Well, it was one of those evenings, again, where I may have made some questionable decisions leading to my reason for staying up later than I should. So I sit in my bed, once again, waiting for my hair to dry. But it's alright; I had the urge to blog throughout the day, so this works out.
I never took a day off last week, so I decided to stack Monday and Tuesday of this week to formulate my own long weekend. It didn't work so well, though. My original plan was to go spend much of the day downtown shopping for wedding clothes and for a cajon.
What ended up happening was: meeting someone for brunch, going downtown, got disappointed, got lost, then came home. Yep.
Let me break it down for you.
I've been trying to get in touch with some churches and their youth groups to see if we could put some youth rally nights together in the Fall. So one of the pastors I've been in touch with said we could meet up today for a chat. I happily obliged. It was a great time of food and chatting, and I love being able to share with other pastors about what currently fires their engines. I think this has to be, easily, one of the best things about being a pastor. The ability to be able to sit down with people who are doing similar things as I am, but in a different setting, hearing the challenges and the accomplishments, to encourage and be encouraged, it is incredible. It really isn't that far off when I tell people that my job involves having coffee with other people.
Of course, this is the sunny side of the job. The rainy sides will be saved for another day to talk about.
After brunch, I made my way downtown feeling great and uplifted. I wanted to make my purchases today for my cousin's wedding. However, when I got to the store, what I wanted was either not there, or way too expensive. I stood around for 45 minutes debating what I should do from there. After the debate, I thought I'd might as well go to the H&M to see what they had, since it was just right above the Topman on the next level.
Here's where I made an oopsie: I'm not that familiar with Pacific Center, and the place is designed like a stinkin' maze. So I wandered around the vicinity of Topman for about 15 minutes, going up escalators, down escalators, through other stores to meet dead ends, outside in the streets to be disoriented, and could not make my way to the H&M which I knew physically where it was, but couldn't find the path to get me there.
When I finally found my way in (I'll save myself some embarrassment by keeping to myself the rest of the details of how I got in), I took a look around. But again, there wasn't what I was looking for, so I just decided to wait until tomorrow to go to another location. It will work out because I'm meeting someone in Richmond, so I'll just hop on over to Richmond Center to take a look at the Topman and H&M there.
Well, I finally made my way home after the short trip downtown without going to Tom Lee's to look for a cajon. I want to buy a cajon so we can use it at church. Teaching how to play that box is infinitely easier than teaching someone how to drum. The only real downfall for me as of right now is that, with the wedding clothes and the cajon, I'm probably spending money that I shouldn't be spending. I'm at a comfortable level with my finances, but the Asian inside of me has kicked into action with the saving money mentality. I mean, in all fairness, I need to save money, but I've never been shy to make purchases that were necessary. I've done a pretty good job at stopping my habit of impulse buys, so it's nice to know that when I need to buy something, I can afford it.
Anyways, I mentioned that today was a day off that didn't feel like one, and it was exactly that. I kept receiving messages and emails throughout the day, so I caved and just did some work. I didn't mind too much because I still felt I got my "rest" in by meeting with the pastor earlier in the day; and I also only told my senior pastor and secretary that I'm off today, meaning no one knew today was my day off as well.
So yeah, a bit of an eventful day for myself. I just came home and had a quiet evening by overcooking some salmon and watching the hockey game. I'll be preaching at the Vietnamese Alliance this coming Sunday, and it will be an interesting experience.
Life just gets busier and busier. There really isn't a point in any day where I don't have something to do. The only question is whether or not I'll do it. Whether it's this or that, life's a kickin', ladies and gentlemen.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Friday, May 22, 2015
Keep On Keepin' On
Typically, I blog when I'm feeling great. So a lot of what you've been reading would've been catching me at good times. I'm not in the best of moods today, so let's see how this post will differ. Haha.
Slowly, I'm approaching the horizon of reaching the one year mark in my career. One year doesn't make me a grizzled veteran, but I do think it's a good milestone. However, that's still a few months away, so let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet.
Over the course of the first, what, 8 or 9 months, I've still not had the sinking feeling of realizing where I'm currently at. Having mentioned that I've always dreamed of living in Vancouver, and it being true now, I still don't really realize that I'm living in Vancouver. It could be the busyness, it could be something else, but catching myself trying to associate Vancouver to who I am still feels strange. Part of it is probably the status that Vancouver has in the world, that maybe I just never saw myself being in such a place - it's surreal. The story of the little kid moving to the big city would describe it pretty well.
Regardless of how I feel, I can tell you boldly that since the end of September of 2014, I've done a bunch of stuff! To list off a few, I've begun renting my own place, bought a car, became pastor in a small church, overhauled an entire worship service (slightly exaggerated), and much more. Ma, I growed up! On a personal level of life, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Sometimes I will pretend like I know, but it's just to save myself from a bit of embarrassment. This is about one of a few times I wish I was extroverted, so it'd be a lot easier for me to get out, try things, and explore without feeling like it's hard work.
In church, it's really been interesting to watch myself do things. I'm one of those that have a tendency to over promise and under deliver. This usually happens when I get excited and have all these things I want to do. So far, I've been able to keep up with most of what I've said I'd do; a few of the things will just take a bit longer because of time. I mean, you only get 100% of time, so as long as I don't say when I'll do things, that's okay right? But then, I'd question my own honesty if I would leave so many things undisclosed.
Even though I don't know what I'm doing with my personal life, I've learned a lot in the avenue of ministry. As someone that takes a while to adjust to change, I think I've adapted pretty nicely. It helps that everyone is so kind to me; it's almost impossible to squeeze even an ounce of negative feedback thus far. It'll come though, I guarantee it. A lot of what I've done is figure out what I am capable of doing, and what I can't; and then, to what capacity can I put things on my plate without feeling overwhelmed.
Not surprisingly, my capacity for workload right now isn't very big. I've mentioned that it's really hard for me to prepare a message during the week and still be able to prepare for youth and other programs. Ideally, as I gain more experience, I'll be able to do that; but I'm just not good at doing that now. Given how much energy I'd need to put into preparing sermons, I feel like I've cheated some of the people in the other ministries that I might cut some time from. I don't like that feeling. Of course, they probably don't really notice, but I don't like to halfass my job. And if I keep giving a halfassed effort here and a halfassed (I can't find a different word to relay the same meaning) effort there, eventually people will start noticing the quality of the ministry going down.
This is why training leaders is so important. I'm so glad that the board saw this need of mine and approved of the hiring of a part time pastor to help me out. In the perfect world, all of my leaders would come from my group internally, but we're not at the stage where that's available to me. So I'm thankful that there is someone who is able to basically be a second "me" to help me with my work. Even with a small church, I can see my desire to get to know literally everyone and have a good relationship with everyone. Remember, my congregation is around 40 people. If I was looking after 100 or 200 people, man I'd probably explode.
So with that being said, I'm seeing my role and purpose become more defined as I move forward. God has presented me with a handful of people that I can work closely with, and it will be my job to help them help the rest of the people. It does suck a bit because I want to be able to work closely with everyone; however, it's just not realistic. Being a big picture person, I'm humbled to know that I'm only one piece of the puzzle, and I need to work within my borders. Trying to take too much just might mean that I'm trying to gain control over everything, and that's not what we need to happen.
Moving forward then, and in the process of learning this, people in my church may start to notice a change in my habits or a change of the way I might be approaching things. This is just because I'm finding out what specifically I need to do. Hopefully it all ends well.
Slowly, I'm approaching the horizon of reaching the one year mark in my career. One year doesn't make me a grizzled veteran, but I do think it's a good milestone. However, that's still a few months away, so let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet.
Over the course of the first, what, 8 or 9 months, I've still not had the sinking feeling of realizing where I'm currently at. Having mentioned that I've always dreamed of living in Vancouver, and it being true now, I still don't really realize that I'm living in Vancouver. It could be the busyness, it could be something else, but catching myself trying to associate Vancouver to who I am still feels strange. Part of it is probably the status that Vancouver has in the world, that maybe I just never saw myself being in such a place - it's surreal. The story of the little kid moving to the big city would describe it pretty well.
Regardless of how I feel, I can tell you boldly that since the end of September of 2014, I've done a bunch of stuff! To list off a few, I've begun renting my own place, bought a car, became pastor in a small church, overhauled an entire worship service (slightly exaggerated), and much more. Ma, I growed up! On a personal level of life, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Sometimes I will pretend like I know, but it's just to save myself from a bit of embarrassment. This is about one of a few times I wish I was extroverted, so it'd be a lot easier for me to get out, try things, and explore without feeling like it's hard work.
In church, it's really been interesting to watch myself do things. I'm one of those that have a tendency to over promise and under deliver. This usually happens when I get excited and have all these things I want to do. So far, I've been able to keep up with most of what I've said I'd do; a few of the things will just take a bit longer because of time. I mean, you only get 100% of time, so as long as I don't say when I'll do things, that's okay right? But then, I'd question my own honesty if I would leave so many things undisclosed.
Even though I don't know what I'm doing with my personal life, I've learned a lot in the avenue of ministry. As someone that takes a while to adjust to change, I think I've adapted pretty nicely. It helps that everyone is so kind to me; it's almost impossible to squeeze even an ounce of negative feedback thus far. It'll come though, I guarantee it. A lot of what I've done is figure out what I am capable of doing, and what I can't; and then, to what capacity can I put things on my plate without feeling overwhelmed.
Not surprisingly, my capacity for workload right now isn't very big. I've mentioned that it's really hard for me to prepare a message during the week and still be able to prepare for youth and other programs. Ideally, as I gain more experience, I'll be able to do that; but I'm just not good at doing that now. Given how much energy I'd need to put into preparing sermons, I feel like I've cheated some of the people in the other ministries that I might cut some time from. I don't like that feeling. Of course, they probably don't really notice, but I don't like to halfass my job. And if I keep giving a halfassed effort here and a halfassed (I can't find a different word to relay the same meaning) effort there, eventually people will start noticing the quality of the ministry going down.
This is why training leaders is so important. I'm so glad that the board saw this need of mine and approved of the hiring of a part time pastor to help me out. In the perfect world, all of my leaders would come from my group internally, but we're not at the stage where that's available to me. So I'm thankful that there is someone who is able to basically be a second "me" to help me with my work. Even with a small church, I can see my desire to get to know literally everyone and have a good relationship with everyone. Remember, my congregation is around 40 people. If I was looking after 100 or 200 people, man I'd probably explode.
So with that being said, I'm seeing my role and purpose become more defined as I move forward. God has presented me with a handful of people that I can work closely with, and it will be my job to help them help the rest of the people. It does suck a bit because I want to be able to work closely with everyone; however, it's just not realistic. Being a big picture person, I'm humbled to know that I'm only one piece of the puzzle, and I need to work within my borders. Trying to take too much just might mean that I'm trying to gain control over everything, and that's not what we need to happen.
Moving forward then, and in the process of learning this, people in my church may start to notice a change in my habits or a change of the way I might be approaching things. This is just because I'm finding out what specifically I need to do. Hopefully it all ends well.
Monday, May 11, 2015
Joyful Tiredness
It really hasn't slowed down. As of now, I'm basically continuing from the last post I made, where things are flying around at 100mph. Throughout today, I've been feeling all sorts of tired in ways that I've never felt before.
I got up, had brunch, and drove someone to the airport. After driving out from the airport, I was debating whether or not to run errands today or do them tomorrow. All of a sudden, I just felt this huge wave of exhaustion come upon me, so I decided to go home. When I got home, I was browsing through the news for about 15 minutes before I really couldn't keep my eyes open. I tried to keep going, but the tiredness was just not going away. So I ended up going to lay down for what ended up to be an hour.
After getting up, again, it took about 15 minutes for me to feel that same tiredness come back - what a terrible feeling of napping just to feel like no nap was had! But by this time, it was almost 4pm, so I thought that I really shouldn't be napping anymore. Staying awake, therefore, has been a struggle up until now. I feel like I'm jetlagged or something.
Perhaps one thing that contributed to being tired literally the whole day was that I had 2 hours of sleep going into Sunday. I managed to have energy to preach a pretty good sermon, have lunch with a few people, go play soccer, then go to the relatives' place for a Mother's Day dinner. After getting home last night though, I knew I was done: I had to go to sleep. I ended up sleeping almost 11 hours, and still felt super tired.
Honestly, I really don't like it when I feel tired. The feeling often makes me seem like I'm doing something wrong, so it irks me whenever I feel like I have no energy. However, in the last month of tiredness that I've felt, it really hasn't been that way too often. Even though I always feel like I'm about to fall asleep, I have been enjoying life a lot. Obviously, not everything is perfect, but in the grand scheme of things, I've really been in a good place.
I've got one week left in my 4 consecutive weeks of preaching, then I'll have a 5 week break from preaching in my own service. I get the opportunity to be a guest speaker for the first time at a different church's service, and I'm actually excited for that! On top of guest preaching, I'll also preach once at our own church's Saturday night service at the beginning of June. So far, I feel like my preaching abilities are hot and cold. My sermons are either pretty good, or really bad - that's how I feel anyway. I'm often curious as to how consistency would look like for preaching week to week. I'm waiting to be more experienced so I have a better sense, but from the way it looks right now, I either preach with great passion, or I don't even know what I'm saying. Of course, I wouldn't want consistency in the wrong direction, but is it doable to preach with that kind of passion every week? Perhaps. But I just find that it is way easier to be passionate some weeks compared to others.
Anyways, I've got a really busy summer coming up. I think the real test for me will start to come as I approach the Fall. It will be because I've got a year of full-time ministry under my belt, and that's when challenges really start to toll on me. So I'll have to do my best to prepare for that. Historically speaking, year 2 has always been the toughest for me, dating back to high school.
Well - I just spent about 5 minutes debating whether or not I should stop here or keep going with this post. I think I'm going to end it here. I believe I've gotten everything that I wanted to get out, so this is good enough for now!
I got up, had brunch, and drove someone to the airport. After driving out from the airport, I was debating whether or not to run errands today or do them tomorrow. All of a sudden, I just felt this huge wave of exhaustion come upon me, so I decided to go home. When I got home, I was browsing through the news for about 15 minutes before I really couldn't keep my eyes open. I tried to keep going, but the tiredness was just not going away. So I ended up going to lay down for what ended up to be an hour.
After getting up, again, it took about 15 minutes for me to feel that same tiredness come back - what a terrible feeling of napping just to feel like no nap was had! But by this time, it was almost 4pm, so I thought that I really shouldn't be napping anymore. Staying awake, therefore, has been a struggle up until now. I feel like I'm jetlagged or something.
Perhaps one thing that contributed to being tired literally the whole day was that I had 2 hours of sleep going into Sunday. I managed to have energy to preach a pretty good sermon, have lunch with a few people, go play soccer, then go to the relatives' place for a Mother's Day dinner. After getting home last night though, I knew I was done: I had to go to sleep. I ended up sleeping almost 11 hours, and still felt super tired.
Honestly, I really don't like it when I feel tired. The feeling often makes me seem like I'm doing something wrong, so it irks me whenever I feel like I have no energy. However, in the last month of tiredness that I've felt, it really hasn't been that way too often. Even though I always feel like I'm about to fall asleep, I have been enjoying life a lot. Obviously, not everything is perfect, but in the grand scheme of things, I've really been in a good place.
I've got one week left in my 4 consecutive weeks of preaching, then I'll have a 5 week break from preaching in my own service. I get the opportunity to be a guest speaker for the first time at a different church's service, and I'm actually excited for that! On top of guest preaching, I'll also preach once at our own church's Saturday night service at the beginning of June. So far, I feel like my preaching abilities are hot and cold. My sermons are either pretty good, or really bad - that's how I feel anyway. I'm often curious as to how consistency would look like for preaching week to week. I'm waiting to be more experienced so I have a better sense, but from the way it looks right now, I either preach with great passion, or I don't even know what I'm saying. Of course, I wouldn't want consistency in the wrong direction, but is it doable to preach with that kind of passion every week? Perhaps. But I just find that it is way easier to be passionate some weeks compared to others.
Anyways, I've got a really busy summer coming up. I think the real test for me will start to come as I approach the Fall. It will be because I've got a year of full-time ministry under my belt, and that's when challenges really start to toll on me. So I'll have to do my best to prepare for that. Historically speaking, year 2 has always been the toughest for me, dating back to high school.
Well - I just spent about 5 minutes debating whether or not I should stop here or keep going with this post. I think I'm going to end it here. I believe I've gotten everything that I wanted to get out, so this is good enough for now!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)