I couldn’t be more excited – my latest book with Doug Fields is here!

99 Thoughts for Small Group Leaders is now available for pre-order from Simply Youth Ministry. Super proud of this one – we took some serious time creating what we hope is an insightful, helpful and practical book for you and your volunteers. I’ve included close to 150 thoughts in the book, and some additional content from voices in our small group community. Good discounts if you order 10+ – ships September 29th. Yeah!

JG

I just got off the phone with a youth worker who overspent summer camp by $6,000. Now, his entire youth ministry budget is $9,000 -  two months into the church’s fiscal year nearly his entire youth ministry budget is toast. So now what? As I thought about his situation (a little shout out to Mike!) I came up with a few practices that have worked for me when we have to pinch every penny:

Don’t be afraid to change the calendar
I wrote 6 Ways to Stretch Your Youth Ministry Budget, and when there’s little or no money left that’s when those principles have to be put into practice. Just because something is already on the calendar doesn’t mean it gets a free pass in the new day. Go low cost. Go free. Don’t subsidize it. Cut it. Change up the youth ministry calendar to reflect your revised financial state.

Make every event break-even
I’ve posted in the past 4 Rules to Make Sure Break-Even Events Break Even, and with no budget left to spend this is more critical then ever. Be extremely conservative in your estimates. Set and promote registration deadlines and stick to them so you’re not stuck with the bill. Charge a couple bucks extra, even if it means taking a few less students.

Wait for super deals on resources
With little or no budget left, you might have to put the brakes on significant purchases for your youth ministry. And while some dreams may have to go on hold – good deals on youth ministry resources pop up from time to time so take action when they do. Look for bundle deals, or products that you can purchase one time that keep giving all year (specifically subscription stuff, like the LIVE small group curriculum, or Simply All Access).

Find ways to get more funding
Asking for more budget due to mismanagement will be a tough ask. But growth in your youth ministry is totally a viable reason to look into getting more funds. If you’ve grown 15% halfway through the year, consider going to your leadership and asking for ways to fund the growth – that’s the best kind of “blowing your budget.” Consider making your need visible to the church body and look at other fundraising options if your church allows.

If you’re on a tight budget 1) be thankful you’re fortunate to have one at all, and 2) you may want to consider picking up $5 Youth Ministry which … ironically … costs $9.99.

JG

Josh’s latest book, 99 Thoughts for Small Group Leaders, is written specifically to the small group volunteer leader. A small group is a powerful place! Lives are changed. Important decisions are made. Spiritual growth is enhanced. Jokes are shared. Lifelong friendships are formed. Cliques disappear when a small group becomes a loving community. The result? Spiritually mature teenagers, empowered leaders, and a healthy youth ministry.

In Live Large. Be Different. Shine Bright. Doug Fields and I share about some important character qualities that will help teenagers live large, be different, and shine bright. These topics are definitely worthy of consideration and experimentation—topics like competition, laughter, cliques, encouragement and several others will help teenagers in the process of being a more vibrant follower of Jesus.

Backward$ is a 2-week sermon series about stewardship and money from Josh Griffin. Help your students develop a Christ-like perspective on money, tithing and ownership. In a culture obsessed with consuming and keeping up with the Joneses, this is a powerful two-week series that shows students how they are God’s delivery system, not His storehouse. The series also features a strong call to action, challenging students to put their beliefs into tangible acts in giving of their money, their time, and their talents.

99 Thoughts for Youth Workers was Josh’s first book – born our of journaling his first 2 years of learning high school ministry at Saddleback Church.Years of little sleep working in the trenches of youth ministry to share personal reflections on youth ministry. The result is a resource packed with practical advice and usable ideas on every page that will help make your work simpler and your ministry more successful. Get the caffeine fix of your choice and step into Josh’s world.

Labels is a 2-week sermon series from Simply Youth Ministry that talks about cheerleaders, jocks, nerds, dorks, Emo, ghetto and preppie kids. Every day, students are being labeled and throwing around labels to define and categorize their peers. The end result? Viewing others and themselves as less than what God intended. In this easy-to-prep and quick-to-teach 2-week series, you’ll give your students a God’s-eye view of who we were all created to be—loved by Him and designed to love like He does.

Happy is a 6-week sermon series based on Matthew’s beatitudes taught by Josh Griffin and Doug Fields. Guess what? Life as a follower of Christ isn’t designed to be dull, boring, or sad. In fact, Jesus wants you to be happy! But God’s definition of happiness is quite different from the way our culture interprets and promotes. God doesn’t want us to focus our energy and efforts on pursuing happiness that is defined by our feelings and emotions. Instead, we can seek happiness that is experienced as we follow God’s plan—and as we’re fueled by God’s power.

Save the Planet is a 3-week sermon series by Josh Griffin that attempts to address environmental issues in our church. I was very excited to do this 3-week series, it ended with a powerful message that Jesus came to “save the planet” too.

Doug Fields and I each took one week of the Roots sermon series in HSM – Are your students ready for life’s storms? Are they prepared for the challenges and struggles that will come with young adulthood? Are they building a root system that will help them grow—even in the middle of all the messy, disappointing, chaotic, stressful moments? In this two-week Roots sermon series, Doug Fields and Josh Griffin examine some of the essentials that will help your teenagers live deeper, richer, more meaningful lives. If we’re truly honest, isn’t that what we all want to experience?

This summer we took some risks and planned a summer calendar for our high school youth group that looked pretty different than years past. I think for the most part it paid off – here are some of the new ideas (for us) and the results:

Summer camp moved to the beginning of the summer
This was the biggest game-changer for us – for years we’ve let camp be the “end of summer event” that catapulted us into Fall Kickoff and the new school year. I blogged about the Benefits of Early Summer Camp, not in an effort to justify the move but to make sure we took advantage of the strategy behind the move. Camp now kicks off the summer, and gives us momentum in a typical downtime for youth groups. COST: $299

Midweek Bible Study replaces small groups
For the longest time our small groups (now Life Groups) have met only during the school year. But this year we decided to have a discipleship/worship/fellowship gathering call WE(MID)EK all summer long. The consistency was a win – students knew that every Tuesday night we gathered to sing, pray, learn and connect. And yes, I realize that Tuesday isn’t midweek but it was the last day available. Cost: FREE

Bible study just for girls
This year one of the ideas was to have a Bible study just for girls – not necessarily on girl’s issues (it was actually an Old Testament character study) but so girls could learn together away from the distractions of the boys. Bagels & Bibles was a great 8-week success – and the guys want one next summer, too! Donuts & Dudes, here we come! Cost: FREE

Fun and relational time every Friday
Every Friday we spent 2 hours at the park, and 2 hours at The Refinery hanging out and playing games. Athletic kids loved the outdoor games, and everyone loved the cold Cokes at lunch. Great opportunity to bring friends or have a surprisingly deep conversation. Cost: FREE

Lots of guest speakers over the summer at the weekend worship service
This summer I did a significant amount of teaching when our freshman we’re incoming, then turned it over to other voices in our youth ministry team. This past weekend, two volunteers spoke, which was incredible. It gave me a chance to go on vacation and for our students to hear from different personalities, styles and backgrounds. COST: FREE

Two service projects, no mission trips
This summer we didn’t go on any mission trips – saving that for our Spring trips to Kenya and Spring Break trip to New Mexico. But our students were involved in service projects in the community, we did a Pancake Breakfast for a needy area and helped pull off Operation: Backpack. COST: FREE

JG

A fantastic testimony shared during the Life Groups weekend of the LAUNCH series. Parker finished his story live on stage – talking about God changing his heart and encouraging students to join small group as well.

JG

Weekend Teaching Series: LAUNCH: Ready for Re-Entry (week 3 of 5)
Sermon in a Sentence: Launching into a successful school year includes getting accountability and community by being a part of an HSM Life Group.
Service Length: 73 minutes

Understandable Message: This week was all about Life Groups. Our small group year starts in just a few weeks, and registration for the big launch ends in 14 days. This weekend was taught by Life Group volunteers (Matt and Mel – Team M&M) and they hit on the importance reasons to be in one using an acrostic (L-I-F-E-G-R-O-U-P-S) and testimonies both live and on video. If a student wasn’t in a small group, they would sure want to be at the end of the hour.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: Matt did a good job of bringing humor into his talk – he made references to Justin Bieber and Batman and made comparisons to the pop stars and comic books of his day. There was a very positive environment to the weekend – you could tell the community that they were teaching on was genuine in their group and a goal for all of HSM’s Life Groups.

Music Playlist: Rise and Sing, Beautiful Things, How He Loves, Burning Ones, With Everything

Favorite Moment: The power of story is always amazing to me – when a student gets up to speak the students listen intently to what they have to say. And it totally works both live or on video. I’m also so impressed by the strength of the students who got up to share their story this week. Epic stuff.

Up Next: LAUNCH week 4

DC is on a roll this week – he just posted some great thoughts about how to have a great Fall kickoff. Hopefully something in there will stir up an idea and trigger something cool as you prepare for the launch. Here’s an excerpt, more thoughts if you head over to his place:

• Push Momentum generators. This is a great time to push what your focus for the fall/school year will be or whatever builds momentum in your group.  Our students love each other so we push Small Groups HARD the first three weeks.

• Have all your ducks in a row. I think this is more important in high school than in middle school (we all know middle schoolers love things more when the ducks are NOT in a row, haha).  In my experience some high schoolers are looking for a reason to discount the church as “not relevant to their life” or “just a knock-off of pop culture” and if there is a lack of excellence this opens that door for them…NOT TO MENTION GOD DESERVES OUR BEST!  (Also note: You have to define excellence for your context, don’t judge it off of another church, it must be contextualized.)

• Meet the minimum expectations THEN EXCEED THEM. This one sounds odd at first but most students come to our ministries with a bare minimum expectation of what could/should happen.  Some minimum expectations are things like:  We will read/open/hear about the Bible, Jesus’ name will probably be used, someone will pray, there might be music, someone will likely talk to us, I’ll have opportunities to spend with my friends. So we try to meet those bare minimums every week (because they’re good ones) AND THEN completely exceed them by trying to constant “redefine church/youth group”.  This is especially important considering during the launch phase there are usually lots of new students. (Comment if you want me to write more on this topic).

JG

This week’s poll – how many of your small group leaders from last year are returning to groups this Fall? And if you’re up to leave a comment, what would be considered a healthy/typical/normal drop out rate year-to-year?

JG

Journaled a little bit last week about pastoral care – how we’re called to care for the wounds of the students that have been entrusted to us as youth workers. In the setup we’re launching soon, we’ll have a 3-pronged approach to helping students with the hurts in their lives. Here’s the breakdown:

Small group leaders
One of the most effective groups of pastoral care volunteers in our ministry are the small group leaders. Students that have taken a step beyond the entry-level program of the weekend service come to experience being known, loved and cared for. When they have a problem (or a celebration, for that matter) they most often turn to “their pastor” – a title we’ve quick to award these amazing leaders. The majority (that part isn’t represented well in my Moleskin drawing above, sorry) of struggles and issues are addressed personally and directly here.

Pastoral care volunteers
This is the area where we have a great opportunity to build, we don’t have this yet so I’m talking in more ideal than real. What if there was a team of adults who pray for, counsel, guide and respond to students in need? If a student doesn’t have a small group leader, or needs more than what that leader can provide, we have a response. When a student is looking for prayer on the weekend, there’s a place for them to go. When they finally get up the nerve to call or Facebook, someone is quick to respond back.

The Landing (check out this program in detail here)
On the other end of the spectrum there are kids dealing with major life issues perhaps considered to be “above the pay grade” of the care team or their small group leader. And while we hope leaders know they can take on anything, we want to offer a program with specifically trained and called volunteers who’ve “seen it all” and can help coach and love these students through recovery. That’s where The Landing comes into play – a Celebrate Recovery for students that is available every Friday night of the year.

How do you care for students? Just thinking out loud today – hoping it triggers and idea to care for your students, too!

JG

Quite a few emails and comments from people this summer about the new self-service Pastoral Care brochure racks we launched for our High School Ministry. Honestly, it has taken a whole lot longer to produce each brochure than we originally thought, and they’ve gone a lot faster than I expected – so it’s been totally worth it. Anyhow, some youth workers were recently asking about publishing a topic list of the different pamphlets, so here’s the list of ideas as of today. I wish we could have done them all, but some ideas had to get cut and only a few are [done].

Pastoral Care Issues
1. Relationships, Dating [done]
2. Sexual Temptations/Porn [done]
3. Identity/Value/Worth [done]
4. Bullies
5. Anger
6. Peer Pressure
7. Insecurity
8. Loneliness
9. Marriage/Divorce
10. Death
11. Feeling Lost/Purposeless
12. Unplanned Pregnancy/Abortion [done]
13. Gender Issues
14. Domestic Violence/Sexual Abuse
15. Addiction
16. Parents
17. Eating Disorders [done]
18. Academic Problems
19. Stress
20. Depression
21. Homosexuality [done]
22. Cutting [done]
23. Grief [done]
24. Forgiveness
25. Suicide [done]
26. Stealing

Christian Life
1. Habits
2. Following Jesus [done]
3. Salvation
4. Serving
5. PEACE
6. Purposes [done]
7. What It Means to be a Christian
8. Baptism [done]
9. Communion [done]
10. Small Groups
11. How to Get Connected
12. M Video Games/M Music/R Movies
13. Alcohol/Drugs [done]
14. How To Grow/A Few Ways to Grow

Theology
1. The Bible [done]
2. God [done]
3. Heaven/Hell [done]
4. Is Jesus the Only Way [done]
5. Theology Terms
6. Environment [done]
7. Humanity
8. Sin

HSM General/Funny
1. Snuggies
2. Fun In the Refinery
3. HSM Insider Terms
4. Ninjas
5. Star Wars
6. Pirates vs. Ninjas
7. Fashion Don’ts [done]

What are we missing? Leave a comment!

JG

I’m excited to announce that in January we’re starting a new program to help the hurting students at Saddleback. It is called The Landing and it is a year-long version of Celebrate Recovery program. Our church leadership has been wanting to run a parallel program to Celebrate Recovery for adults and children. This is it! Life Hurts, God Heals is still a great option as well – you can check that out right here as well. Either way, stop for a minute today and think about the hurting kids in your ministry and what you can do to serve them.

The Landing is an all-new, year-long program that helps teenagers travel the path to freedom, healing, and wholeness. This dynamic resource mirrors the content presented in the successful Celebrate Recovery program. The lessons deliver hope-filled truths and real-life strategies for giving young people the tools for making wise choices and developing healthy patterns for living.

Use The Landing as a way to minister to teenagers in your church and community who are struggling with life-controlling hurts, hang-ups, and habits. Or simply implement the curriculum in your small groups, Sunday school classes, or midweek program to give all of your students insights on following the path to freedom. This resource will complement your efforts if you church is using the Celebrate Recovery ministry for adults and the Celebration Station content for kids—but it also flourishes as a stand alone option!

JG

Well, we made the change from calling them small groups to calling them life groups – it only took me a year since I first blogged about the idea – ha! It is a bit of a semantic thing, but I’m a big fan of the switch. Rather then focus on their size (which remains important) the name focuses on what happens (sharing life, which is more important). Here’s some of the frequently asked questions we answer as people register:

What are High School Ministry Life Groups?
Life Groups are small groups for high school students. These groups are made up of 10 – 12 students (same grade and gender) that meet weekly with a caring adult leader.

Life Groups are a perfect place for you to form great friendships with other students your age, build relationships with adult leaders and learn more about God and grow closer to Him. Your group will be encouraged to establish accountability with each other, have consistent personal quiet times, get involved in ministry, and participate in service projects.

When and where do they meet?
Life Groups meet in host homes on Tuesday or Wednesday evenings from 7:00 – 9:00pm. Meeting in homes creates a warm, friendly atmosphere for sharing life together.

What does a typical night look like?
Each Life Group will look different, but a typical night will look something like this: welcome / snacks / hang out / Bible study / discussion / prayer.

Being involved in a Life Group will be an awesome time to grow closer to God; what better way to do that than by reading and studying the Bible? Every Life Group will choose their study topic from the provided LIVE Curriculum. Studies include: prayer, following Jesus, making good decisions, purity, having healthy relationships, studying the Bible, dealing with temptation, living in godly community and more.

What about my leader?
HSM has incredible, screened, and trained adult volunteers who are ready to serve and teach high school students. Our HSM leaders are there to encourage, teach, guide, and help strengthen your walk with Christ. It may turn out to be the most significant relationship of your high school years.

What is the Life Group Commitment?
Being part of a Life Group is a privilege. We expect each Life Group member to commit to the following:

1. Come to group prepared, equipped with a Bible, a pen, a notebook and a good attitude.
2. Respect your Life Group leader. They are giving you their time because they WANT to minister to you.
3. Respect and be kind to others in your group.
4. Respect your Host Home. Help clean-up your host home at the end of every night.

JG

What a tough decision … the stories you submitted in the LIVE Curriculum contest were amazing and heart-stirring. The nominations, the effort, the heart of youth ministry in all of them – wow. So hard to choose! So … I didn’t, exactly. I took my 5 favorite, and then picked one at random. Here’s the winning story, congratulations to Bree Klemme:

Check out the LIVE small group curriculum at Simply Youth Ministry today!

JG

OK, you’ve read about HSM’s 4-year teaching plan strategy and how we’re going “all in” using the LIVE curriculum for our small groups. Simply put, we needed a way to centralize and formalize the teaching plan for all of our small groups. Without a structure and good communication, groups would be headed all over the place and in different directions. When someone graduates, what are we confident they’ve learned?

That’s why we’re using LIVE – 4 years of discipleship and web-based community of our volunteer leaders. Now, I realize the $499 price point is shocking until you investigate it and see how it works. The stuff is pretty slick – an all-in-one solution for small groups in your church.

Youth leaders will experience a bountiful abundance of benefits. (Wasn’t that the name of an old hymn?) Because you’ll have your long-range plans locked down, you can devote more time to equipping your volunteers and building excitement in students about upcoming topics through creative promotions. And of course, you’ll save yourself countless hours of planning.

But wait! There’s more! You know what your small groups will be discussing six months from now, so parents will gain more confidence in your ministry, and along the way, you’ll provide them with resources to spark conversation and dialogue in the home. And if we’re serious about getting families involved in our youth ministries, how can you go wrong with that?

So, check it out if you want, but here’s the deal: I’m giving one away this week! All you have to do is tell me why you (or another youth worker you know) needs LIVE, and we’ll pick the best story and give it to them. Why should we give LIVE to you?! May the best comment win!

JG

It won’t be long before we start back full-force into small groups during the school year. We’re about to start registration asking students to be a part of an HSM Life Group and on the form we ask for basic information as well as do our best to divide up groups by these 4 main categories. Here are the breakdown of how we divide up groups:

GENDER (always)
HSM divides our small groups by gender – no exceptions to this rule. If you are a guy, you’ll be in a guy group. Girls = girls group. From time to time groups meet together and we do allow groups of different genders  in the same home, but our groups are always divided by gender.

GRADE (as much as possible)
So now you’ve got 2 groups of students, guys and girls. Now what? There are four natural divisions in high school, so we try to put underclassmen together and upperclassmen together. That way, students can journey through similar life-stages together as well as be together longer through high school. The larger your ministry grows, the more specific groups you can have.

GEOGRAPHY (if we can)
Groups are split by gender and by grade, and now if possible, we group them together by geography. Often times this works naturally because students share the same high school, but sometimes geography is the one that has to give. To be in a gender and grade specific group, you might have to drive or be dropped off.

GUIDE (we try our best)
I should write “leader” here, but I wanted another “G” word. Lame, I know. Anyhow, we also ask students if they have a particular leader whose group they want to be a part of. We can’t always fulfill the request, but we try our hardest to make it happen. Problems come up with too many students ask for the same popular leader. 

JG

From time to time people ask who are the paid staff behind HSM – and to be honest, we’ve been in some transition over the past seasons of ministry so the answer would vary from year to year. But in case you were wondering who did what and how we’re structured, here’s some insight:

High School Pastor (full-time) – that’s my job! I cast vision, handle conflict, lead the team, teach and direct the ministry. The buck stops with me, so if something goes wrong – it’s on me. It might be the best job in the world, I sure love it, despite the massive challenges. The rest of the team is organzationally flat, and I report to Kurt, the Student Ministries Pastor.

My assistant/team admin Associate (29 hrs/wk) – Alaina just came on the team last week and functions primarily in a support role to my job as well as helping the team with admin tasks.

Volunteer Coordinator (full-time) – Ryanne is an incredible minister to our adults who serve students. She works diligently interviewing, training, encouragement and care. She is our first impression to adults, and pastors them well.

Service/Ministry Coordinator (full-time) - AC is also brand new to the team – he’ll be responsible for all of our service projects in the community and helping get students into ministry. He’ll also work with our guys small groups to help make sure they are cared for.

Events/Missions Coordinator (full-time) - Phil cranks out any event we have planned. The dude is a administrative genius, and his top speed blasts by most people. He plans Summer Camp, missions trips, events and activities.

Life Groups Coordinator (full-time) – Jessica has been with us just over a year and has a huge heart for our small groups effort. She works hard to make sure volunteers are the right fit, helps manage curriculum and makes sure things move smoothy in the puzzle that is small groups.

We also currently have 2 open full-time spots on the team – we just lost Jake (program, 2nd in command) to be the campus pastor at Saddleback Irvine, and in September we’re losing Robby (pastoral care) to be another campus pastor. In addition to this paid team, we’ve also got 3 amazing 2-year interns and 3 summer interns that function as full-on staff people as well – all of them are brilliant and work 40-50 hours a week and own significant parts of our high school ministry.

JG

I’m very excited to announce today a new addition to the HSM team here at Saddleback – Aaron Crumbey (AC) is joining our staff to serve High School students here in Orange County. He was a key volunteer in our small groups before joining on as full-time staff last week. Very excited to welcome him, Sandra and their two kids to the High School Ministry team!

JG

This weekend we launched a project we’ve been working on for several months – I’m really proud of it and the team that have put it together. We built some self-service pastoral care racks and filled them with brochures and postcards that help address common issues students face. I’ve been thinking of it as a way for students to get help and go deeper on their own, when they’re ready for a baby step forward. We’re hoping that they really take off – here’s some of the heart/strategy behind it:

• The brochure racks are always there, so students can find help outside of service times.
• They can pick up 1 or several that might interest them.
• A hole is punched in the top of them so they can put them on their HSM hook.
• Brochures focus on helping students learn about Christian doctrine and real-life issues.
• We wrote and included some goofy topics as well for fun. Each category has a clear color, too.
• There are 5 racks around The Refinery, we figured why not really make them available if we’re gonna do it.
• We also include other relevant handouts/information in the racks as well (like summer calendars).
• Volunteers will refill the racks as needed. Seeing what brochures ae being taken give us a pulse of the needs of our students.
• Parents get a good glimpse at what we believe/are teaching their students.
• Students that are afraid to admit a problem or talk to someone face to face about it yet can find help.
• Next steps are clear – small groups, baptism, etc.

The writing of the content took far longer than we expected – but it turned out REALLY strong. Interested to see which ones get taken first …

JG

Pastor Rick asked us each to submit our teaching/spiritual development plans for our areas of ministry – his desire was to refine the alignment of how we disciple from literal infancy to spiritual maturity as a graduate of high school. Here’s a little bit of the answer I gave in the profile of HSM. The answer for small groups was easy – we are going to exclusively use the LIVE Small Group material next year in life groups. Our weekend answer mostly revolved around these three categories of broad teaching topics:

Felt-needs. What are students dealing with we want to address? Topical teaching from God’s word. Topics are chosen that students want/need to hear about and practical instruction about how a follower of Jesus should respond to this topic. Example: the series we did this Spring called, “The Sex” about guys, girls, self-worth, premarital sex, marriage and more.

Doctrine. What do our students need to know about God and faith? What are the basic Christian doctrines essential to understanding God and theology? How do students define and defend their faith in God? Example: our apologetics series called Q from this Spring, or our current series called Trinity.

Bible survey. Survey of the books of the Bible. We want students to get holistic teaching and an understanding. Example: We’re doing a series called 5 Ways to be Awesome, which is really a 5-week chapter study on the book of James. Our summer Midweek program is an 8-week expositional study of Ephesians.

JG

One of our small group leaders named Dennis (who runs volunteeryouthministry.com) had a great post about challenging his small group boys with next steps over the summer. Some good stuff in

1. Grow spiritually! Just as they should be further along spiritually than they were when the school year began, they should be further along spiritually in the Fall when we come back together for small groups. To help them do that, I remind them of some of our discipleship tools (HABITS – see the link below) they can do on their own. I actually have a few copies there so they can take something with them if they choose.

2. Stay connected! Even though we are not having small groups over the summer, there are plenty of ways for them to stay connected through the church. I have plenty of our ministry’s summer calendars so those who don’t already have them can grab one. I especially highlight our summer camp because that’s where the best connections and spiritual decisions are made.

JG