Way back in the day, about seven years ago, this crazy and shall we say naive youth minister named Scott, from York, PA had a crazy idea.
Scott said, "you know", (he says that a lot), "you know, it seems to me that these young people come back from the Steubenville Summer Conference all fired up, and along about October or November the flame is running low on fuel for some of the crew. You know, maybe we should just have us a little one day thing where we do some singing and praising, talk about Jesus and give the young folks some much needed FIRE. You know, maybe we could even plant some seeds for next years conference at the same time."
So the first year about 200 folks showed up to Scott's parish, St. Joseph's in York, PA and sang songs of praise, worshipped the Lord, ate pizza, listened to speakers and had a pretty cool Mass with some awesome Franciscan Priests. Way to go Scott.
Then the next year Scott says, "you know, maybe some more people from other places might want to come." So he invited them. Four Hundred showed up. Wow, way to go Scott. He invited a big name celebrity from Catholic Answers, Jason Everet, and now Martin Doman was working at the parish, so year two was a great big hit.
Then he really started to get the big head. Not really. What really happened is that Scott in humility realized that FTF was a great idea and that the Holy Spirit was guiding it into a day of conversion and renewal for many young people and adults. Scott joined his two friends Tom and Art at Catholicl Youth Ministry Group to begin to pray about what God wanted to do with Fan The Fire ®. After much prayer the decision was that we would be open to taking Fan The Fire on the road if it was Gods will. We made no attempt to promote new locations for FTF, but in 2005 God brought a great group of enthusiastic youth ministers in Philadelphia, PA into the the FTF family and FTF Philly was born.
God has truly blessed this effort and we are now planing our third FTF in Philly and our First FTF in CT is coming in August 2006.
And FTF in York, PA, continues to draw over 700 people each year.
We now listen to Scott. He has great ideas. Join us for this great idea and be a part of a Fan the Fire near you!
