Shall We Start?

Ok, I feel like it is time to give you a real post. To tell you the truth, I'm a little nervous doing this, I mean, does this mean there will be no more ChunkManYeah xanga? If that's what needs to happen, so be it! Will people read this? I hope so! So yeah, seriously, let me give you some of my thoughts and info and stuff about how life has been going lately.

To start off, I would just like give you some thoughts I have towards my role in small groups this year. Some of you might know that I was a Freshman guys leader last year and I loved it. I really enjoyed just investing in the live's of my small group students. I really connected well with a lot of guys and just spending time with them talking, praying, laughing. It was a really good year, but unfortunately, small group time just felt like a "mininum" or something. It's not that they were bad or anything. It just didn't feel like it went deeper. Sure there were some pretty awesome times of just diving in Spiritually, but for the most part it just didn't go anywhere that I was hoping for. It wasn't all my fault and it wasn't the student's fault. The group did however connect very well and it felt like a small group and it was. Maybe I just had high expectations. The group started out big and I was scared(not a big fan of talking in front of a big group. Sure there were just like 10 guys, but still, 10 freshman guys), but it soon averaged out to about 4 or 5 guys a night and I felt comfortable. I work really good with that amount and most of our good nights were with about 4 or 5 guys.
See, the number one thing that I enjoyed about small groups, were nights that I would take one or two of the guys out to T-Bell or Hacienda and just talk one-on-one. Those were some of the time I really enjoyed when I was in the youth group. Times when a small group leader would just take some time to invest in my life. Sometimes those times were just time of fun and joking around and sometime they were serious, maybe involving just confession or prayer. So when I started with small groups, I knew it was time for me to just do the same for the students, spending time with guys like Carter, Austin, or Bufkin. I can do that great, but just leading a group alone...maybe not so great.
So that gets me to this year. I don't like to think of it this way, but I stepped down from being a "Small Group Leader" to being a Small Group Leader Assistant, but not to be confused with Assistant to the Small Group leader(if any of you are fans of The Office) I had a talk with Derry Prenkert about it and just the role I can play. I thought it was awesome. A good thing for me to just get a chance to work with another leader and just invest in the student's lives in a different way and I would just feel more comfortable with a bigger group, knowing that its not just me, but me working along side of another leader. At first, when time came, I was a little unsure. I was getting a whole new group to work with and not quite ready to leave working with the group I had last year. I started praying about it and just thinking and even talking with Cindi Lantz and I can now say, that I'm ready and that I'm very excited. God is gonna is just do awesome things in these students' lives. He's gonna change lives and I can't wait to see it. I can't wait to just spend time taking these new students out to eat or out to play Kickball or something. I don't know why I didn't mention God before in the this post. I'm sorry! God Is awesome and He's gonna do great things with this youth group! Am I right? Small Groups 2006-2007, BRING IT!!! Craig, we are doing this...YEAH!!!

So yeah, thats it for my first post...well...I have some more thoughts about different stuff in my life, but that can wait for a new post. Can it? It's boring stuff, maybe. I hope not!

Can I get a Bye Bye? Like a Bye Bye Beautiful?