{"id":9671,"date":"2011-01-30T00:46:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-30T00:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9671"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:36:26","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:36:26","slug":"day-78-three-120-day-dry-erase-planners-give","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9671","title":{"rendered":"Day 78 – Three 120 Day Dry Erase Planners (Give)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Years ago I bought these planners so that I could hang them on\u00a0my wall in the\u00a0youth ministry office and have space to plan out an entire year in advance.\u00a0 I thought it would help if I had the dates in front of me, since most times when I write dates down in a traditional calendar, events tend to sneak up on me.\u00a0 I don’t flip the page until the month ends and then … Yikes! … there’s some big event early in the next month which hasn’t been planned yet! I got them in 2000 when I first started as youth pastor of First United Methodist Church of Pensacola, Florida.\u00a0 The best part was these calendars\u00a0had a slick surface for dry erase markers so they could be used and reused.\u00a0 When I pulled them out of the garage, they still had writing on them.\u00a0 The\u00a0most recent date\u00a0is April 2002!\u00a0 Haven’t been used since. November 18 of 2001 has the words “Grand Opening” written in big capital letters… It was the Grand Opening of a million dollar youth ministry center.\u00a0 Literally … a million dollars.\u00a0 Just before Melissa and I arrived in town, the church had purchased an old funeral home across the street for $300,000.\u00a0 It was going to get fresh paint and new carpet, but instead got sucked into a capital campaign drive which resulted in $700,000 worth of renovations!<\/p>\n\n\n

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We went out of our way to make it an attractive, interesting place for teens – a place they’d want to visit often – a place they’d be excited to bring their friends.\u00a0 There was a sanctuary with video and sound equipment.\u00a0 The “One Way Cafe” sported kitchen facilities, a fountain soda dispenser, a garage theme throughout and full-fledged pinball games rigged to play for free.\u00a0 Upstairs there were classrooms – each one with its own unique theme.\u00a0 Pool tables.\u00a0 Ping pong tables.\u00a0 Video games.\u00a0 Murals. \u00a0Even an outdoor deck with picnic tables. The Grand Opening was a huge success.\u00a0 We were packed out with church kids and their friends.\u00a0 Which caused\u00a0a few\u00a0of our ministry team adults to freak out. When the last kid was out the door that night, some of the adults wanted to meet to discuss new rules we might consider\u00a0… … to\u00a0limit the number of teens… …\u00a0and to protect the building. Isn’t that the way it is with THINGS? (I don’t want to leave the impression that the church as a whole felt this way … they had willingly\u00a0invested a million dollars in an effort to reach out to the teens of Pensacola.\u00a0 I am only pointing out the temptation to protect what’s ours – even when it’s a church building and even when doing so puts doing God’s will in jeopardy.\u00a0 I know a lot of great ministry has undoubtedly taken place in that building over the last decade and I pray that it continues for many more years to come.) I left the calendars\u00a0in the teachers’ lounge at school with the word “Free” on a post-it note.\u00a0 If they\u00a0haven’t moved by\u00a0next week, I’ll offer them to my students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Years ago I bought these planners so that I could hang them on\u00a0my wall in the\u00a0youth ministry office and have space to plan out an entire year in advance.\u00a0 I thought it would help if I had the dates in front of me, since most times when I write dates down in a traditional calendar, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9671"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9674,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9671\/revisions\/9674"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}