OT: We're now accepting pre-orders for the CD!

[Ben E Lou]

Alright boyz, Things I Know For Sure can now be pre-ordered. Go to www.benelou.com to pre-order. The estimated shipping date for pre-orders is Monday, March 31st.

Also, a newsletter went out this afternoon with all the 4-1-1 on what is happening with my music. To see it, click HERE

[Senator]

I will be grabbing one of these before Skydog becomes famous and leaves the board forever.

And if Deep Within does not show up on the Christian Contemporary Charts, then I will be crying FOUL!

[FBPro]

Great job, just listened to a few samples....I'll be grabbing one but probably not till "tax month".

[McSweeny]

when are you going to get up here and play in the north east huh? i could hook you up with a bunch of cool guys if you're interested. Us punk rockers are very openminded and we'd love for you to open one of the local shows

[Ben E Lou]

McSweeny--Touring just really isn't an option at this point. I have a career that I love. For now, I intend to limit myself to the three release concerts, local shows in the Atlanta metro area, and Young Life events.

Senator--I appreciate you saying that, but being an indy, there's not a snowball's chance.

FBPro--Thanks!

[Dutch]

It's unavailable right now (paypal) but that gives me time to get my paypal account figured out.

[Vince]

SkyDog - I've been meaning to ask you this ever since I found out you were involved in Young Life. How big an organization is Young Life? My little brother got involved in High School for a little while (he's only 13 months younger than I am, but he went to the local public school and I went to private school), and I think that it really turned him around. He went from being a loner with a bad attitude and poor grades to a social, successful high school student, and he always raved about Young Life.

I was just wondering, because I have only heard of it in the two instances, and was curious about the size because I was wondering if you over on the East Coast ever have any interaction with any of the organization that my brother might have been involved in here on the West Coast.

PS - I'll be ordering your CD as soon as my financial situation permits it Hopefully that's soon

[Ben E Lou]

Originally posted by Dutch
It's unavailable right now (paypal) but that gives me time to get my paypal account figured out.

Yeah...I just saw that. I went over there to look at my orders from last night. It says it will be back up by 6:30 (15 minutes from now...) We'll see.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally posted by Vince
SkyDog - I've been meaning to ask you this ever since I found out you were involved in Young Life. How big an organization is Young Life? My little brother got involved in High School for a little while (he's only 13 months younger than I am, but he went to the local public school and I went to private school), and I think that it really turned him around. He went from being a loner with a bad attitude and poor grades to a social, successful high school student, and he always raved about Young Life.

I was just wondering, because I have only heard of it in the two instances, and was curious about the size because I was wondering if you over on the East Coast ever have any interaction with any of the organization that my brother might have been involved in here on the West Coast.

PS - I'll be ordering your CD as soon as my financial situation permits it Hopefully that's soon

Vince,

First off, that's great to hear about your little brother! It is the same organization, but I personally don't have much interaction with the ministry out there. Because Young Life encourages the local community to "own" the ministry, the strength of the ministry is definitely at the local level. We are much more of a "grassroots" organization than a top-down led organization. As a staff person, I see myself on the org chart as below the volunteer leaders in my community, undergirding and supporting them--setting THEM up to minister to kids, so that it is their ministry, not mine. My Regional Director (next level of management) would be "below" me as well, trying to do the same things for me that I try to do for the volunteers in my community. We have interactions as staff members at conferences and whatnot, but those break down as follows:

Regional Conferences (in my case, the state of Georgia)--2 or 3 per year (about 50 full-time staff members)
Divisional Conferences (the Southeast Division in this case)--every 2 years (maybe 300-400 full-time staff)
All-Staff (US and International)--every 4 years (over 3,000 full-time staff, PLUS nearly all spouses attend--this is a monster)

So, as you can see, I have significant interaction with other staff members in my region. Not only do we do the conferences together, but we also help each other out on our weekend trips to free one another up to be with kids and leaders. (For example, when Gwinnett County YL does a weekend trip, they might ask me to go up and lead music, another staff person from our region to be the speaker, and still another to put a "program" team together--the team that takes care of activities/games/fun stuff. So we also hang out together running camps.) The staff members in my Region are some of my best friends. It is hit and miss with those farther away though.

To give you more an idea of the size of YL, I just looked at some stats. Here ya go...

• Young Life currently operates in 845 communities across the United States.
• We have ministries in 52 other countries.
• We have around 3,300 staff members and around 15,000 volunteers working with kids.
• We had about 100,000 campers go on trips with YL last year, with about 20,000 leaders. (Note that those leader numbers indicate significant numbers who went on more than one trip. As a staff person, I am planning on being on 9 different trips from Fall 2K2 to the end of summer 2K3. Campers tend to go on no more than 2 in any one school year.)
• We have 171 ministries in the US that specifically target disabled kids.

Probably more info than you were looking for, but there it is.

--Ben

[AnalBumCover]

Bump.

Just ordered my copy. Congratulations Ben. And thank you. Your music will accompany me every weekday afternoon on my long and lonely commute home from work.

Rob

[Vince]

Wow, YL is a bit larger than I expected...I'm surprised the only times I've heard of it were when my brother joined and when you mentioned that you are a member. Well, kudos to you guys for doing a good job, and being great members of the community!