The Post - Parents Night Leadership Meeting. So, I made a mistake at Parents Night 2011. I made a pretty huge cultural change without consulting my leadership team. I changed the time for Converge @ Night from 6-8pm to 6-7:30pm. I didn't think it was a big deal at the time, but I was later reminded that they had been going to youth group from 6-8pm since it started - way longer that I had been there. So, I brought my leadership team together to set things straight. We met and I apologized, telling them that I had really not thought about it. We then further discussed the issue and other things that needed to be changed. To end the night, I used my $25 plus $5 from each of them plus some of my own money to buy us all sushi to celebrate a great start to the new year. The best part was that we hung out from about 3:30pm until about 8pm - tons of time to just invest in each other. And tons of time to further our already exploding relationship. I couldn't ask for a better leadership team.

Week three was yet again an interesting week as my scheduling came down to the last few days before Parents Night 2011. I met with my newly elected leadership team, now called Legacy, and discussed dates and times of trips, cost implications, and AWAKEN event expectations. An AWAKEN event for us is one where we expect to bring a friend. In fact, if we do not bring a friend, the event will not happen. The best part about those expectations was that my entire leadership team was stoked! We also made some necessary changes and updated the calendar. Part of my $25 was invested on coffee and a few breakfast items for them while the remainder was invested in supplies for Parents Night 2011. We had pizza, soda, snacks, and had tons of fun playing competitive games. The best part of the night was that I really had an opportunity to cast vision to the parents. Vision about connecting with their students. Vision about our direction for this year. Vision about outreach. And overall vision about Converge @ Night. The night was a major success and I really owe it to my leadership team and their commitment to making Converge an awesome environment.

Still catching up... This week I had been thinking about what to talk about with my students this year. I want to be relevant above all else. I really want to connect with them. One of the biggest issues with connecting (as my boss and I discovered) is that when we were in youth group the culture was to go on Sunday mornings, Sunday nights & Wednesday nights. I occasionally hung out on Fridays with my youth group as well. Out here in Ashburn, VA I get one night a week with my students and it just isn't enough. So,

Back-tracking a little bit here... I had to pause on the blogging to finish scheduling for the 2011 year and to clean up a few items to prepare for this year's Converge @ Night. So, week one was an interesting week as most of it I was in Kansas with the family. However, I did come back at the end of the week and was able to hang out with one of my students. We went to the big bad McD's and had some fries and McDoubles (not to be confused with Double Cheeseburgers). Even though the conversation never really went deep, it was a great opportunity to get back in the swing of Youth Ministry...

I have attempted to make it a priority to always blog about my $25, but as you can obviously tell, I have been sporadic about my posting. Not that I don't want to blog, because I love seeing my thoughts on paper, but it seems I get distracted by other things in my life - work, my wife, my Xbox, etc. So, now that I have had a short break and started the new year fresh and ready for Converge '11, I decided that maybe I should make a few New Year's Resolutions. I, in fact have never, EVER made a New Year's Resolution; probably for fear of both not living up to my resolution and feeling the pressure to do it. You set yourself up for failure a lot when you set resolutions. Anyways one of my resolutions is to blog every week. I want to make sure that both my $25 sponsor and anyone reading gets the opportunity to hear what I spent the $25 on. So, we'll see how it goes!

A few other resolutions (not all):

Learn Piano
Learn Italian by My Birthday
Show My Wife I Love Her Betterp

- That Guy