Coming Alive

I have asked many others and now I will ask you...What makes you come alive? I believe it is one of the most important questions in life. It is deeply rooted in the soil of who God made us; it is an imprint that we can choose to trace the lines of or simply ignore them- but it is still there even when it is ignored. It's the thing that makes you pop out of bed in the morning before sunrise, the thing that keeps your heart pumping deep into the night when everyone else is in bed, and the thing that you wish you could get paid to do it but you'd do it for free. I love the outdoors. I love climbing rocks, hard routes up rocks. I love falling asleep looking at the stars. I love the idea of unmapped terrain, unclimbed mountains, and fish that have never seen an artificial fly. The wilderness seems like a kind of home for me and getting there is a passion of mine, but I don't know where it came from. Growing up as a young chap next to the Shenandoah mountains in Virginia I used to look up at them every day and long to explore them. Rarely did my family go for an outing in the mountains. The creek in the ditch behind our house became my terrain to explore. I remember one of my favorite birthdays near the Smoky Mountains. We were on vacation and my parents said I could choose what I wanted to do that day. Pull my net out and catch fish and crawdads...of course. So all day I waded in the stream as my parents and brother were bored out of their minds. It was my favorite birthday party. This weekend a friend and I had the chance to go camping with some friends and take people rock climbing that had never had the chance. It makes me tick, helping them overcome their fear and experience victory, watching them look up a hundred feet one minute and look down a hundred feet just ten minutes later. There are few things I love more and few things that bring me more joy than watching their faces at the top and hearing their hollars. What makes you tick? Go do it...

The Next Season

Hey guys, I know it's been a while since I've blogged, and I really have no excuse. If you didn't hear, I got the job! I'm now a youth pastor at Vanguard Church in Colorado Springs. Their mission is to "love people into a REAL relationship with God." The people here are real, transparent, excited about what God is up to, and ready to stomp out traditional Christian views that life is perfect once you are in Christ. I line up SO well with this church's model and am amazed that God has drawn me here. The whole story of how I ended up here is pretty incredible. It started in a coffee shop, it continued in Antarctica, and it finished in an office sharing vision with the elders of this church. I am truly amazed at how this has been all about God and not about me. The job found me- I didn't find it. So, the next season of life will be spent in Colorado hanging out with high school kids, doing stupid stuff, asking them hard questions, sifting through film clips that convey truth, pouring over scripture before teaching, and certainly the unknown. The adventure continues, but the season has changed. Most often God gives us what we need, not just what we want....but a very few times those two converge. That is the case for me right now.