Live from Cleveland, it's NCCYM!

So here's the total so far:

15 pages of notes

7 Post-It notes

6 books purchased or received free (love that expo hall!)

Two free shirts

Two key notes

Two workshops

One water bottle filled with goodies

Considering we still have all day tomorrow and what I have no doubt will be an amazing Mass on Sunday, I am in that state of simultaneous awe, exhaustion, and invigoration that a good conference offers.

As Michael Norman said today, only other youth ministers can understand all that it is to be a youth minister.  The joys and triumphs, the disappointments and desolation, the exhaustion and the hyper-activity, the well honed skill of pulling wax up from carpet with an iron and a paper bag.  Youth ministry is a strange field.  A room full of 2,000+ youth ministers doing the Hokey Pokey just proves it.  

This is my third NCCYM.  Each time I come it reinvigorates me.  Workshops provide the down and dirty means to improve the ministry.  Whether it is on retreats or evangelization, communication or biblical literacy, I can walk away with pages of notes and a mind full of ideas.  The keynotes challenge me.  They throw the statistics and realities of American youth into our faces to remind us what we need to be doing.  They offer inspiration with success stories and peculiar humor.  The expo hall is full of shiny new books, CDs, DVDs, websites, religious orders offering ideas, resources, and support.  Of course many offer free things like pens and candy.  

For all the concrete and spiritual development that is offered and that I rake in as quickly as possible, what always gives me the greatest joy is the fellowship.  here are 2,000 people who don't ask, "So is this your real job?"  They don't look at you like you're insane because you take two dozen kids out of the country to serve the poor in a garbage dump for your summer vacation.  They know that the greatest praise that you can receive is that one particular look on a teen's face when they have the 'ah-ha' moment.  They get it and they get me.

I will head home on Sunday with a bag full of resources and a notebook full of notes and ideas.  I will have new phone numbers in my cell phone and new friends on Facebook.  I will have books to read and CDs to listen to.  I will go home with a reminder of church and a renewed sense of mission.  For I am sent and as the last thing He said is the first thing we are to do - 

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age. 

~Matthew 28.19-20

I am sent to make disciples.  I am sent to teach as I follow.  I am sent with the presences of God.

I have a lot to do.