My first month on the job: What I’ve learned

On August 4th, 2008, I began my first day at St. Paul’s. Starting in August has been both a blessing and a trial. The reality of Church in Canada during the summer is that, basically, it is on vacation, for better or worse. Attendance drops, people head north and at St. Paul’s the youth group is dormant. A large part of my job is overseeing the youth ministry. So you may be asking, “Matt, what the heck have you done all August?” Good question. You’d be surprised how much time it can take to get your head around a particular ministry or a particular Church. In fact I think there are pastors who spend their whole lives trying to figure out this mystery and I’m sure God wonders sometimes too! This brings me to the point I was getting at, blessing and trial. This has been a blessing because it has given me time and space to think through and learn about youth ministry at St. Paul’s. What is about? What happens? What’s important? What is the vision? Where is God at work? What are the youth like!?! These are all very big questions. For the first two weeks I was like a kid in a candy shop. As someone who loves ministry it’s a true gift to be in a place where I can wrestle with these questions and for the first bit I thought I was doing a pretty good job. However, have you ever had those moments in life where you stop and go, “shoot…does any of this make any sense? What if all these ideas I have are really not that good? Am I out to lunch!?!” This is when discouragement sets in and this is when, I believe, satan is at his best. At the same time though, this is a breaking point which holds great opportunity. This is a place in our life that brings us to our knees, that shows us our need for God. It is a good place to be in when we know and realize that none if this is possible without God and none of this matters if God is not the Lord of all we’re doing. It’s at this point where we begin to ask questions like, “God, what do you want to see? Jesus, what’s important to you? Holy Spirit…I need you!” Anyhow, here a couple of lessons that I’ve learned through this journey:

# 1. Support. Having a team of people to support and pray for you is key. Thank you ministry team!

# 2. Personal Devotion. I can’t tell you how important staying rooted in God has been. This means lot’s of time in prayer, reading scripture and being still. It is also funny how as time has gone on here and the newness of the job has worn off that being disciplined in this area has been harder. “There are so many things to do. How can you justify doing this, it is a waste of time”. However, I have had the still quiet voice confirm, “Matt, this is important. Matt, you need to do this. Matt, slow down and stick with me.” Okay God, sounds good.

# 3. God uses it all. It would be easy to think of all the hours I spent working through all the big questions as a waste of time. Again, I think that is a way satan would discourage us. However, it is so important to have the grace to fail. So what if an idea flops? So what if you take a wrong turn? That’s life. Keep going!

# 4. Keep it simple. When it comes down to it all of the fancy frills of ministry, all the plans, systems, templates, process, is secondary. What’s first is staying connected to God. What’s second is loving people where they’re at. The rest is a bonus.

Well, chalk the first “real” blog posting up as a long one. I can’t promise they will all be this long. Come to think of it, who knows if you want to even read posts this long…congratulations if you made it this far! (Note to self, shorten blog postings)

Okay, well God bless. I hope all is well with you. If you’ve been learning any cool things on your own spiritual journey I’d love to hear about. Post them below or post your opinion on how long blog posts should be…I have no idea!

Peace out,

Matt