Meeting An Answer to Prayer

Yesterday was a good day but my morning was AMAZING because of two simple meetings and one was with a person I had no interaction with until the day of our lunch.

While in Dallas, on the first leg of my Texas Triangle Road Trip, Doug Clark, Mark Whitaker and I met with network coordinators from the Dallas metro area and a few from other areas of Texas. All of those interactions are worthy of 3-8 blog entries but for now, I’ll remain focused. During our time together, we began praying for God to raise up other metro network coordinators so Mark would be able to help Austin, Houston and San Antonio use the applicable the principles he has learned in his 20 plus years of running Youth Outreach Network.

Yesterday morning I became facebook friends with Scott Austin from San Antonio. The night before I was cruising through Community Bible Church’s staff page, ?hoping to connect with their youth pastor. ?If you clicked the link you can see it’s easy to get lost there and my ADD brain saw his pic and “Pastor: Next Gen Ministries” ?title so I thought, that must be him with the cool cutting edge/hip title. (Which it really is, by the way.) ?So I found him on facebook, sent him a message introducing myself basically saying I was in town and if he had time it’d be fun (otter) to get together and meet.

He responded that morning and was able to meet for lunch so we did. ?As we began sharing our stories and I heard him explain what he did I thought, “This will still be fun but I’m an idiot, I contacted the wrong guy”. ?See. . . Scott has been a youth pastor, loves youth ministry and the NNYM but his role at CBC is really overseeing 3,000 children/students from cradle to college. ?In my mind I had the wrong guy but within God’s?sovereignty I had met the right guy.

After we talked about a lot of things Scott had shared his experience with the Orange Conference, Reggie Joiner and his passion to train leaders and his heart for youth pastors. ?We talked a little more and before we left I said something along the lines of, “Scott, I’m a good DTS guy and I normally don’t say stuff like this but you’re an answer to prayer. A group of us prayed a few days ago that God would raise up people to lead the youth pastor networks in Austin, Houston and San Antonio and here we are today.”

We met and now we have to work out details and confirm what we believe is God’s will but what an exciting thing to be a part of! I’m looking forward to getting to to know Scott and working together because we are united on a lot of things but I realize it only happened because God used my thorn in the flesh (ADD and all the adventures that comes with it) to introduce me to the person he’s been preparing for a long time. By the way, my first meeting of the day was JUST as exciting but that’s a story for another day.

It’s an incredible experience being somewhere that is a natural fit on almost every level. Thanks for being willing to support this ministry (through encouragement, prayer, financially, remember $10 = 25%) which allows me to play hide and seek with Jesus as I look for what he’s up to next.