About

Neal Bowes

I am honored to be serving God as the fulltime Director of Youth Ministries at Jesse Lee Memorial United Methodist Church in Ridgefield, Connecticut, where I reside with my wife, Angela, and our children, Dackerie (4/28/01) and Camden (5/28/06). Previously, I had volunteered as the youth group leader at my home church in Avis, Pennsylvania, and at the Long Hill UMC in Trumbull, CT, but this is my first “job” as a youth minister. I started at Jesse Lee in August of 2002, and have been having the time of my life ever since.

I was born September 7, 1971, in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. I lived for a while in Cogan Station and South Williamsport before my family moved to Avis when I was 6. I grew up there and attended the Jersey Shore Area High School. I also attended the Avis United Methodist Church, where I was confirmed and very active in youth group. I graduated high school in 1989, but I guess I never really graduated youth group. I stayed on as a leader and served there for several years.

God gives me guidance in a number of ways, but the first time I heard His voice was when I was 15. God said that my career would be working for Him. I spoke with my pastor about this, and he started gathering information for me on different seminaries. But that isn’t what I understood my calling to be—then or now.

During my junior year of high school, my friend, Mike Fox, and I joined a Boy Scout Explorer post sponsored by WPBZ radio in Lock Haven. I had a blast! I was completely in love with the idea of working in radio. I took an audition tape to Scott Masteller at WYRS in Jersey Shore during the summer before my senior year and he hired me. I did two shifts a weekend. A month after I graduated, I was hired fulltime by their sister station, WWPA. Meanwhile, I attended the Pennsylvania College of Technology.

I worked in radio for 12 years, including WLYC and WILQ. On “The Q,” I was part of “Todd and Neal in the Morning.” We had so much fun. Our morning show was rated #1 in our market, and we were rated #7 in the country by Radio and Records (based on percentage audience, and I forget the year, but probably 1999). I also won awards for commercial production. On the weekends, I would hire myself out as a DJ for wedding receptions and parties. I was booked a year in advance.

Things were going well. I was on top of my game and making a ton of money. But somehow, I just wasn’t content. I think that’s what happens when you’re not where God wants you to be.

An opportunity came up to work as a website designer for SiteShell in Shelton, Connecticut. Angela and I had been married in August of 1998 and had just bought a house that December. Changing careers, selling a house, and moving out of state are big decisions for newlyweds to make, but we felt that if we didn’t do it, we’d always wonder “what if.” We left Pennsylvania in June of 2000.

The website company was not really my destination. It was the carrot and stick that God was using to lure me away from radio and back on track with his plan. Yes, I am aware that using this illustration makes me a donkey. If the hoof fits…

Funding was cut to the website company about a year and a half after I started there. Angela lost her job, too. So there we were, unemployed in the most expensive state in the union. But God is good all the time.

I had started a youth ministry at the Long Hill church and was attending a youth conference in Stamford, CT, in March of 2002, when I met Emily Hall, the Associate Pastor at Jesse Lee. She wanted to know if I wanted a job. She said that she was being reassigned that year and that Jesse Lee would be looking for a fulltime youth minister. I thanked her, but told her that on paper I wasn’t qualified for that job. My résumé wouldn’t have moved anybody to interview me, much less hire me. She said she had a feeling, and from that day in March until the day they posted the job in May, not a day went by where she wasn’t in touch either by phone or IM. I submitted an application in May and had an interview in July.

The interview consisted of a meeting with the search committee, which was comprised of 14 people. They all asked me a bunch of theological and hypothetical questions. I should have been nervous, but I wasn’t. I knew that whomever God wanted to have this job would have it, and all the rest was just a going through of the motions. But when Craig Stunkel, the chairperson of SPRC, called to offer me the job, then I got nervous.

Aside from my duties at Jesse Lee, I work as a youth ministry consultant for the New York Annual Conference. I visit churches in the region to help them start and strengthen their youth ministries.

I also work as a staff writer for the United Methodist Publishing House, for their youth Sunday school curriculum called LinC.

Each week, I write daily devotions for the kids in my youth group and publish them on www.DailyDevos.org, where youth group leaders can download, copy, and distribute them to their kids.

I am incredibly happy, and good things are happening here. Praise be to God.