Joel Young Blog.com

Well it’s official, the Young name has made it through another generation. Just yesterday my wife and I found out that our baby will definitely be a boy! We are both ecstatic about the news and for me it’s kind of surreal. I mean, it’s great news, but wow is this coming fast. I feel like just yesterday we were in college, staying out until 3 in the morning, and doing whatever we want, and now we plan our trips to the grocery store around my wife’s level of nausea. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade this for the world. I’m ready to be a father, but it seems like my whole mindset has changed overnight.

I just thought I would share that little tid-bit with you all this morning. Maybe the picture will make you laugh. We can already see that he has my chin!

Today I was reading an entry in Tom Rhoade’s Blog called 5 vital signs of healthy leadership and I was really hit hard by some of the comments made about the vision a leader projects. Since I’ve been in college, having a great vision for my ministry has been something that is very important to me. When I have a vision of what I want something to be or where I want it to go, it fuels my passion for that vision, and hopefully I will follow that up with pouring my passion into the people around me and enlisting them to work towards the overall vision. But it’s not always that easy.

I think the NUMBER ONE problem in churches today is that our ministers are poor communicators of their visions. And though that might seem to be a negative statement, and it is in one way, it actually is positive. This is due to the fact that most ministers actually have a great vision for their ministry, but they don’t know to relate it their church body or their staff if they are a senior leader.

Now, I’m in now way, shape, or form saying that I can do these things well because I find myself constantly struggling to keep my passion for my ministry alive, but I feel that many times we substitute good planning for passion. Ministers need to spur one another on to continue to be passionate about what we are doing, and how we are doing it. If we were to put some passion behind our visions and make sure our church’s know about both of those things, great things will happen.

March is probably my most favorite time of the year, without a doubt. First off, it is the month in which my lovely wife celebrates her birthday, and I’m sure glad she was born, it is when I usually get to play my first round of golf, and March always means MARCH MADNESS and the NCAA basketball tourney. I like to watch as many games as I can just to see how hard a team play when they are in danger of being knocked out. There is nothing else like it in all of sports.

Of course, I am bias towards the buckeyes, as I am in football, and this year I might even have something to cheer about. Just think, if the boys hadn’t choked in January we might have been able to hope for a football and basketball title in the same year, but now Florida is the only team that can hope for that.

But, unlike the frustration that we all feel during football season there is no ifs, ands, or buts about what happens in March with college basketball. It is totally fair and gives everyone who makes it into the tournament the same chance to win. There won’t be a committee voting on who is the actual champion after the tournament is over, and there won’t be any fans angry with the system because the brackets are fair. I guess what I’m saying is THANK YOU to the NCAA Men’s Basketball committees who got this one right. It’s makes my March so much more enjoyable.

I recently started reading a book that a good friend of mine gave me a couple years ago called Making Room For Life by Randy Frazee. I’m not far enough into it to be able to give much detail on practicality, but I have gathered that because someone has written a book about it this has become a problem. People living lives without putting much emphasis on relationships or getting connected to other human beings.

In my small group last week we talked about how as Christians we are often too busy to stop and share our faith or even have a conversation with the people that we pay for our gas, or checks us out at Target. And if we can’t do those things are we really fulfilling our role as Christians in this world.

I tend to think similarly about relationships. I feel that if we can’t make building relationships a priority in our lives we will never fulfill God’s intention for our lives. Whether it’s because of our business or any other reason. I know this hasn’t been my biggest struggle, but being busy is one of my struggles and I’ve seen how little by little things can changed in a persons lifestyle, and I think all Christians need to remind one another of how unimportant those things we busy ourselves with sometimes are.