Orcas Island Community Church is excited to introduce our new Pastor for Youth and Young Adults, T.J. Meaney, who moved to Orcas in January.

“I’m excited to get to know everybody, to hear lots of stories, to be part of life here, and to figure out what makes everyone tick,” says Meaney. He will be joined by his fiancee Jessica after their wedding this March.

Meaney will manage the Wednesday Night Live youth group for middle and high school students, as well as special events like summertime Camp Chelan and mission trips. First on his docket is planning a youth mission trip to the San Francisco Bay Area during Spring Break on April 15-22.

Meaney will also be establishing a new ministry on the island with young adults. Over the next several months, Meaney will share new initiatives aimed at connecting with this group of people. “Since this is a new ministry to the church the specifics of what this will look like have yet to be determined, but we are excited about seeing these new connections start to come together,” said OICC associate pastor Brian Moss.

Last summer, Meaney helped lead worship at the church’s annual Camp Chelan trip for middle and high school youth. He was intrigued by the community he saw among the kids at Camp Chelan that summer.

“Experiencing the community feel at camp and seeing the kind of relationships these kids have, it was inspiring,” he said. “It was so outside of my world, so different from city life.”

A few months later, Meaney discovered the church was looking for a youth pastor, and he thought back to his time at camp.

“God’s been teaching me the importance of community in all of our lives, having people who are consistently there,” he said. “It’s exciting to think that I can be the person that’s around when someone’s having a hard time.” Small-town life is familiar to Jessica, who grew up in Belen, New Mexico, with a population of 7,000.

During Meaney’s own childhood, his father Timothy worked as a traveling worship leader, touring Japan, Germany and the Unites States. Moss actually toured and performed with Meaney during that time.

Meaney soon discovered that he, too, was gifted in music and sound production. Starting in seventh grade, his youth group didn’t have anyone to lead worship, so he and his friend Joel stepped up with their guitars.

Thanks to the Running Start program, Meaney graduated from high school in 2010 with his associate’s degree from Bellevue College. He learned sound engineering and recording techniques at his dad’s studio. In 2011, he helped friends at Eigenart Music School in Germany set up a recording studio. When he returned to the states, Meaney earned a certificate in Theology of Music from the Calvary Chapel School of Worship in Santa Ana, California. He spent a couple of years in sales at Apple, teaching workshops and classes, before he accepted a job as a worship leader for a non-denominational church in Woodinville called Washington Cathedral. He was working there when he felt called to Orcas Island. He loves playing guitar, writing and recording songs and working with studio equipment.

“A lot of my life revolves around music,” says Meaney.