What type of Minister are you?

Growing up I loved playing with Legos.  Every time our parents got us new sets, my twin brother and I would eagerly put them together as quick as possible.  Even though the sets were great to play with, after a while, we would destroy the set and use the Lego pieces to build something completely new or different.  For instance, I remember one Christmas we got this great Fire Station set.  It was very cool as it had 2 levels and 2 different bays for fire engines.  However, after a short period of time, we got bored with it and felt that we could put those pieces (along with some other pieces from other sets) to better use to build a bigger and better set from scratch.  After it was done, being completely biased, I think we did build something truly spectacular.  That was a regular occurrence for my brother and I.  We loved to create and design new buildings from scratch.

That desire to create and build stayed with me all throughout my childhood and into my professional life.  In fact, I can remember the excitement I felt the day I started my first ministry job at Truro Church in September of 1997.  It was a warm, humid day, and my stomach was full of butterflies because I had a ton of excitement about what lay ahead.  Even though I was only a Junior High Intern, my boss had given me complete control of what would happen in the junior high ministry.  See, at the time I was hired, the junior high ministry at Truro was run completely by volunteers.  Although it was run very well, the volunteers did not have a lot of time to put forward a really good program.  They maintained it well, but they could not take the program to another level where the youth were really engaged in what was happening.  Therefore, I was hired to bring some focus and energy into the program.  As I was getting ready to start that first day brought me back to my days of Lego building where I could create something from scratch.

Young Life provided another great challenge for me to undertake after I finished up with Truro.  In fact, it was probably my biggest challenge.  When I started working with Young Life, they had just launched their new initative – WyldLife, their ministry to middle school students.

What I loved about being involved with WyldLife was the ability to start something completely new.  With WyldLife being new, fresh ideas were expected.  The national leadership at Young Life didn’t want WyldLife to look anything like Young Life.  So that caused me and all the other pioneers of WyldLife to think outside the box and try a lot of new things.  Not everything worked, but I can tell you that we did hit some pretty big home runs.  For example, we took two regular events, a Super Bowl party and a Lock-in and made them very unique and outreach focused.  We didn’t want to just watch the Super Bowl or just hang out in a Church for an overnight.  We added spice to them that made them more than just an event.  It was a very exciting time for me as when we started WyldLife as it looked and felt completely different from Young Life.  It was fun to dream and try new ideas.