St. Patrick Presbyterian Church, Epc

Earlier today our new youth pastor Greg quipped, “12 years ago I went from being a dog trainer to a youth pastor and honestly… not much changed.” That was just the reminder I needed as I’ve been preparing to join over forty of our middle schoolers and leaders in Chattanooga next week for a conference called The Edge. Before we head out, you’ll hear me talk on Sunday about a dear friend I made while learning the ropes of youth ministry 20 years ago, and the profound impact he made on my spiritual journey. Shepherding teens may be a frenetic firestorm, but there was something about that foxhole that forged a fast and formative friendship between otherwise night-and-day personalities.  That has me thinking about how things have changed since I was making friends in my teens and early twenties. We did have the internet, but it was still an amendment to our analog lives, not the all-encompassing platform it has become. Phones didn’t do much of anything but call, or sometimes text very slowly at a rate per characte