Elevating Your Faith: What does the next level look like?

What does taking the next step in our faith look like? I was talking to one of my Student Pastor friends about this the other day and we came to these three conclusions:

Discipleship: Guiding the Spiritual Temperature of a Youth Group

Take a warm cup of water, add ice, and it becomes cold. The same is true for the opposite. Take a cup of ice, pour hot water in, and it melts. Each cup is determined by the two opposing temperatures that collide into one to give you the temperature of the glass of water. The temperature rises and falls with how we treat the contents of the glass.

5 Reasons Students Leave Their Faith

One of the most daunting tasks of a Student Pastor is to make sure their students continue their faith after high school. The stats are not hard to find, but I’m too lazy to look them up. But they’re there. And it’s staggering. Calling it an epidemic is not out of place. So the obvious question is why?

LuvBuf 2012

I’ve had 3 posts sitting in my iPad for 2.5 months. Here is one regarding Xalt’s Sumemr Mission trip to Buffalo, NY…

This year we took our students to Buffalo, NY for our summer mission trip. We partnered with The Wesleyan Church of Hamburg and took part in their west side service project lovebuffalo.

Psalm 66: David’s Worship

Psalm 66 is a powerful prayer written by David proclaiming the awesomeness of God and our responsibility, as His people, to praise Him! This whole passage is great, but recently verses 13-15 have been speaking to me:

Bad Pastor or Bad Leader?

At a Pastor’s Gathering last summer, keynote speaker Dr. Wayne Schmidt, Vice President at Wesley Seminary, said this:

              “There are no bad pastors, just bad leaders.”

After I raised my jaw from the floor, I started reflecting on my pastoral ministry. I realized there were aspects of my leadership that had to change. In order for Xalt to get where we needed to be, I needed to grow as a leader and a pastor.

New Worship Songs?

Why do we sing new songs? At Trinity, we are constantly learning new worship songs. As a worship band, its helps us work on our craft and keep up with the current worship environment and contemporary pulse. As a church, it breathes new life into our time of praise and helps us be mindful of the words we are singing.

FUEL12 Day 2 PM Recap

A-Town A-List, as mentioned earlier, was the houseband at FUEL12 and they did an incredible job entertaining the room full of student pastors and workers. They were witty, funny, fearless, and sounded incredible. They led us in a  couple games where they gave away some pretty sweet stuff. Three lucky student pastors received a $1200 grant for their youth group while two other lucky student pastors won free FOLLOW ’12 t-shirts for their entire group! Here is A-Town A-List’s official promo video:

FUEL12 Day 2 AM Recap

A-Town A-List was the FUEL12 houseband and they rocked the house. Dustin Ahkoui emceed the event with help from Stevsn Sheets. But more from them tomorrow. Our second day started with Kyle Idleman, our guest speaker. He took center stage and shared with us the purpose of his book, not a fan. not a fan examines Luke 9:23 word by word and looks at what it truly means to daily follow Christ.

FUEL12 Day 1 Recap

FUEL is a Youth Leaders convention held every 2 years for the Wesleyan Church. It is a time of refreshing, refocusing, networking for the student ministry pastors in the denomination. Friends are made and laughter is to be had. I look forward to it every time it comes around and this year was no exception.