches, comes with an immense responsibility. Chances are, if we were honest with ourselves, any of us who claim to speak on behalf of Christ on any level at all have a lot to apologize for, and a lot of forgiveness to ask of our readers/listeners. Rachel claims the first star this week for actually being willing to ask for that forgiveness. It is in moments like this that we wish the J-Blog had an actual trophy to give away for the three stars. 

More to come this afternoon!

In Uncategorized
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Being a mystic without being weird…

May 23, 2013 — Leave a comment

LabyrinthHello bloggers,

A few days ago, in the midst of the whole paper/end of school/business of work, I needed to take some time to chill out. Because I’m a pretty introverted person (a fact not many people would assume of someone who speaks in front of large groups of people for a living, but still) Sarah calls this “I” time. And so in the middle of a pretty busy day, between meetings and appointments, I went down and walked our church’s prayer labyrinth. 

To those of you who have never seen one, it looks kind of like what is pictured above. Two different colored bricks are used together to form the easiest maze the world has ever known. The idea isn’t to thwart your spacial abilities (though, there are times…), but rather to give you something to focus on so that everything else can drift away, leaving only you, your thoughts, and God. 

I set my Bible and my journal in the middle flower and walked back out to start. I took my shoes off, because that just seemed like the thing to do. If you’re going to do this, you ought to experience as much of it as you can, including through your toes. On the way in, I had to 1) Keep praying the Jesus prayer (Lord Jesus, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner) to keep my mind from wandering too far and 2) constantly remind myself to slow down. I don’t think this activity does what we want it to do if we try to run it at a sprint. Once I got to the center, I did some lectio divina and journaled for about a half hour. Then I hopped up and walked back out, this time praying specifically for the rest of my day, for the meetings I had left to go, for the paper I’m working on in school, for all of our summer trips, for some of our students who I know needed some prayers. To say it was refreshing would be an extreme understatement. This restored a piece of my soul. 

I’ve always liked the more mystical prayer approaches. Something about the “Hey God, give me a Volvo” type prayers never really struck a chord with me. I don’t like having to ask people for anything. I don’t want to seem like I’m a burden. Especially to God. This type of prayer was more about being in the presence of God. I didn’t want anything, I wasn’t seeking anything, I wasn’t searching for anything more than just to be with God, to be near to him, and to feel his presence. I even at more than a few points along the way (probably inspired by my paper on Isaiah 6) prayed for a vision from God. Why not? It worked for the prophet!

My point is this. In a lot of the Christian circles I run in, this type of stuff gets labeled as nuts or weird or whatever. I don’t think it is at all. In fact, I think it’s weird to have a prayer life that doesn’t focus on the presence of God. I think it’s weird to have a prayer life where you don’t expect to hear a word from God, or maybe even see a vision or something. Otherwise your prayer life is essentially just taking another crank on the slot machine, hoping that he’ll give you the desires of your heart at the moment. And no one pointed at me and laughed. No one was watching me through this experience. No one thought I was weird (of course you might, but I’ll never know so whatever!) It was just me, and God, and presence. 

What does your prayer life look like? Do you have these mystical elements to your walk with God? Have you ever used a labyrinth? 

More to come!

In Spiritual Development
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The writing process…

May 22, 2013 — Leave a comment

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Greetings friends!

So this is it! No more classes left in the 2012-2013 Seminary season. Nothing left between me and a summer of youth ministry as it was meant to be but a 15 page (well, we’ll get to that in a second) behemoth of a exegesis paper. Should be tons of fun!

I knew a while ago that I was in a bit of trouble with this paper. Not the usual kind of trouble either. The sneak up behind you with chloroform kind of trouble that no one ever sees coming. The paper is due on Tuesday, but by about two weeks ago I was around halfway done. It was an impressive show of productivity, the likes of which I haven’t seen in ages. But what it did, what being ahead in work almost always does, is lead me to a place where I stop working, because I figure I’ve got tons of time to get this thing done. Now I no longer have tons of time to get things done, and my paper is in almost the exact same place it was a few weeks ago. Lame. 

So the plan was to come home from work yesterday and just crank through the paper and finish it, in a college-esque all nighter with coffee and red bull and chips and typing. What actually transpired was me falling asleep about two seconds into a rerun of the Daily Show and waking up this morning with no accomplishment to my name. Another success!

But the part that I’m most enjoying about this paper is the mathematics behind it. To get a C in this class, which I had in every Hebrew class up until this point, I need only get a 43% on the paper. Now, to some this sounds like I’m saying I could completely mail in my effort here, to write 43% of a paper and call it good enough. And that’s a little tempting, sure. But what’s more tempting, and more intriguing, is the freedom I have for this paper now. I can try some creative things, I can let my writing process take over, rather than just rehashing someone else’s research and adding my own commentary around it, I have the freedom to throw out some new ideas, to play with some new themes, to try some creative writing. If it costs me a few points here and there, that’s ok, because I have the room to wiggle with it. I might even put a few jokes in the paper, if only to see if throughout the summer I can hear his laugh all the way from here in the South Hills. (Spoiler alert: I bet I can) I’m also gearing up to go over my 15 page suggestion, because I have some stuff to say. 

So for the rest of this week, I have this paper on my mind. But when we’re done here, we’re going to turn our attention to youth ministry in a big way. Stay tuned J-Bloggers, stuffs about to get real. 

In Seminary
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