One Year!!!

Well friends, yesterday was my one year anniversary of living in Clarksdale and serving as full time Youth and Evangelism pastor of Oakhurst Baptist Church. I've always heard that each year you should set goals for yourself as a minster and follow up on those goals at the end of that year. Well its time for evaluation. Last June 1st, when I started, I really wanted to see a few things happen. First and foremost I wanted to build relationships with the students. I had been commuting for over a year and it was hard to really invest the way I wanted to from a distance. Looking back over the past year I feel that many relationships have flourished. This is no way means that I have fulfilled my task and its time to move on. Ministry is about people and I will always strive to continue building and bridging until the Lord takes me home. 

I also desired that God would grow our group qualitatively and I feel that he has. I've seen tremendous spiritual growth in many of the students and that is one of the greatest answers to prayers I've ever received. The Lord has saw fit to grow us quantitatively as well. Of course, some times are better than others, but as a whole God has grown our numbers by the truck loads. 

The Lord has blessed our year with so many great moments of ministry. We had a successful fifth quarter and an awesome Fall Retreat. RAKE has grown along with Youth Nights and we have our first self-organized (in-house) mission trip in a few weeks. Wow, God has been good! 

In the last year I've seen a church (Oakhurst) that never treats its staff any less than they did the first day we arrived. In the last year, I've had many visits from members bringing great food, gifts and blessings. Finally, God saw fit to bless my wife and I with a child in this last year.  If this next year is only half as good as the first, than I still have a lifetime of gratitude for all that I've experienced. So what are the goals for next year? Hopefully, we can do all that we've done and more. Thank you God and Oakhurst for making this year so great.