A good reminder...

Things have been crazy lately. It's been a busy couple months planning for, publicizing, and putting things into place for the new teen ministry year. A lot of time has been spent in front of this crazy mac computer making brochures, sending e-mails, and staring at a calendar to figure out what we are going to teach these teenagers and when we are going to it teach them. In addition to all this craziness, I've was able to preach twice during the month of September. It was a ton of fun to do, but added quite a bit of stress.

This stressful and busy time happens every year, and every year I make a commitment to start planning earlier, but it never happens. Oh well.

Well, during this time, one of the things that suffers is relationships with teens, unfortunately. But I figure this planning time is necessary because... if parents don't know what is happening, and if I don't communicate with leaders, people won't know what is going on and they won't feel prepared, which might mean I won't have the opportunity to hang with teens, because I will be putting out fires, which could have been taken care of earlier. (Alright, enough rambling, I must get on to the main point.)

So, with the months of August and September behind me, and all the planning and kick-off events taken care of, I have made a commitment to ramp up the relationship side of the teen ministry. And to help remind me to do this, I'm wearing the bracelet in the picture above. No, I'm not trying to make a fashion statement. This bracelet was given to me by a teenager as a way to say thank-you for the time I spent with him. He gave it to me so that I would remember him and all the great time we had together. He encouraged me to wear it and challenged me to always have an impact in the lives of teenagers.

So that's what I'm going to do. When you see me around town wearing this bracelet, know that it's a reminder for me and maybe for you to "be there" for teenagers and not to stress out so much about all the details of the youth ministry.