Category: ministry

Perry Describes TTU from Robert Terrell on Vimeo.

disclaimer – i’m on the board of touched twice united so my opinion is slightly biased – of course, it is actually one of the most amazing opportunities you and your church will ever have.

ok, i’ve done my disclaimer now i can speak freely. TOUCHED TWICE UNITED IS AMAZING! it really is a cool way of doing GOD-things.

basically ttu is a way of getting churches, community organizations, and community leaders to work together to help the weakest citizens in their counties. imagine combining a medical, dental, hearing, and vision clinic with any other service you can imagine (beauty salon, oil change service, etc.) and doing it with a $0 budget. that’s part of what touched twice is. churches work together to find people who are already wanting to help their community. the churches also look for ways that are already in their communities of meeting the needs that will be discovered. for example, hold as a part of a vision clinic touched twice gets the lions club involved – those lions love  working with the vision impaired – i know this because my dad used to sale the lions club brooms and lights door to door when he was a lion). another example in wisconsin is the fact that there are free dental supplies that the state will offer to any dentist doing charitable work. there are tons of ways of meeting needs that are already in our communities which are simply not very well known. you get all this together and then provide every person in need who shows up for a clinic an “advocate” who will help them to discover needs, determine what can be done, walk them through the process, and will pray with them.

it’s an amazing thing and did i mention that a touched twice clinic is usually done on a ZERO budget? this is why the national institute of health is interested in it (which should make jonathan wilmore happy). if you’re church is interested in learning more or doing one give me a ring, visit the website (the new one is ttunited.org which will be fully functional by may 1st), or even better yet contact perry polnaszek and let him tell you about ttu. as a group we have a goal of having a clinic in every county in the u.s of a by 2011. it’s a big goal but the clinics are really taking off – which is what usually happens with good ideas.

tapestry is going to be a part of doing one later this year and i’m pretty pumped about.

i love what i am doing BUT i still miss youth ministry. i don’t want to swap back or anything like that but i miss some of the fun and experiences that are just naturally a part of working with teens. since the only teen we have in tapestry right now is my oldest son i can’t really call that a youth ministry … it’s parenting.

anyhow, a good third of my youth ministry friends have been blogging, twittering, and facebooking about being at one of the national youth workers conventions. i know i’m not supposed to be jealous of people so i’ll just say that i hate all of my friends who got to go to one of the nywc’s. crap … i’m not supposed to do that either. … i strongly dislike my friends who got to go.

i just wanted to say “thanks” again to so many of you. when i left parkview a year ago they threw a party (i’m still not sure if it was out of joy or sadness over me leaving). at the end of the party jess, meg, josh, and the parkview youth gave me a jambalaya pot and some fixins. this pot has been used quite a bit since moving to wisconsin.

tonight the pot was used to fix the weekly meal for the “place of peace.” the “place of peace” provides a free meal each week for all who need it. a lot of independent living residents of point go for the meal. i spent most of my day fixing a meal for about 45 people. that would not have even been an option if it had not been for all those who thought of giving me the jambalaya pot. so if you are a part of that group i wanted to tell you that you made dinner for 45 people tonight and it was pretty good.