Going to the chapel...

One of the most fun things about working with a young singles ministry is that I get to do a ton of weddings. It's also one of the most challenging things about working with young singles. Young singles tend to get married, which tends to deplete your leadership team pretty quickly. We always have to be in leadership recognition mode, or we'll end up with a leadership vacuum.

Not even college ministry has the same turnover rate as a young singles ministry - they keep people for 4 (or 5 or 6) years. We have a few strong young singles who have been around that long, but for the most part the shelf-life of a healthy young single person in our singles ministry is one or two years, and we don't even have the "meat-market" mentality that some other young singles ministries adopt.

Some people would see the above challenge as a whip - I see it as an opportunity for greater influence. Even though I know our leadership team is going to turn over regularly, an investment in their life means healthy young married groups for us and the other churches these people fan out to. If we get to influence someone for a year, and they go out to make a significant difference somewhere else, I just look at it as the opportunity to broaden our influence.

This weekend, I'm doing two weddings for two leadership couples in Eikon, our young singles ministry. After today I will have married off 6 of the 8 singles who were on the Eikon leadership team at this time last year. That's pretty exciting, because we've got 6 or 8 more great leaders ready to step in and carry the baton (especially after they see statistics like that!).

Congratulations to Mitchell and Katie, and Korey and Ginger this weekend. I'm proud of all four of these individuals, and am looking forward to starting two new godly families this weekend.