One of the biggest things in moving to a new church or town is to take care of the personal side of the transition. I knew that God had called us to come to Visalia because of that I knew that if I did not take care of the personal side of life with my Wife and Children we would not only be unhappy but the thing He had asked us to do for Him would never transpire. Here are some things that we did to transition and what we have done for the 12 months... 
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May 2nd 2012. One year ago I took over the role as Youth Pastor of Visalia First Assembly of God and what a year it has been. I have really enjoyed chronicling the ups and downs / ins and outs of our journey of starting over after 20 years of student ministry. I thought it would be cool to use this blog as a re-cap of all we have experienced the past year in ministry. Here are some of the high-lights. Ministry: From May 2nd 2011 to May 2nd 2012... 
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We are on a new journey here at THECROSS. About 6 weeks ago we launched our Young Adult Venue. The goal of Y/A is to be “an anchor for 20something already in the church and a doorway for those who are not”. Our mission is not to be a church within a church but to use this Y/A venue to get 20somthings to passionately love Jesus thru his local church (Visalia First Assembly of God). We have made this ministry a matter of prayer and planning... 
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It was a moment I will never forget. It was Sunday Night and earlier that day I had just returned from leading our Keep It Simple Conference in Dallas. Just the day before I was the special conference speaker that leaders came to listen to. Just the day before I was having interns from the host church asking me if they could get me something to drink. Just the day before I had leaders from all over the mid-west asking me questions about life and... 
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Questions. Questions are very powerful things. Everything that mankind has ever invented originated from a question. Cars, homes, microwaves, computers, iPods, iTunes, all came into existence because someone somewhere was not afraid to ask what if. One of my favorite things to do is dream. Every month I set aside some time to dream. In fact I carry a “Dream Notebook” with me wherever I go. This notebook is full of thoughts, ideas... 
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I have found thru the years that the small changes I make in ministry produce some of the biggest results. Here are some of the small changes we’ve made here in Visalia. Meeting Schedule. When we arrived the big youth service was on Sunday Night and the Small Group type service was on Wednesday Night. I felt that Sunday Night was not the right night to a big outreach type service for two reasons 1) Teenagers do their home-work on Sunday Nights... 
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In II Timothy 2:2 Paul writes … “These things you have heard from me Timothy, give thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” If I am going to serve my God the very best I can, it is very important that I know the role I play as a leader in HIS Kingdom. In this passage my Senior Pastor is “Paul”. I am “Timothy”. The team that I have and will assimilate are the “faithful men”. And... 
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We have so many amazing things going on here at THECROSS Youth and Young Adult Ministry. I am so excited about all that HE is doing thru our incredible team of leaders and students that I decided to take a few minutes to stop and share what we are working on and what we will be doing in the future. Youth Ministry We are having a blast working in the student ministry each week. Here are some things we are doing in April and May. Celebrate The Change: This... 
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Teenagers do not know the Bible. This is a very sad but a very true statement. Non-Christian and even many Christian teenagers have no clue what the Bible says, who is in the Bible, or what the Bible has to do with their life. I want to change that so we are doing a three week series titled STORIES. In this series we will take some classic “Sunday School” stories and bring them to life. We are going to talk about …. Daniel and... 
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PROJECT INTO THE FUTURE. What I mean by that is this. When you solve one problem, generally you will cause one or two other problems to arise. As you are solving the first problem, take the time to project into the future, seeing what other problems may occur from what you are getting ready to do. Once you spot those problems, be pro-active and solve them before they happen. One of the ways I projected into the futures was, when we were creating... 
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