Jason

Jason is the Youth Pastor at Crossroads. Him and his wife, Jess are pretty awesome. Jason has a blog, if you want to check it out! I give credit to Jason, Dave and Jess for connecting to kids at their level. It's a gift that so GREAT! Great blog entry from Dave, it's so awesome that people can be so supportive!

I love a good story - especially when it goes counter to what normally happens in the world; stories of when a person chooses others rather than themselves, stories about long-term commitment, love and sacrifice. Here's a true story that speaks volumes about a friend of mine, Jason Shinn.

Jason is the Youth Pastor at Crossroads Church, where Cathie and I have been attending for 12 years. The past few years have been pretty tumultuous - with two affairs on staff, lots of people having left and a church in chaos.
As a fresh-out-of-college Youth Pastor, Jason was forced to step up into teaching, leading and odd jobs to keep things rolling. Throughout it all, he stuck with the church and with the kids.

Even in the midst of our newly found consistency and new growth, we're at a point right now in our budget and our building campaign where we've had to make some hard trade-offs. With a church of about 150, we don't have the budget right now to pay a youth pastor what we should, which is where Jay comes into the story. Now understand that being a youth pastor isn't a glamorous job to begin with and Jason is not paid a ton of money, even by youth pastoring standards. It would have been very easy for Jason (and his wife Jess, who works part time helping everywhere for free) to be disgruntled, leave and go find a job at a stable church that pays him decently).

He and Jess are so committed to this church and to the kids at this church that Jason was willing to humble himself to go work at Old Navy so he could continue the work that he feels God has called him to at Crossroads. I think that speaks a ton about J and his commitment to his calling. Kids learn stuff from the youth group meetings, but mostly, they learn from the character of the leaders over time and they way they live their lives. The kids in our youth group saw leaders in this church do some very dishonorable things over time and I'm proud of the way Jay has shown them what honor, integrity and commitment look like in his life. In a world where the average life expetency of a youth pastor is 2 years, and youth pastors jump from job to job every couple years and rarely stay long enough to go deep, Jay is the kind of guy that I would want my kids learning from.