I had my last Leaders' Meeting tonight. We debriefed five years of the current youth ministry model. I told them that seeing as I would be only hearing good comments between now and when I go, I need to do an honest debrief.

I think I needed it more than anyone else. I needed to get the good and the bad in perspective. Otherwise all I would be thinking about between now and when I leave is my failures. As much as people will say nice things about me, I'll ignore them and just think about how I've messed things up.

So tonight I got to tell the Leaders what I honestly thought were my, and our, failures, what were the negatives, what we did well and what were the positives. While the meeting started off a bit depressing it actually cheered me up. Maybe because it felt like I was confessing my sins. And when my leaders, who probably have the most invested in my ministry (not including God) heard and didn't tell me I was useless and didn't hate me, it felt better. I think I can go into the end of this job feeling happier now that I have a better perspective on my crapness.

The good stuff was nice too. I'm really happy about all that God has done in the youth ministry. It's been such a privilege to be involved and to see God do so much. And it's been nice to see that things we've aimed to do 5 years ago, we did. And while we didn't always get the results we wanted, we stuck to our values, and led with integrity.

I do have a wonderful bunch of leaders.

The meeting went about 45 minutes overtime and everyone was happy to stay.

And stay they did. We ended up still being at church at 11pm laughing at Fail Blog together. It was a fun night. And a satisfying one too. I feel like in the last five years we may have got a thing or two done and had a bunch of fun along the way.