"Stoked"

This past Wednesday we had our annual Re-Launch of The Gathering Youth Church after taking a few weeks off for July. Not only was the room jammed to capacity, but it is like a totally different ministry than last year. Several years back we gathered our core leadership team together because we realized that we were losing our juniors and seniors. We made it a point to focus on the freshman and sophomores over the next two years to see what would happen as far as our graduating classes go. We were amazed when last spring we graduated our largest senior class ever, more that four times larger than any previous year. With that however comes many challenges. Although we have several of those now college freshman hanging around in leadership roles, we also lost many who went off to college. Among them were our worship leader of 4 years, lead guitarist, drummer, keyboard player, and back-up vocalist, not to mention the student leaders we also had to let go of. I have to admit I was a little concerned about how things would go. With me back on the keyboard (which is never a good thing), and all underclassmen filling the other roles, I was "stoked" to see how well things went. The energy was at all time highs, worship simply rocked, and to top it all off it was our largest re-launch ever. We have more youth leaders, student leaders, and the largest kick-off ever. Were "stoked."