Good Work.

Hey everyone!

This past few weeks have been busy and good. Here are a few of the highlights:

The Elders

I sat down with the elders of the church, who are excited about what I will be doing and very supportive. We talked about what I was passionate about - pastoral care, leadership development, and spiritual formation. They spent a good deal of time affirming me, calling out the good they've seen as I've been a part of the community over the past year.

They made sure to let me know that this isn't a short term thing, or some way to capitalize on the seminary students in the church. Like, "quick, let's see how much we can get them to do for how little!" Their hope and dream for me is that I will be a (paid) part of the work of the community indefinitely, with their support and mentoring along the way. If it only lasted two years, and then I was planting another church in another city, great! If I stayed as the pastor of the Burlingame gathering for the next 20 years, also great! It is incredible to feel so supported.

Funny rabbit trail on this. I was getting really nervous to introduce myself to the elders, they seemed so mysterious. I kept listing off the elders I knew, and could only come up with six. Who were the others? When Julia and I got to the place where they were meeting, I counted the cars I recognized. It was just the six elders I knew. Did they carpool so that I wouldn't know who they were? Are they really this secretive? I got even more nervous. We walk in the door, and there are the six elders I named. Turns out only Presbyterians elders come in sets of 12!

Good Conversations

Julia and I have been breathing community. Three nights a week we are having dinner with people from the congregation, and it has been incredible. The people are excited to have us, and very supportive of what we are there to do. This has meant the world to me.

The other night we had a woman over to dinner who was an ex-pastor from Dallas. We got to talking about desires and mission. It turns out her story was very similar to mine, burn out at a young age, disillusionment, wondering if ministry would ever be on the radar again. It was great to get to know her this way, and speak into her life the truth, that God still had dreams for her that hadn't yet come to pass. If I have a conversation like that once a month, I will consider this life well lived.

I got on the phone with a man at my church a couple weeks back, who had just posted an intriguing status update on Facebook. For those of you who are hearing those words for the first time, Facebook is a social website where people make a unique page about themselves, communicate with friends, and waste huge amounts of time ;) One of the best pieces is the ability to leave status updates, little snippets on what you are doing, thinking, reading, etc. So his update said, "[Insert Name Here] is considering his vocational future." I gave him a call, and we had a good and long conversation about his hopes to be doing ministry. He works for a restaurant chain as a waiter, just finished seminary, and has a wife and newborn son. He knows that his life is meant for more than waiting tables, but the opportunities to lead weren't readily in front of him. I got to speak words of encouragement into his life as well, knowing that he has been on my mind for different ministry projects that are coming up. After our conversation, we set out a plan to create a new ministry to the elementary school children who are now coming to church. His input at our first meeting was incredible, and I can tell that he is going to do really great things at our church in the near future.

Big Kids

As a church with many young families (we probably have 30 or more kids ages 0-5), we are beginning to ask ourselves big questions. What do we want to pass on to our youth? What will our kids one day say about their church experience? These questions are really important to a church filled with people who have had less than perfect church experiences. They probably should be real important questions everywhere, but I take what I can get!

We got into discussing what to do with our older kids (ages 6-10) during our services, and we pushed around some big picture ideas. One key vision for the spiritual formation of our youth was the idea of parental modeling. We are setting our sights on having this be the goal: that the family is the best place for spiritual formation to occur. This happens best during our Sunday gatherings by watching and participating. Kids get to see their parents responding to God's invitations through giving, discussing, praying, singing, and taking communion. This also happens throughout the week as parents talk with their kids, pracitice hospitality to neighbors, participate in what good the city is accomplishing, etc. It's exciting to dream about what this will mean for children's spiritual development. With this being the case, will they struggle with the same questions we struggled with? Will they meet the same challenges in high school, college, adulthood? I guess it's hard to know, but it is exciting to take steps that will hopefully bring a better spiritual legacy for our children.

Here's a beautiful real life example.

Well, that seems like quite an update, I'll keep you posted. Thanks everyone! We love you all a lot.

Andrew