Pastor 1st, Speaker Guy 2nd

Sometimes I get envious of all of the sweet words attached to people’s profiles on Twitter: Architect, Visioneer, Imaginative, Creative, Discoverer, Dreamer. They are incredible! Especially Visioneer, since spellcheck tells me that it isn’t even a real word. Wait, spellcheck isn’t a word either? There goes that one.

Well … I’m a pastor. My first calling is to the church and I’m honored to fulfill my life purpose as a youth worker. As long as they’ll have me, I’m in. Being in the trenches of leading a youth ministry is where I want to be and where I thrive. I’ve had great experiences in a little rural church in Michigan and blessed to be a part of of the high school team at Saddleback Church in the suburbs of LA. I do get asked occasionally to teach a workshop or event – here’s my usual answer: “I wish I could, but no.” Another question I get a lot is, “would you like an editor to clean up the misspellings and grammar atrocities on your blog?”

I can’t do much about the grammar thing – I just live with it and hope the sheer volume of posts keep people coming back since my English is simultaneously driving them away. And it isn’t that I don’t want to speak at youth events, especially since I believe speaking to youth workers and students is part of that calling. It is just that in this life-stage and an intensely hands-on ministry I have to be super selective about what events I can say “yes” to each season.

Here’s the good news: I really want to say yes! It can’t happen too often, but I would be honored to be considered for your event. If you want to know if I might be a good fit, here are a few clips from our High School Ministry service at Saddleback:

Here’s a pretty standard bio, too:

Josh Griffin is the High School Pastor at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA. He is a father of four and has been in full-time youth ministry for 15 years. He is the author of 99 Thoughts for Youth Workers, 99 Thoughts for Small Group Leaders, and co-authored Live Large. Be Different. Shine Bright. with Doug Fields. Josh speaks a little, writes a little, Twitters a bit and blogs a lot. More than 20,000 youth workers visit his blog, www.MoreThanDodgeball.com for insight, ideas and fun.

You know you want a fancy speaker-guy headshot. Grab it here and gaze into the wonderment. (3MB)

So let’s see what happens – you can contact me right here! Sorry about all the grammar mistakes. Know any good editors who work for free?

JG

Josh Griffin
High School Pastor
Saddleback Church
morethandodgeball@gmail.com