Changes in Ministry

Whew, the changes just keep coming. This past Sunday, one of my co-workers announced his resignation. He's not leaving to go work at another church, he's decided that he needs to get out of ministry for his own spiritual health and relationship with Christ. In talking with him over the past few weeks as he has dealt with this decision, it has of course, made me start thinking about the same sort of things and how I deal with these feelings when they come up.

I am saddened anytime I hear of someone getting out of ministry, especially for personal spiritual health reasons. I respect my co-worker for his insight and recognition of what was happening in his life and his relationship with Christ, but I'm still saddened to see him step out of ministry. He is just one of several friends of mine that have gotten out of ministry in the past few years because of similar reasons.

What his decision got me thinking about was how I "take care" of my spiritual health to make sure I don't get to a point of "burnout" or something like that. I know that Satan attacks everyone who tries to serve God with their lives, and I know that I am always susceptible to those attacks, and that is the reason I make it a prioirty to have some of these things in place in my life and my ministry.

Shiloh plays a major role in keeping me "spiritually healthy". She is always encouraging me to take days off, to ask for help, to just spend time with God, and most importantly, she is always praying for me and tells me so. That gives me such strength and gives me such confidence that it is truly God working through me, rather than me doing anything on my own.

I also have several people close to me that I can go talk to when I'm having spiritually dry times, or just simple bad days. Volunteer parents in the Youth Ministry at University, friends in Youth Ministry at other churches, and even friends that have no interest in my ministry (sometimes the most important support!) are great friends that check up on me and that I can go to when needed.

The main two things that I try and do on my own are 1) taking "solo" days throughout the year and 2) reading books and listening to things that grow my spiritual life apart from my ministry. What I mean with my "solo" days are not just days off...but sort of like spiritual retreats by myself to refocus and just slow down. And the books that I read are not just books about Youth Ministry (or any other ministry), I also make sure to read things about making myself a better praying husband, or other things that are outside of my paid ministry.

And probably the biggest thing that helps keep my focus where I feel it needs to be in my ministry is that I know that it is God working in this ministry...not anything special that I am doing. I have been even more convinced of this in recent years and months. Watching the Spirit guide our teens, our class discussions, and even our Mission Trip makes it much easier on me to not feel the burden of needing to be THE one leading anything. Most of the time, I'm just convincing myself to get out of the way and let the teens see what God is doing.

So when these changes that do come up (it seems everyday) happen in my life and ministry, I feel comfortable dealing with them because I have made setting these supports and helps up in my life and my ministry a top prioirty.

And speaking of those changes...it seems that the "big one" is going to happen almost any day. This limbo of not knowing when Addison will come, and the fact that she could come at any time, is really going to be stressful!

Get Real & Live It!

Speaking of Changes...my house has a nursery!

So yeah, when talking about changes that are happening in my life right now, obviously the biggest one is that Ms. Addison is about to show up and change my whole world. Numerous things will be changing once she shows up (and have already begun to change before she's even here, of course) and the one that is on my mind tonight is that I will now live in a house that has a nursery.

Back in June, Shiloh and I started putting together the room that would become the nursery. That meant changing our "guest room" into the nursery, which meant turning the basement into our "guest room". The summer is a hard time for a Youth Minister to try and tackle a project like that...but its finally done. We've pretty much got the basement set up in two halves...one half to be our guest room, and the other half to be Shiloh's craft room. But probably more importantly, we have the guest room now officially turned in to the nursery.

The room was blue, and of course, that wouldn't work for our little girl...so we had to decide on a color that would be good for her.

We didn't want an all-pink room, but we needed a "girly" color. So we decided on yellow. I tried to convince Shiloh that we should leave the top third of the room blue, mainly so that I wouldn't have to paint that part. But that didn't work, so the whole room got painted. But first I decided that I needed to prime the walls, to make it easier for the yellow to cover the blue.

Shiloh's dad & step-mom were able to come in to town last weekend, and they were both a great help to us as we tried to get our house decorated (since we still had not done much of that since we moved in back in March) and Van was especially great to help get the nursery fully painted.

And after the room was painted, I added this tree in the corner to make it more than just a yellow room.

And then, once the tree was up, we added these butterflies and flowers to make it even more girly for little Addison.

And so, the last bit of decorations will be going up in the next week or so, but its pretty much done. Now if we can get the baby showers done (this weekend and next), I guess we'll be fairly ready for Addison to show up! (Or at least as ready as we can be!)

So, that's the big change that's on my mind right now...I guess I'll share about more changes later. Have a great weekend!

Get Real & Live It!

Ch-ch-changes...

From "The Best of Bowie (or Hunky Dory) - Changes":

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strain
...
Ch-ch-changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me,
But I can't trace time

Its been quite a while since I even had the thought of attempting to write a blog. Shiloh has had a blog for a little over a year now (I think) and I've sort of been vicariously blog-living through her. I always seem to have the problem of not really knowing what I would write about everyday to make it worth having a blog. And I didn't really want to be someone who only wrote about having a kid (not that its bad...I enjoy reading about your kid, I just don't want to ONLY write about that part of my life). And I'm not a preacher and don't have a desire to be, so I don't have deep inspirational stuff that pops into my head everyday that I can write devotional thoughts about each morning. But I do have "stuff" that pops into my head everyday...and Shiloh and I are having a baby soon (any week now, really)...and there is a lot of stuff going on that might be entertaining or interesting to other people...so I guess I'll give it a try and see what comes out of it.

As the song says at the beginning of this post, Changes...you're gonna have to turn and face the strain and be a different man. I'm about to be a dad, and I have this funny feeling that my life is going to change forever. I've been around different dads pretty much all my life (imagine that), and I have some excellent examples to follow, so I'm not really nervous about the actual "being a dad" part. I am fully comfortable knowing that I'm going to probably screw this up a time or two. What is starting to make me nervous are the times that I'm going to think I'm not screwing it up...that I'm doing a really good job. So I'm nervous about my confidence level, and how I'm going to handle all these changes. Already last week, I found myself sitting in my living room watching "Mamma Mia!" with Shiloh. Just one of many questionable (see: bad) decisions that will be made by the females in my life, I'm sure. And I'm sure there will be bigger changes than just what is on the TV.

There are lots of other changes going on right now, too, but I should probably save some of them for another day when I can't think of something else to blog about.

I guess that makes the first post completed!

Get Real & Live It!