Andy Brightbill took over leadership of our youth ministry close to four years ago when it was at a very low stage. He has done an absolutely tremendous job of building our church youth ministry into one of the best local church youth ministries that you will find. Since I came to Lititz, I have used Andy as more than just a “youth pastor.” I knew Andy from teaching at Grace College. He was one of my students and also served as my student assistant while in graduate school. I continue to see great potential in Andy. In fact, as I told the Elders, I believe that Andy Brightbill will one day be a very dynamic Senior Pastor. My hope is to keep him around here at Grace Church for as long as possible.
With Pastor Snow moving into retirement I began dialogue with three key men who I was interested in hiring to oversee our Adult Ministries here at Grace, especially as it relates to seeing all of the new people that God is bringing to us become connected to our church. All three of these men agreed to fervently pray about this possibility but each of them was led by the Lord to stay in their current area of ministry. It was after this that Andy talked with me about his interest in this role. My first reaction was to think, “But what about our youth ministry?”
It was right about this time that I went off to California to speak at Brethren National Youth Conference. While I was there I learned that we had a young man right here within our church that was quickly becoming a highly sought after individual to be youth pastor at other churches. I am speaking of our own Doug Kegarise. Doug grew up in our youth ministry and has served on our youth staff. He has been on our church staff here at Grace for the past six months as our part-time Assistant Director of Student Ministries. Doug has experienced the valuable ministry training and equipping program of Operation Barnabas in every capacity from a student to a Senior Leader just this past summer. His passion for youth and he and his wife’s effectiveness in working with teenagers is very evident.
It is then that I realized that the Lord was allowing me to fill all of our needed staffing slots with young, passionate and gifted leaders from right within our own church that I could have the privilege of continuing to mentor in the years to come. As a result, I am very excited to announce that beginning right after our Youth Winter Retreat (February 23-25), I will be officially moving Andy Brightbill to the role of Pastor of Connections here at Grace Church and Doug Kegarise will officially become our full-time Director of Student Ministries. Along with being over all of our Adult Ministry, Andy’s role as Pastor of Connections will also include giving pastoral oversight to our entire children’s and youth ministries. Doug will now become the staff member with the “hands on” responsibility for our Youth program and will start with the title, “Director of Student Ministries.” He will also begin working toward his ministerial licensure. When he has completed this, the church will have the opportunity to vote on Doug’s becoming an official part of our pastoral team as well as an Elder here at Grace Church. Please be praying for him and Renee as well as for Andy and Amber as they transition into these new and exciting roles here at Grace.
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