The Greatest Season Warrants Its Greetings

Thank you for letting us serve Orange County in 2008! Raise your glasses high to 2009!

Hot Dog and Chocolate Dodgeball Tournament

Mark your calendars, gather your teams and start training.

The 1st annual Orange County Wide "Hot Dog and Chocolate Dodgeball Tournament" has been set. We all know ministry is not a competition, but this one is!

The Date: February 21st (Saturday) - Must register by February 20th to get the price break

The Time: Tournament play starts at 9:30am and goes till about 1:30

The Place: The gym and outside courts of Calvary Church of Santa Ana (1010 N. Tustin Ave, Santa Ana)

Who: Everyone who wants to put a team together including: youth pastors with youth groups, Young Life Leaders, Lifestyle mentors, Small groups

Cost: Pre-registration is $5 a person and $10 at the door. (that is per person, not team, prizes will be given - including best uniforms)

Reason: Create a great opportunity for as ministry leaders to love on kids and create a great experience with them.

TEAM Size: 6 on the court with optional 2 subs. Only two people can be over the age of 18 on the team. These teams can be co-ed.

Please pass this email to other group leaders!!!!!

General Rules of Dodgeball

Volleyball With Impact.

I wanted to call this blog post "Purpose Driven Volleyball," but that has probably already been trademarked. Here is a great story from a great guy who is doing incredible things down at Doheny:

"Beach volleyball. Words that bring to mind images of busy summer days, Top Gun, or even Summer Olympic gold. What these words do not make you think of is ministry, unity, and salvation. But these are exactly what beach volleyball has brought to the college group at our church. My wife and I spent the past year playing regularly with a couple of friends and after Misty May and Kerri Walsh put the sport back on the
map this summer, we decided to give our college students an opportunity to learn how to play. It was a pretty simple set-up: meet at 8am, warm-up, teach a few skills and play some games. Week by week we were having what we expected, a lot of fun and some memorable moments.

Soon we started grabbing lunch together afterwords and some incredible results began to manafest. What started as a fun interest began to bear a lot of fruit. Here are three realizations as we began to look at what was happening:

1. Ownership. The people who came to volleyball began to take ownership of the group and their faith. These where the ones that became the most excited to participate in our other Bible studies and even planned additional times to get-together to hang-out building up the unity of our group.

2. Evangelism through relationship. Some of our students started to stick around and join up with the Saddleback college class that meets at 10 am. As they built relationships based on volleyball, they started having opportunities to actually show Christian love and share the good news of Jesus, inviting people to church and other
gatherings...

3. and lastly... after playing volleyball, a girl from the college class accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior with one of our college ministry students who had taken a particular interest in volleyball and living out his Christian faith.

The idea of living out our Christian faith is living missional! Praise God for reaching others through us by a fun and silly game!"

A story from Derick Zeulner, a pastor at South Shores, Dana Point.

A Lifestyle Mentor's Support Goes A Long Way

I'd love to share one story from a relatively new lifestyle mentor:

My group currently consists of 3 young ladies and we all are becoming very close. I love it! There is one person that I've been focusing on who I'll call "Mary." Her parents are homeless and they want Mary and her little sister to live with them. Unfortunately this means staying at a motel or in their van in a store parking lot. The kids have been bounced back and forth between their parents and a family that would love to become foster parents to Mary and her sister. Recently Mary had to attend a custody hearing in court, which would decide if Mary and her sister would be able to stay at the foster parent's house for good. I went to court with Mary to give her and her sister support. It was very difficult for Mary because she had to tell the truth about her parents and Mary knew it would expose her parent's faults. Mary had to tell about her parents alcoholism and that they let her and her sister drink with them. It was a very tough time for Mary. We are still waiting to hear what the court's decision is in this heartbreaking situation.

I know God is using me to touch Mary's life. For two weekends in a row Mary has not taken a drink even when her parents offered it to her. She says she does this as a promise to me. Mary also cuts herself and as we've talked about it she has promised to stop that too. Two months ago I couldn't get Mary to talk to me. Now she tells me everything that is going on in her life. It is the same way with the other girls too. Sometimes they give me way too much information but I count it a privilege that they are so open with me. I thank the Lord for giving me this opportunity to serve these girls.

Pastoral Reference

"I really appreciate Ryan's creativity and passion for the church to develop authentic disciples of Jesus Christ. His vision for mentoring needs to be embraced by this new generations of youth leaders."

- Bill Staffieri
Youth Pastor at Beachpoint Church, Fountain Valley (He has been there for like 19 years)
Adjunct Professor at Biola University in the Christian Education Department. (6 years)