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It’s been 3 years since I last attended the NYWC put on by Youth Specialties. It was a neat time that brought our youth team together as our youth ministry was taking on a multi-site look. I can point to that trip as a passing of the torch to middle school pastor Josh Turner and myself, as it was the biggest youth thing we’d ever been to.

This Friday, we take that trip again. This time, with our current youth staff… John Wyatt, Sean Kelly, Josh T., and myself. We’re at a unique point in our youth ministry history. Last time we went, we had 2 youth groups that totaled around 200 people. Now, we have 7 distinct youth ministries, with separate middle and high school groups at 3 separate campuses, and a thriving college group of 150+ at our Midtown Campus. I’d dare say there are 700 active students amongst those 7 groups. We currently have 3 more Florida campuses who will very likely launch youth ministries in the next 12 months. God is clearly entrusting a lot within us 4 leaders during this time.

Here’s what I’m looking forward to at NYWC, my first conference since Fermi Project’s Q Conference last April.

1) Vision for releasing more youth workers from our fold. We could very easily launch 3-6 more youth groups in the next 12 months in our new and existing campuses.

2) Networking and building relationship with churches and youth workers who’ve been where we are right now….if there are any. Multi Site youth ministry is the next frontier, and few are venturing into it full fledged.

3) Spending time growing with John Wyatt, Josh Turner, and Sean Kelly. In ‘05 when we went to this conference, Josh was a rookie. Now he sits on youth ministry roundtables with Doug Fields and has a seriously kicking crazy vision for east coast middle school ministry. In 05 when we went, Sean was a first year intern in our church’s fledgling leadership college. In the 16 months since he graduated, God used him to grow one of our campus youth ministries from 30-130. John W is overseeing an explosion of college ministry within our church and has a unique opportunity along with us to launch new youth ministry teams to our new campuses both home and abroad. It’s an exciting time.

So Nashville, here we come.