A Wife's Call to Her Husband's Ministry

I am at the age most people begin looking at retirement. Imagine the surprise I felt when my husband came to me and said he knew God was calling him into full-time ministry! We had been through a very rough church split and were driving almost an hour to attend a church we believed God called us to be a part of. Changing careers was not on my agenda. I have somewhat of a career working in the public school system and was extremely happy with where I was working. I promised my husband I would pray through it with him and seek God’s direction. He began doing seminary classes and preparing for a new life’s calling. Between my jobs at private and public schools and volunteer church work I have 20+ years experience of working in youth ministry Honestly, I was really surprised at how God worked in our lives and placed us where we are. When my husband was called to be the Student Ministries Pastor at the church we’d been attending it meant moving. A precious individual in our church offered for us to stay with him while we looked for a place to live in Gonzales. The plan was for me to stay in our home except for Sunday and Wednesday nights since they are the specific times of ministry. I clearly remember (a few weeks into this new life) one evening, as I was walking, I felt this deep longing in my heart to be where my husband was and to be with the people God had called us to minister to. Yes you understood correctly, I said us. I almost felt jealous that he was there full-time. Although I wasn’t the paid staff member I knew it was just as much my calling to be involved in the ministry we are a part of. So the next day I loaded up my car and went to our temporary home full-time. It took a few months but God provided a nice house in a great area for us to live in. As tiring as it gets at times driving back and forth to my job, rushing to get home in time for whatever ministry we are a part of that evening, it is exhilarating and so satisfying knowing we are right where God wants us to be, doing what He has called us to do. I know most people would think that we are a little on the “old side” to be working with youth, even the kids tease us sometimes, but I believe at the time He placed us here they needed our laid back personalities to ease them through the changes they were going through. It has been an incredible journey seeing all the wonderful changes God is making not only in our students, but us as well. I fully trust and believe Him when He assures me, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” And trust me it is only by HIS strength that I can keep up the non-stop schedule. To see my husband’s heart break over a situation that a student is going through or the joy that bubbles out of his heart and explodes into the room when he sees a student “get it” or sees them grow in an area we’d been praying for them to change in is just amazing. But then, why wouldn’t it be when we serve such an incredible and amazing God. I can’t tell you that students know and comprehend how much God loves them but I do know if they can understand and comprehend that the love my husband and I pour and pray over them is just a thimble full compared to what God has for them then we are heading in the right direction with them to understanding His love. I love our community and the direction the youth pastors/leaders are heading and know that being on God’s side we are going to make great strides in reaching the youth of our community for Him. I love being a minister’s wife and the privileges that come with it. Seeing God at work up close and personal in so many areas as well as being a part of a team that loves God with all their heart, soul, and mind, and want to encourage those of all ages that when we embrace that we are embracing the most incredible life one could have and be on a journey that never stops being exciting. Look out Gonzales, because God is on the move!!!

Every Waking Thought

Being a follower of Jesus Christ and being in full-time ministry consume my every waking thought. This is what it would be like for you to spend the day in my flip-flops. Every waking thought is not only thinking on Kingdom things and the incredible Savior that I have but ministry (children's, youth, young adult) as well. Then you hear something or God reveals something to you and from that point on every waking thought is about that. Recently at our annual vision meeting, our Pastor shared some statistics with us that really stuck in my thoughts. He stated that 80% of our city is un-churched, 85% of our county is unchurched, and one of the cities within our county conservatively is 90 to 95% unchurched. These are shocking numbers; this means that 8 out 10 people are unchurched.

This is where my “every waking thought” is consumed with the W's, what can we do about it, when can we do something about it, and where do we come into play. Along with how we do it, how soon can we get started, and then there are several other questions that come along the way.

Up to 95% of one community is unchurched. These are huge numbers! How do you begin looking at solutions when from the first look it seems too overwhelming? Just this week I was watching a 2007 documentary on” The Pixar Story” where I learned an insight into ministry. In the developing of a computer animated cartoon they discovered that every scene is made up of little triangles and that one scene could have over 1 million little triangles. The numbers were over whelming but it made them think differently about solutions. 95% of the community that is unchurched causes you to begin thinking differently about the way you can reach into their lives and introduce them to Jesus Christ.

Right away, being a youth pastor, I began thinking how to impact the youth. I thought about having a presence at baseball, basketball, volleyball, soccer, softball, football games and etc. would be ways that I could look at reaching into this community. We do not have a church there this is a city that is 20+ miles away and we have 80% unchurched in our own community.

We are doing things in our own community to reach the unchurched, with an initiative that I began when I first took my position as Student Ministries Pastor. We now have five churches setting aside all of our denominational and associational boundaries to come together as one youth to worship one God once a quarter, and with the intention of equipping the students to reach their campus for Christ.

One thing that I would like to do with you, my online community, is to open up conversation and create some innovative “outside the box” thinking of creative ways to impact a rural community that is 95% unchurched. I would like to create a forum where this could take place, be it on this blog or through e-mails. My e-mail address is fluid2819@yahoo.com . Thank you for taking the time to read this blog and hopefully respond. I am looking forward to hearing and discussing some creative and innovative ways of impacting a community for Christ. If you are anything like me I know that you're “every waking thought” is consumed with your relationship with Christ and your own ministry.

Christian Cuss Words Are They Acceptable?

After being in the youth group for just a short time I was appalled by the language some of the youth were using. I began to listen to the adults in our church and even some of them used inappropriate language from time to time. I began to pray and ask God, “Why do these words that are used by the youth and some adults bother me?” Not long after I began praying this God showed me Ephesians 5: 10 I like the way The Message puts it “Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it.” The NIV says, “And find out what pleases the Lord.” I know another version said, “Seek what acceptable to the Lord”. I believe that Ephesians 5: 10 also deals with our vocabulary not just our actions.

I began talking with my students about the use of Christian cuss words. The first thing they wanted was a list of words that they should not say. I was not going to fall into that trap of legalism.

So what is a cuss word? A cuss word is profanity. It is an adjective and the dictionary describes it as the following: 1. Characterized by irreverence or contempt for God or sacred principles for things irreligious. 2. Not devoted to holy religious purposes; or the last thing you said was, common or vulgar.

The next thing we looked at was euphemisms. A euphemism by definition is; the substitution of a mild, indirect, vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh, or blunt. For example; “To pass away” is a euphemism for “to die”.

As the youth group met we learned that when you replace a profanity/cuss word with something that is less offensive you just turned that less offensive word into a profanity/cuss word. For example one of the favorite words used by Christians today and even some non-Christians is the word “frickin'” in place of the “F bomb.” I shared with my youth group my Christian cuss word is crap. When I asked them if they knew the word I was replacing it with they all nodded and smiled.

One of things that I discovered through the discussion of “Christian cuss words are they acceptable?” was that they do not like it when their parents or adults use euphemisms because they know the words that they are replacing them for, and they thought they should just go ahead and say the word if they are going to use that style of language.

Since this lesson a year ago this month the use of Christian cuss words have dramatically decreased and it is very rare that I hear any of those terms from my students. When someone new comes in and uses words like that I have heard them tell the new students that they are using a euphemism for a cuss word and we don't use them in our group.

I am not trying to tell you or anyone else how to speak. I am trying to provoke some thought and conversation about the language that we use. Ephesians 5:10; “Figure out what will please Christ and then do it.”

Sometimes You Just Have to Laugh

Second month into ministry, I find myself standing on the stage one Sunday morning in October giving announcements and it happened. I opened my mouth and it just came out and when those things happen there's no taking them back. So let me back up just a little bit to give you some background. October in our town brings two big events. The first one is “Come and Take it!” The whole town comes out for a long weekend of festivities; carnival rides, vendors, concerts, and all kinds of fun things. The second thing is more exclusive to our church. We’re a young church, at this point we're only three years old and from the beginning we have done what we affectionately call “Halloweiner.” This is an event where we go into a neighborhood and we give out hot dogs on Halloween. In our town we have one street that everybody trick-or-treats on and we set up at the end of the street in one of our church member’s front yard. We have our tables set up and our volunteers cooking hot dogs on grills, others putting the hot dogs in buns, more are serving the hot dogs and lemonade, to all the trick-or-treaters and their parents. We typically hand out 1000 free hot dogs in a two hour time span. We also have volunteers who man the carnival type games and hand out candy. Okay, let's go back to that Sunday morning when I was giving announcements. The Worship Pastor and I usually try to have some fun giving the announcements and he asked me that morning what I was going to dress up like for the Halloweiner. That's when I opened my mouth in front of the whole church with the youth right there. I said, “I don't know I'm dressing up as. I think I’ll let the youth create my costume for me. Well over the next couple of weeks the youth did a really good job hiding from me what they were going to do. On October 31st my phone rings and when I answer it one of the youth said they were ready for me and I was to meet them at the church. I drive to the church, very nervous. As I’m walking down the long hallway to the youth room not knowing what I was getting myself into, I get even more nervous. As I get closer the youth room I can see cardboard, paintbrushes, and I see some blue paint. I think to myself, homeless painter who likes the color blue but that was far from the truth. They had me stand on a piece of cardboard while they took paintbrushes and the blue paint and painted me from head to toe. Blue, that's right, in just a few minutes I was painted into an “avatar.” I had so much fun! It took weeks to get all the blue paint out of all nooks and crannies of my feet. Even though I had a ton of fun, honestly, this year I did not let them do my costume.

That is just one example of a funny ha-ha experience. There are other times that all you can do is laugh. Not long after that, just shortly before Thanksgiving, that year that I found a youth conference that I wanted to take our students to in January. It would be an overnight stay in Houston so I scrounged through what was left of the budget that I inherited and I found enough money to pay for a hotel. All I needed was the students to pay for the price of their ticket. I get everything done, flyers made up, sign-up sheets, etc. I'm getting ready to give information to the students and parents for the very first time on my very first event. I have everything worked out. I hand out the first flyers to announce this incredible conference and an overnight stay in Houston. Then two of the moms look at me and they tell me “they didn't know anything about this event”. They proceed to tell me I have to do a better job getting information to them earlier. I just simply smiled and said ladies you're right I'm so sorry. The funny thing about that is that the students of these two women haven't been in my youth group since that event. Another time that is just laughable is the first time I took our junior high youth group out of town for the day. Remember, this is sixth and seventh graders. I posted it on Facebook, sent e-mails, and I text messaged every junior high parent and said we will leave the church at 11:30 to go to Austin for the day. I got a returning text message asking me a.m. or p.m.? Then from another parent I got a phone call asking me a.m. or p.m.? I told them a.m. Okay, I know youth pastors are known for being a little nuts but I will not be leaving the church at 11:30 p.m. to go to the big city of Austin, Texas with your junior high students. This is where I learned that you have to make sure that every “T” is crossed and every “I” is dotted. You can't just make this stuff up sometimes you just have to laugh.

Rattling the Rules in Rural America

Rattling the rules does not always make sense even when the “why” is very clear. Growing up in a small town in rural America I remember the anxiety and fear of that long awaited rite-of-passage from junior high to high school. The anxiety and fear in this incredible new journey into high school came from the initiation that took place in our local high school. The school administrators and teachers and any other adult on a campus just seemed to turn and look the other way when the freshman class was harassed and even hazed by the upperclassman. Any junior or senior could walk up to a freshman student and tell them to “drop them or lose them.” If you did not comply your pants could end up flying from the campus flagpole or tossed out onto the middle of the gymnasium floor during the girls PE class. I was not very popular in junior high and thinking about going to the high school campus made me feel I was quite alone and fearful. This transition time was made easier for me by having friends already in high school. One of my neighbors and best friends was already a junior so I came to high school with an ally.
I feel I rattled the rules when I took a position as a youth pastor in rural America with one of the first changes I incorporated. I shifted the promotion ages a bit. I wanted to create a junior high youth group that began with 6th grade and a high school group beginning with 8th grade. The way our schools are set up in my town is fourth through sixth graders are on a campus, junior high is seventh through eighth grade, and high school is the normal ninth through twelfth. Our church Bible study classrooms were set up with fourth through sixth grades being a part of children's ministry, and junior high Bible class was seventh through eighth graders who didn't really belong to children's ministry or youth ministry. Youth ministry was only considered ninth through twelfth grades.
In making the shift of classroom age divisions I created a new youth group for junior high (6-7) and a part of youth ministry and moved the eighth grade in with the high school. My logic behind this was to mix the grades so that a student at a lower level campus would already have built friendships with an upper level campus student so as to help relieve some of the anxiety for the younger student knowing they had an older student that would look out for them when they moved up, especially the eighth graders going into high school.
This was a move that parents and students alike did not agree with or understand until they saw it in action through their own students and in their personal experiences.

New on the Job

The day is finally here, my first day on the job as a Student Ministries Pastor! So much excitement about the journey ahead, but I know it's not going to be a smooth road. Over the past three months I've been sharing the responsibilities with the summer intern. A few months earlier the current youth pastor had left the position. I don't want to go into a lot of details about that, but I will say that once I started the position I felt that the youth group had just gone through a very painful separation and divorce. The young man, who I replaced, was the first youth pastor our students had at TRBC. He was a great guy, built a lot of solid relationships with the students but it was still a rough separation. My wife and I had been facilitating DivorceCare for the last five years and seeing the pain that comes from separation and divorce was really similar to what we were experiencing with the students in this youth group. This was the first hurdle that we had to overcome in our brand-new ministry.

Coming into this I already had some thoughts and ideas and game plans that I believe God had laid on my heart for this youth group and for me. One of the things was a desire to get to know the other youth pastors in our community and to work together in serving the community of Gonzales as one youth group and yet staying very independent in our own youth groups, more about that later.

Within my first week I'll never forget leaving Whataburger after lunch one day and as I drove by the football stadium I just really remember how God laid on my heart teenage parents. I remember saying, “this is my first week on the job I have a lot of things that I need to get used to are you sure you want me to start this new ministry so early?” This is just one of those things that you try to set aside and He keeps bringing it back, you set it aside then He brings it back. During a conversation one afternoon, with one of the ladies in our church, I was sharing with her what God had laid on my heart several months earlier. She told me that teen parents were also heavy on her heart because she had been a teen parent. In sharing this with my senior pastor he told me that this is an area that is near and dear to the heart of our core. At the time of this conversation our church was approximately 3 years old. He shared with me the conversations that went on in the very beginning with the core families. I started researching teen parenthood in our city and our state and in the nation. The things I discovered in my research were not only shocking but really disappointing. Our local high school, of only 600 students, was just barely through half of the school year and one of the counselors at the high school told me that this year alone new pregnancies, not counting existing teen parents but new moms and dads was already at 17. Learning that our state, TX, is third in the nation for first-time pregnancies and we rank number one in the nation for second time pregnancies for teens. Quickly I found many women in our congregation that had the same burden as I did and we began putting together a program for teen moms and dads. We didn’t want to leave the dad out as many of the fine programs out there are strictly focused towards the moms. Understanding that dads usually don't stick around which leaves the teen mom by herself without support from him, we wanted to try to keep him involved. Like many programs that are begun in the church this one had its troubles. The people on the planning team had trouble with commitment to meetings and following through with assignments, due to their own busy schedules with families and jobs. These were all things that contributed to putting this program on hold for a while. I still believe that this is something that God wants us to do here in our community but I also believe that it wasn't meant to be the way we were going about. This is still an area that comes to my heart on a consistent basis. I am waiting on God to show when the time is right to pull the plans out and begin getting things back in motion for this important opportunity to reach young people who have made a choice and will need guidance in living with the outcome of those choices.

God working in me

Not long ago on a Friday night sitting in the stands watching a football game I heard God calling me into full-time ministry. I was just recently laid off from my job. Now let me tell you this was an incredible feeling for the first time in many years maybe even ever I felt a calm, comfort, and even direction in my life. I knew at that very moment that God had been preparing me all these years for ministry. The uncertainty of not having a job and not knowing where the next paycheck was going to come from kind of disappeared that night. I knew that what ever was next God was in control. Not knowing where to begin with education, job prospects, how do you get started in full-time ministry these are just some of the questions that I had but I knew that it all would work out. The Internet is the first place to start, I thought. I have to get an education, I have no money, I'm old how can I go to seminary at my age, how was I going to pay for it, were all the things that ran through my thoughts. Then I found a Bible college offering affordable associates, bachelors,masters, and doctorate degrees. Andersonville Theological Seminary, that's the place for me so I began my education and could look for new job. Within about two months after being laid off I found employment with Pepsi. I went to work as a merchandiser knowing in my heart that this would just be a temporary job until God moved me into the ministry. Nine short months later on September 1, 2009 I began my new position as Student Ministries Pastor at Two Rivers Bible Church in Gonzales Texas. Now one year and three months later at the age of 49 years old and four months away from my 50th birthday I find myself writing a blog about these wonderful students, this great community, and incredible church that God has given me. I hope that you enjoy the journey that we're about to begin these blogs with. I hope through my highs and lows my successes and my failures that God will teach you something about Himself like He's been teaching me.