Staff Member Mondays = Sarah Yardley

Reality Carpinteria welcomes Sarah Yardley as the newest member of our staff!

The first time I met Sarah was at College Camp 2008. She wasn’t in college (she was head of Calvary Distribution at the time), but she showed up anyway with an entourage of gals, and stayed in a hotel up the road instead of the cabins. It was one of the coolest rockstar moments I had ever seen (except for the days Britt Merrick used to fauxhawk his hair, remember??).

Now she is the executive assistant to Britt, and she’s still a rockstar.

Staff Member Mondays = Britt Merrick

-This is what he looks like AFTER Easter.

Chad Amico is our Missions Pastor, and a coordinator at the Ventura Campus.

One time, when we were prepping our teams for missions, and the excitement of running around a new city was overwhelming the team, Chad exclaimed with a Piper-esque fervor,

“This ain’t no cappuccino prayer tour! Learn to suffer!”

We’ve been suffering on the mission field ever since (Except for S.F. and London, where part of the mission is to infiltrate coffee shops and be hip).

Chad is the great dichotomy of our staff meeting…

• He is often the one with brilliant suggestions for maintaining the ebb and flow of various church functions, and is a voice of wisdom and experience in nearly every possible field of ministry, not limited to, but including pastoring our international sending team, to offering wise council in the lives of others (like us) on a regular basis.
• Yet he unashamedly remains unscathed by Facebook, Twitter, blogs, mp3 players, and if you ask him if he got in someone’s grill, he will reply, “What’s a grill?”

Of course, he is a fast learner, and is constantly picking up on the current lingo of the times, and at such a rapid pace, he would have hipsters weeping and gnashing. In fact, he learns so quickly that he sometimes takes things overboard, but in a way that makes us truly love having him on staff with us. He fits in well.

(For some of his uses of modern day slang, click here)

Just kidding. But I wish.

Ryan is the youth pastor for Reality Carp Youth. His nickname is “Rizz.”

In addition to spearheading the youth ministry at Reality Carpinteria, Rizz has also revolutionized the way the English language is spoken around Reality. He has single-handedly demolished the need for any type of adverbs, predicates, and the usage of many third-person singular pronouns.

Words like “it” are now considered outdated by the youth, as you may often hear sentence structures such as,

• Nobody hates, everybody loves (this means “we are all in agreement” and is missing the pronoun “this”)
• Nobody knows (this should say “nobody knows the answer to ______.)
• Best thing ever (this sentence would normally read “that’s really awesome”)
• Must needs (this sentence should read, “I really need that”)
• Just sayin’ (this sentence is missing “I” and an object. You say this when making a valid point, or just going on a tangent)
• Never been done before (something amazing just happened)
• I want all things (this means you want a specific thing, not all things)
• Hundo (this is short for “100”)
• Ohhh (in a high-pitched voice, this means you are overwhelmed)
• I mean…Really? (this is the same as ‘ohhh’ but with a direct object)

As you can see, Rizz has greatly influenced the way we talk in the office.

Since he needs little introduction on this blog, I’ve decided to offer a few informalities about him instead:

1. He has his own avocado tree
2. He hates dogs
3. He likes to rough-house (usually with new recruits to the Reality staff)
4. One time when we were wrestling in Jerusalem, he picked me up and slammed me against the ground three times. Then we laughed and ate Shwarma together.
5. He’s coming out with a book next week, which you can learn more about here.
6. He sometimes assumes the stylistic mannerisms of various church-planters as they are on staff (anyone notice the recent tight-pants, and v-neck additions to his wardrobe?)
7. He used to use lotion in his hair to get his famous faux-hawk
8. He’s been stoned by angry people (The stones missed of course).
9. He can only be serious for so long!
10. He is one of the funnest people in the world to be around.

Cody is our Director of Media & Communications. It’s his birthday today!

Cody reminds me of Wilson Wilson from Home Improvement, who would always offer wise insights, but could never be identified due to his stealth, ninja-like hiding place behind the fence. Only… Cody’s ‘fence’ is an Apple computer, or a sound board.

Carol is the mastermind of both Children’s Ministry, and Women’s Ministry, overseeing roughly 100 volunteers on a given week. She’s also one of the only persons on staff with a masters degree.

An easy way to get on her nerves is to eat from her stock of goldfish crackers. Children’s ministers hate that!

Here’s her Facebook. Say hi!

Staff Member #4 = Dominic Balli