Evaluation part 2

So after Haiti I travelled south to spend time with the OP12 wake team. I needed to make sure that we were all on the same page and God had obviously taken me much deeper than previously. We met weekly for a team bible study and discipleship time. So for a month I was down in Florida training for the wakeboard side of things and mentoring the guys to be ready for the spiritual side of things. God was continuing to work on my heart and I was excited to have an avenue to share.

The summer was a whirlwind. I won't tell you all of the ins and outs of our ministry but we had camps and demos in Florida, Missouri, Illinois, North Carolina, Minnesota, Washington, Virginia, and South Carolina... Many people were blessed by the ministry of Op12 that summer and it was so wild to think that only a few years before we were just a couple of bums feeling like God was calling us to pioneer a ministry and now we were a moderately well known sports ministry.

But, fall came. I hate fall. I don't hate the weather or the season but it always felt like hitting a wall because ministry would come to an abrupt end and the pace that I set earlier in the year was so fast and then nothing... It was always a time of deep depression and reevaluation. In 07 it was different. Not that it wasn't a depressing time but God was opening new doors. God had given me a passion for more than just sports ministry but for the Bride. A passion for the local church. After several weeks of being bored and miserable I started helping at the youth group of the church that I grew up attending... Central Christian Church. The nature of the group was pretty wild because they had a director but no teaching pastor so it was an easy fit for me to begin teaching and preaching for the youth group.... Long story short, I began to feel God calling me to put some roots down here. To settle in and get comfortable because God wanted to take what He had taught me and impart it to these students. My prayers began to get very specific and God started to open doors for me to come on staff at Central.

The decision was made by the end of 07 that starting in February of 2008 I would come on staff as Central's new youth pastor.