I'm a Folkie?

You are a Folkie. Good for you.

More lazy blogging. I have excuses. Really.

For starters, since January 8th I've been working as the Youth Missioner at The Church of the Epiphany in Clarks Summit, PA. This is a half-time position for now, and my main focus is working with the high school youth of the parish. We're hoping to build this program into a full-time position not too far down the line, with some possible help coming from sharing ministries with another church in the area. I've had a great time getting to know the church, the parents, and above all, the kids. They're amazingly talented and eager to get into the pattern of having a regularly meeting high school community within their church. The parents have done a great job in keeping something going for them since my friend Demery, their previous Youth Missioner, moved on to a job for the Diocese. Slowly but surely I'm getting my feet under me, and I can't wait to see how this develops. This Sunday we're going to do a bit of an alt.worship style pre-Lent service using a video clip based on some Si Smith illustrations, perhaps some Death Cab for Cutie, and maybe even some Taize music thrown into the mix. Prayer stations, candles, you get the drift.

I may be turning the focus of this blog towards chronicling my life as a Youth Missioner; it may get heavy on the summarizing what we do and posting resources end of things, but I know there are readers who will appreciate that.

Other excuses include finishing up my last semester at Marywood and being highly involved with an emerging church community in the area. We recently named ourselves Peacemeal (please go visit our brand new blog!), for it's connections to the Eucharist and symbolism of a table gathering as well as the play on the word piecemeal, which indicates slowly drawing together, building bit by bit, using fragments and random things, etc. An awesome aspect of this is that it's being hosted by our friends Demery, who is an Episcopal priest, and her husband Scott, who teaches at the University of Scranton. It's sprung out of conversations in their diocese about evangelism and fresh expressions of church. So we're kind of doing a new thing, but wrapping ourselves in the deep traditions of the church at large. Cool, eh? If that kind of thing intrigues you, let me know. If you're in the area we'd love to have a conversation and invite you to join us on a Friday night.