Joel Tassie
 

RTW Connection: Student Ministry Professionals Program

Current ministry: Christ Church
Ministry Position: Director of Youth Ministry
Location: Greenville, SC

Q: What are you currently doing in ministry?
A: I am responsible for youth 6th grade through college age, and I oversee an Associate Director of Youth Ministry and a Basketball Ministry Coordinator as well as the dozens of volunteer leaders. It's all about connecting the youth to Jesus, maintaining relationships and helping these kids get through some pretty amazing stages of life.

Q: What is God doing in your ministry right now?
A: I'm loving the fact that God is working in two directions in the ministry at the moment – increasing the depth of the love of Him in acore group of youth while also increasing the breadth of numbers of those involved in various aspects of the ministry. We've seen more and more involvement of both youth and parents, and have expanded the ministry in all areas: service, discipleship and fun.

Q: What challenges do you face in your ministry right now?
A: While growth is a blessing, adjusting to the growth is a challenge. You have to rethink how you will ensure that every youth is connected when you might have 60-70 youth at every event.

Q: Can you share a story of God transforming a young person's life?
A: Don't you love being in a position to see God transform lives? We have one young woman in our group whom I had the pleasure of meeting whenshe was a college freshman. She started going to lunch with us afterthe Sunday morning services, and then coming to our college Bible Study. Then she went to Rock the World’s re:mix young adult conference and was blown wide open by God as she accepted more of His love than she'd ever imagined. We found out that she had been dealing with anerexia and major parent issues (which God dealt with at re:mix as well). We watched a healing transformation over the last year as she dove into the love of Jesus and He showed her what true love is andgave her the ability to forgive and to become whole.

Q: What Rock the World training are you applying to your current ministry?
A: If I only had more space to write! I use everything from the model of how to handle a youth group leadership team by first taking care of the team, including worship, prayer and the individual before getting down to business...to how to run a retreat with 150-250 youth...to differentiating between evangelistic retreats and discipleship level retreats...to setting up a ministry strategy that allows for multiplication of youth and leaders...to designing an exit strategy when God moves you to another place of ministry. Rock the World has been very forming and informing of the way I do ministry!