Reboot

I hope that all of you had a great Christmas and a wonderful celebration of the birth of our Savior.  The Jones family certainly did, and I am glad to report that Marilyn and Will returned safely from NC and a visit with all of her family and 2011 is off to a good start.  It seems like that the holiday season always throws our routines and day-to-day operations out of wack, and that has certainly been true here on the blog.  The good news is I have picked up many new readers in the past month.  The bad news is they may have no idea who I am (that picture may say more than 10,000 words...).  So today I want to take a minute and REBOOT so we can all get back on track! I even have a new design- how do you like it?

I began this blog on August 26, 2009, with the intention of blogging every day for 1 year (to learn more check out my first post by clicking here).  The focus of the writing would be to tell the story (and the stories) of my 28 years as a youth pastor in a variety of churches.  I have been doing that for well over a year now, and we have still only reached 2001 and my short stint at the Union Church of Hinsdale in Illinois.  Along the way I have covered a lot of years and a lot of relationships.  It's been a remarkable journey.  The focus of the posts have changed some in the last few months, as I find myself writing more about faith and grace and less about myself.  I will continue to combine the two as well as a variety of other topics.

For the first year of this blog almost all of my readers were former youth, and the posts focused on them.  They knew me.  They knew my heart.  They knew the passion for youth ministry that drove my life for so many years.  And many of them knew that I had thrown it all away through my own sinful actions.  Fortunately, the grace of God as found in Jesus Christ is what defines my life today, not my past actions.  The list of "who's who" of biblical heroes includes a lot of screw ups, so I am in good company.  The writing I do here I do to express my love for Christ.  It has been such an act of redemption.

So as we REBOOT in 2011, I am going to change my writing schedule around a bit.  Mondays and Wednesdays I will write about my past experiences and ministries.  Tuesdays I will update you all on how things are going with my own Jesus Revolution.  Thursdays will continue to focus on music, as they have since the end of 2009. Fridays will be a wild-card day.  Saturdays will focus on Shout Outs and Random Ramblings.  And Sunday I will continue delivering my own "mini-sermons."  I suppose I am trying to mirror Paul and be "all things to all people." 

I look forward to spending this year as part of your lives.  Please feel free to leave comments, send me tweets or e-mail me at Youthguy07@aol.com May the grace of God and peace of Christ accompany you each and every day.

Because of Jesus,