The Baltimore Orioles have just been awful over this summer. I mean, really, check out who they are ringing in as a relief pitcher!

Meanwhile, Ravens training camp opened earlier this week.  Everything is fresh and new.  And, if you don’t think that there are spiritual / religious implications then…

Meanwhile, in honor of the present Super Bowl champs, you should play a round of trivia game that asks you to discern between a legitimate Catholic Saint and a New Orleans Saint.

During times of universal deceit,

telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

– George Orwell

(h/t Michael Hyatt)

It’s been that sort of week. Last time, we visited the Keystone state, it was big enough to split into two, but nooooo, let’s do it all today!  Besides being my own childhood home (eastern PA), it is now home again to former co-worker and fellow blogger Sharon (western PA).

+ Peer Listening Training is available in Allentown.

+ Altoona – Johnstown offers you all the appropriate links for Catholic Scouting

+ A silent vocations discernment retreat for high school students, limited to 12 students, is available in the vacation spot of northwestern PA, Erie.

+ Greensburg extends the invitation to become a Diocesan Youth Reporter 

+ Churchstock, an annual end-of-Summer Reunion and Rally, will again be offered in Harrisburg

+ Leo Carlin, a 2009 Philadelphia CYO Hall of Fame Honoree and Philadelphia Eagles Ticket Manager, invites you to the Philadelphia Eagles Flight Night! Fly, ig-gles, fly!

+ Each fall, Pittsburgh sponsors a WYD Boat Cruise along the “three rivers.”

+ The Catholic Youth Center for Wilkes-Barre opened its doors in 1948. The original building structure consisted of multi-purpose rooms for programming and special events. Bowling lanes were located on the lower level of the building. In 1959, the structure was expanded to include a gymnasium and swimming pool. Additional land was purchased in the late 1970′s which allowed for the construction of outdoor basketball and tennis courts along with a playground area. Through a Capital Expansion/Improvement program, the CYC added a state of the art Aquatic Center, converted the existing swimming pool into an additional gymnasium, remodeled its main gymnasium, and purchased land to create a beautiful park at the rear of the facility.  All part of the ministry in Scranton.

We continue on our journey on Monday! 

  Joshua Griffin is the High School Pastor at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA. (Perhaps you’ve heard of it… Imagine having to defend what purpose had driven you to leave a mess in the youth room <youth complex, actually> to Pastor Rick Warren – - yeah, that Saddleback.)

Josh Griffin is a blogger. Find him at MoreThanDodgeball.com.  Most importantly, Griff is a parent who is off on vacation this week. So, he sought out some guest bloggers, I submitted, and, well…

Check it out.

Welcome, Dodgeballians, feel free to tour the blog.  Yea, we are papists, but we are the fun sort that you likely not tell your mother about. Check the state tour and see what our brothers and sisters are doing in your neighborhood.  And, don’t be a stranger! Y’all come back now, ya’ hear?

Nah, we’re not celebrating this blogger’s hometown baseball team.  They’re in the basement, not much to celebrate there like we have already done with Oklahoma and Oregon.

 + Oklahoma City is prepping up for the Region 10 Catholic Youth Conference in November in Little Rock. The theme is Ignite your heart… Work for justice… Transform the world

 + Tulsa asks (and suggests an answer to) the question would Jesus have tweeted?

  + The theme for this Summer’s Camps for Baker is Armor Yourself: Fight for Faith based on Hebrews 4:12a, “The Word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword.”

 + The Youth Minister Gathering in Portland is underwritten in part by the Archbishop’s Annual Appeal.

Whew, what a week… there the second double-stater in three days.  Come back tomorrow as we wrap it up with my childhood home state!

Tom Peters has got this great Little Big Things series on YouTube that is worth monitoring. This series and his book are about suggesting that it is not the big showy things that make for great leadership but it is the little big things that are done and done well that make the difference.

In this video, he is talking the language that we often toss around in Catholic Youth Ministry… Servant Leadership. 

He suggests that the truest servant leader is one who lays down his own life to remove hurdles for another… Hmmm, that sounds remarkably familiar!

What have you done in the past 24 hours to make the ability to do ministry easier for another person?

Did i seriously forget Columbus last year?  Seems so.  Sorry!

+ Hey, that’s a colorful use of “buttons” on the Cincinnati site.

+ Wild! Cleveland has got an upcoming fundraiser at the fundraiser at the Zoo

+ Columbus has a special site for XLT

+ And for the second year running, Steubenville does not have an office page. Steubenville?  How can this be?

+ The Night of Wisdom concert event precedes the Youth Workers Retreat… Both on a February weekend with Sarah Hart in Toledo

+ The newsletter in Youngstown is pretty spiffy looking!

We use this regular Tuesday feature to report what is going on in the world of Catholic Youth Ministry as reported in the news.  Sometimes, we don’t have to look too far. (Besides, we are proud of our programming  and talent folks in the ArchBalt.)

BALTIMORE, MD — Before he departed for potentially five years of studies at the Pontifical North American College in Rome July 18, Seminarian Josh Laws had one last thing he wanted to do in the Archdiocese of Baltimore: be a staff member in Justice Action Week. “I kind of look at it as the church at its best and really Baltimore at its best,” said Laws, who grew up a parishioner of St. Stephen in Bradshaw and is an alumni and past staffer of JAW. “I wanted to spend time with Baltimore and the local church.”  Read the whole Catholic Review story.

Both Carolina and Dakota, North’s that is, are two-diocese states, so, we are gonna double up today, something we did not do last year. So… North Dakota

+ Bismarck has a Summer Youth Service Projects in June in Mandaree with another coming next month in
Fort Yates.

+ The Young Disciples Teams from Fargo put on week-long camps at parishes for elementary students.

and then, North Carolina

+ One of the events available in Charlotte is the True Love Waits program

+ Raleigh has a program ministry by college aged youth known as CREW.

Whew, I’m exhausted. Two states, four dioceses, one Lord of all.

I’ve been reading Kenda Creasy Dean’s OMG: A Youth Ministry Handbook.  It is a brilliant and worthwhile read.  In it she offers a retelling of the story of a young man named Eutychus from Acts 20: 5-12.

On the first day of the week when we gathered to break bread, Paul spoke to them because he was going to leave on the next day, and he kept on speaking until midnight. There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were gathered, and a young man named Eutychus who was sitting on the window sill was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. Once overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and when he was picked up, he was dead. Paul went down, threw himself upon him, and said as he embraced him, "Don’t be alarmed; there is life in him."

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