Realife Youth Leader's Conference

Janna and I will be attending the Realife Youth Worker's Conference at James River Assembly in Springfield, Missouri this week. I was able to attend in the inaugural year of 2007 and enjoyed it. The conference delivered practical information that I have been able to use in my youth ministry over the past couple of years. Scotty Gibbons is the youth pastor at Realife and has been for 15 years. I was encouraged by his longevity at the same church and by his testimony. When he first started at James River, there was barely enough kids to fill a church van and now their youth group has grown to over a thousand students. I'm also a part of the Realife Network, which is a youth pastor's mentoring group. The Realife Network was started a couple years ago by Scotty and the staff at Realife. It's a small community of 20 youth pastors from all over the nation. We have monthly conference calls where we discuss various topics from disciplining students to outreach ideas. We are also able to communicate through group forums, discussions and blogs. The network allows us to download some resources from Realife and we get a great discount at the Youth Worker's Conference, which is cool. I'm heading to Realife a day early so that I can check out their youth service and how they minister to students. I pray that God continues to mold me to be a better Christ follower, husband, father, friend, minister, and youth pastor. God has blessed me with great students at Lakeside. My goal in youth ministry is to do my best at assisting parents in developing the spiritual of lives of their students and mentoring their students. I have a great responsibility and I want to make the most of it!