10 Foot Truck

This is kind of fun... in a few hours, I'll be driving a 10-foot cargo truck up to Alton Bay, NH. The worship team for our winter youth retreat is apparently big enough to require a tour truck to transport all the gear. I'll be leading nine juniors and seniors as they lead 150 fellow teenagers in singing worship. There's lots of talent, which makes this a particularly fun job.

This will be my seventh Winter Teen Conference as a counselor; it will be my 14th youth retreat with BCEC youths. That means I've been to 22 total Teen Conferences if you include my time as a youth. I'm not sure when this happened, but I guess that makes me a veteran.

Anyhow, please pray for us this weekend as we hope students will come away with a greater sense of the grace of Jesus and his call on their lives.

Wedding planning is coming along... need to get invitations printed this week to stay on schedule.

Snow Days and Movement of the Heart

Took PDAS Ice Skating over Christmas

We made a practice of canceling PDAS every time Boston Public Schools flinches. It makes sense, since families can avoid the guesswork of trying to figure out when we open or close due to snow. But in the past two weeks, we've been closed for 4 days! That's a lot of days lost when you consider that a month only has about 20 days of service.

What do I do on those days off? I still put in "office time." I'm working on federal funding for our after-school snacks and coming up with a tutoring model to use in training counselors. I don't personally track attendance anymore since Kirk has taken over those responsibilities (hurrah for sharing administrative work!); but there are still plenty of loose ends to slowly tighten. Aside from administrative work, I try to use some of that time to study. Systematic Theology II is my online class and I'm trying to move forward in it so that I can keep up my status as a full time student. There's also wedding planning, which is starting to feel very imminent. I can't wait; and I'm so glad we're not doing that alone (thanks wedding planning team)!

Tonight, with the snow on the way, I spent some more time driving and chatting with K., a PDAS student. Good conversations about whether marriage is worth it and what the point of PDAS is. Sometimes I forget I'm chatting with a 6th grader who avoids homework.

There are so many little surprising things that have happened this year. Doing PDAS sometimes feels like my raw wide-eyed experience of serving in the Dorchester youth group several years ago. I don't really know how to explain the emotion except that a lot of tenderness of heart that has been absent for a few years in my ministry work is back again-- just when I thought those feelings were symptoms of youth and inexperience which I would never have again. I know better than to base my confidence in feelings; nor can I explain why sometimes they are strong while at other times they're not; but it's nice to have them.

PDAS: two months

I had a phone call with Em recently about what we each did in PDAS, our church's after-school ministry during the day. In the midst of it, I thought, wow, we're getting to do all the things we hoped we'd get to do when we started this new model! It's hard to share this stuff on a blog since so much of what happens is about people who deserve to have their privacy preserved, but we've been hanging out with Boston teenagers, most of whom are not connected to any of the regular youth groups. Sure, we're making youngsters do homework and in a way you might say it's glorified babysitting. But we're also getting a lot of awesome opportunities. We're having one-on-one huddles about life with kids who probably would have never thought of attending church. We're meeting with parents about their hopes and worries. We're seeing a handful of kids experiment with attending regular youth group. I'm driving kids home and having conversations about God almost every night this week. We're filling up two-three rooms at church every day with kids who otherwise might not have a connection to our church. We're seeing young servant leaders develop in their capacity to care for kids and take advantage of opportunities to share the gospel. We're offering free enrichment opportunities that other programs might have to charge a lot for. And it's just the beginning of what we hope God will do through PDAS.

I'm thankful and really glad to have a chance to be a part of all this. If anybody ever gets really helped through PDAS, I hope they'll actually think this: "Wow, if there's a God, he must really love me if his church went through all this trouble to do stuff for me." And they'd be starting to understand the gospel a little better.

End of Week 1

This has been a really neat, but busy week. We kicked off PDAS, with an average of 25 kids each day stopping in for most of each afternoon. It looks like the kids are having fun and getting homework done, but it's clear that we will need more qualified staff. On a typical day, a small handful of kids arrive at 3:00 and play video games. Then, the Quincy Upper School contingent arrives at 3:35. Not long after, bigger waves of kids arrive; but by that time, I'm out of the Family Room and in the Studio doing some tutoring or homework supervising. By 4:30, when we have our Meeting TIme, we're usually up to near-capacity, which is great because they'll get to be there for announcements and the devotions. After Meeting time and snack, the rest of the afternoon is taken up by more homework, card games, and maybe basketball if the parking lot is free.

I'm getting to know some of the newer kids, particularly 6th graders who are full of energy-- in the best and worst ways. It's hard for me to remember when I was that age, and it's sometimes hard to keep up with their hyperactive pace and attention span, but I hope we get to keep them and watch them grow for a few years. Lord willing, we'll still have a program when they are high-schoolers. On Sunday, I'll be taking a group to the New England Aquarium-- if anybody shows up with a permission slip. You just don't know; and that's one of the realities of a "drop-in/ stop-in" model.

Other than ministry, classes have started. It's tough to find time to do homework with all the administrative work related to running these programs. Still, I'm glad to be back in Boston again for the whole year and hopefully I'll get better at managing this schedule.

Day 1

Today was the first day of a totally new routine! After spending some time listening to Andy Stanley's podcast, I spent the morning in Gordon Conwell's Roxbury office, trying to fix an administrative issue so that I could register for the class I'd take later that night. Then I went to church for the final prep and setup before PDAS's start.

At around 3PM, the doorbells started ringing. Kids arrived 2-3 at a time at a steady rate until both the family room and studio were packed! We had more than 30 teenagers and middle-schoolers staying most of the afternoon. Most kids started with their homework without anybody to prompt them. Some of them joined video games or card games. It was awesome-- at least 1/3 of the kids were not from our regular church ministries and most of them looked like they were getting comfortable after a little while.

In some ways, the afternoon was a blur. So much happening, so little time to sit! A few highlights:

•  One boy asked, "if we're not paying for this, is this school broke?" I answered by citing support from the church family. "If you run into an older person if you come to our church on a Sunday, say to them, 'hello, great benefactor.'"
• I played a pickup game with 3 of the "older" kids at the end of the day.
• 3 counselors and 1 guest counselor came today and made things fun and smooth.
• When I went upstairs to the Studio, it was filled and quiet!

After the program closed at 6PM, we had a quick debrief session and then Emily drove me to my class, which met from 6:45 to 9:30PM. My night was just beginning as my Inner City Ministry class met for the first night. It looks like it will be a lot of work, but I'm excited. 

Tomorrow, we'll repeat the routine, only the class will be Exegesis of Judges at Park St. Church. Praise God for a great first day!

Planning for PDAS

PDAS-- Project Destiny After School.

We've had an after-school program at our church for a few years now. The idea was that we could provide a few resources, program a few activities, and share the gospel with the kids who came. Over the past few months, while directing Project Destiny Summer Camp, I've been thinking a lot about the year-round After-School component. There's no official title yet, especially since the former paid-staff position was eliminated from the church budget this year, but I'm planning on coordinating and directing PDAS this school year on a part-time basis while attending seminary part-time.

There are several changes I'm excited about implementing:
1. We've reduced the cost by 100%. This seems more radical than it should-- churches have giving free services to their neighbors for millennia; but economic times are tough. I'm excited for a chance for our church to be generous with its time and finances.

2. We've moved to a drop-in model. There are a lot of negative associations with the term "drop-in" in after-school care; but drop-in is a great way to meet the individual needs of families and students. They can come when they have nothing else to do or when they need help with a particular assignment. This just means we're going to have to really amp up quality of care to keep kids coming.

3. We're open to high-schoolers. We used to only take middle-school to correspond to our summer camp, but older teenagers are more likely to come to a drop-in program and invite their friends to come hang out. More than that, being open to high-schoolers means having a chance for our church to build a longer-term relationship with teenagers.

We're starting next Monday. There are about 30 students registered. It's all so new and I'm not sure what to expect. I'm sure there will be challenges and mistakes along the way. We'll have less control and so many more variables to anticipate. Please join me in praying for God to provide the right staff and wisdom for the planning team. Pray also for me as I take on this new ministry role in Chinatown while continuing my studies.

Summer Teen Conference

In a few hours, I'll be driving up to Alfred, ME with a car full of music equipment and a worship team. Our church's annual Summer Teen Conference is this weekend. We'll be taking a total of 130 kids for 4 days and 3 nights to hear God's word and play in the clean air of Maine. I'm excited particularly for the 43 Project Destiny campers who will be joining us and the many students who wrote down that they are not Christians. My prayer for them is that they'd get to know our church family better and know the love of Christ. Again, I'll be leading the worship team. It's such a privilege to play and worship with these guys. Please pray that the word of God would penetrate hearts and change lives.