I had the privlege of meeting with a youth pastor today, who seems to be going through a lot of the stuff that I went through in my first church. I was working part time, and felt like my hands were completely tied by a leader who couldn’t or wouldn’t let others around him succeed.

This friend of mine is hurting because he feels like he is being stifled from the top. It’s very, very hard to be in these situations. He’s looking around at some other opportunities and he has hope. The biggest thing that I resonated with was the excitement in knowing he was going somewhere but not exactly knowing where he was going to land.

It’s very easy to just do what others expect you to do and play the game, but God hasn’t called us to play other people’s games. He wants us to play his game and be obedient to only Him. And when you step out of a comfortable existence and begin to trust God and try to find where He wants me to go.

I’ll be praying for this friend and I am excited to see what he learns and how he changes during this process.

Our Management team is currently reading doing church as a team. This book was written by a pastor in Hawaii, Wayne Cordeiro, of New Hope Church. Whenever I read this book I am reminded of a time in my life when I was in a band, salt was our name, and our two singers were from Hawaii, so they had a bunch of connections back there. We were privileged to do ministry in Hawaii for three weeks one summer. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I really enjoyed it.

The beaches, the people, the food, the small churches with big hearts. I loved it. We played in big churches, and we played in very small churches. One church was a Samoan congregation that met in a field and all they had was a Covering over their meeting area, no walls. It was really cool, because that’s what the church should be, no walls.

We had to deal with a lot of challenges during that trip, we learned a lot about each other, and we really took time to grow. My dear friend John O’malley was the devotional leader during the trip and everyday we would meet together for corporate devotions and prayer. It was really fun.

I have to be honest for all it’s beauty there is a really dark side to Hawaii. We were mainly on the Big Island for the majority of our trip and we drove all around and through the middle of the Island, and you could see the idols set up to Pele all over the place. There is so much demonic oppression over those islands. During this trip we drove through a Rastafarian village, and you could tell that everyone was just stoned out of their minds. The work of the gospel is hard work, but there are outposts of faith scattered throughout the islands. People who are struggling to build the kingdom of God.

Pray for Hawaii, pray for freedom, pray for the churches that are hurting, pray for the churches that are thriving. There’s so much work to do, so many battles to fight, so many souls to reach.