gearing up for summer ...

I am looking more and more forward to being back at camp this summer. I think that my position may actually be my dream job. I love encouraging people in ministry, and I love that that itself is ministry. I also understand the theory right now a lot better than I practice it, so that's also a benefit of being able to encourage young people in ministry.

I just really hope that everything I see as the potential benefit of having someone in my position this summer actually comes to fruition. That was an awkward sentence, but basically, I hope that this staff USES me! I just think back to my days on staff and how amazing it would have been to have had a non-partisan person there to talk to and who was there just to take care of us. Troy does an amazing job at that already, but there's still the fact that he is the boss. That just takes away some of a staff member's ability to be completely candid. 

So, if you happen to be on staff this summer and have found my blog, USE me!! Please?

If you care anything about youth ministry, and find anything about literature intriguing in the slightest, I have to recommend Sarah Arthur's The God-Hungry Imagination. She looks at the essential connections among God, story, and youth ministry. It's something that has been so fragmented inside of me, and she brings them all together so beautifully. I feel like my personal theology of youth ministry is being more and more defined with every page. Very few of the ideas shock me. I find myself going, "Yes!" pretty often. It just seems to be the kind of thing that has already shaped much of my ministry, but now I have very specific details and illustrations of what it really is and why it works. Not to mention it brings together my two educational endeavors. 

The best part is, I actually am reading it for class! I get to write a paper on it. And that paper should help me further define my theology of youth ministry and my personal theology as a whole. Amazing. That's all for now. I'm sure there will be more to come.