Wednesday Nights

Tonight we are going to be finishing up our series "God's Gladiators" on prayer. I am going to be giving the teens some quiet time before we get into small groups to pray by themselves. Feel free during this time if you hear or see a teen talking to someone else to ask them to go in the hallway to finish their prayer time! We have done this before and it works pretty good to get the teens to pray or at least have some quiet time in their lives. Your questions tonight will have to do with this time and you may as well enjoy this time of quiet and peace from our normal sensory overload! You all have been doing an awesome job and I have been encouraged by your hard work. I've seen some of you at teens' sporting events and that is awesome. Keep up the good work. We only have two series left before we start Summer Wednesdays and each series is only two weeks. Then on May 28th we are having Senior Night. I've heard from some of you about your intentions for the summer and would like to hear from those that haven't let me know yet. Remember our celebration "End of the Year" party is at our house on June 19th at 6 PM a Thursday night. I look forward to seeing you all tonight.

-Joel

Wednesday Nights & Year Finishing

I thought last Wednesday Night went OK, and I did get a lot of the commitment cards back, so that was encouraging to see where the teens think they are at. Of course, the number one answer by far on the commitment cards was "I have a realtioship with Jesus Christ, but I want to grow closer." So, I sent out an email to everyone and said, "I am your youth pastor and want to know what I can personally do or what FOCUS Factor Ministries can do to help you grow closer." I haven't gotten back a single email, which is probalby normal because of where they are at in their maturity. I did have one person come up to me and say that he prayed the prayer of acceptance, so that is awesome (PRAISE THE LORD)! I suppose we just keep preachin' the Word and leave the rest up to God. If any of you have ideas or suggestions about how we can help them grow closer to the LORD just let me know. You all have been doing a great job and we will get into small groups tonight for at least 15 minutes, since I know it has been a while for that. I think we will be missing a lot of people tonight because of some school activities that are going on so your small groups may be even smaller. You all are the backbone of the ministry and I appreciate everything you do. Have a good day and we'll see you tonight.

-Joel

An Encourging Meeting

I was very encouraged by last night's meeting! I always leave those meetings encouraged and uplifted after getting together will all of you and talking ministry and hanging out. I love that we all stayed after for a little bit and just chatted and talked because it was fun and it is nice to see. I hope that you all enjoy the meetings as much as I do, and if you don't just don't tell me :)!! I am going to pursue getting a laptop. I am not sure how long this will take, since my wife knows that I usually research technology too much before a purchase, but I look to get one in the next couple of weeks. I am going to try and do a better job of letting you all know how many sponsors I need for a certain event, WAY AHEAD OF TIME, so that you and I can both plan better. I will get together the "First Impressions" team for a meeting hopefully in the next month and give them better details as to what they are to do and for me to step aside a little bit. Also, tonight I will give them clipboards with the blue cards on them and also some other things to hand out to everyone that comes upstairs. I think we covered a lot of good things and these are some great things for us to work on. Please remember that if you ever want to get together with your small group you can be reimbursed for your expenses whatever they may be. I know we are winding down the school year, but I would love to see you all doing things with your small groups outside of Wednesday Night. You are all doing and AWESOME job and I love working with you. Have a great day and we'll see you tonight. Please continue to pray for God to do His work tonight!

-Joel