I was talking with a friend that I’ve known for about 10 years, he served in youth ministry in the same area that I first started ministry in. I asked him how many personal retreats he went on as a Catholic youth minister and he just laughed. You see for as much talk as we youth minsters do, it is hard for us to convince ourselves to take the time away from our ministries. Hypocritical much?

So finally our team is on its way back to Texas; everyone is committed to working with/for each other. So now what?  I had been calling different parishes trying to set up a meeting to pitch our idea to them. I’ve committed resources to hiring 3 part-time salaried employees and as of yet don’t have enough ministries to keep them all busy.

We’ve come to the point in the formation of CCFM that we have our mission, name, and a team. At this point we have all decided to put off the launch of CCFM for a year, the main reason for this is that two of our staff members were going on NET Canada, but on the back end I did have some business work that needed to be done as well.

I start this post knowing that I didn’t find anyone that I’m working with; all I did was not be so stupid as to over-look the gifts that God had placed before me.

One thing that I’ve learned about myself that is pretty darn accurate is that I am not a designer. I‘m the code guy, the person in the cubicle hacking away at lines and lines of code to make websites do stuff, not look pretty. So when it came to designing our logo I decided to leave it up to the experts and for a second time enlist the community design method put forth by crowdSPRING.

Who would have ever thought that naming a non-profit ministry would be so hard? We know what the organization hopes to do, how it is going to work, what it may possibly become, but how do you put that into a name that communicates the purpose, is easy to remember, and is short. To be honest it is quite obvious with our name we missed the mark on at least one of these.

Ever since I began work in youth ministry, God has been forming an idea in me which has finally become reality in CCFM. When the idea first manifested I saw it as a sort of Catholic youth church, yeah I know how theologically wrong that thought is, but the man I was 12 years ago didn’t.
I am glad that God waited for the idea to develop and form before he gave me the courage to go through with it. It’s fun to look back and see just how smart this God guy is! For the past ten years God has worked to form me and this idea of youth formation into something that he could launch.