Great Heights

Few times I write about the good and great things about my life and job on here. I should probably do it more, so people don't think I'm completely depressed. LOL.

Well, as you'd expect me to be mentioning, I had the great privilege of baptizing my first two members this past Sunday into the church. Since I'd only ever been involved with helping in one other baptism in my life, I was bound to screw up some things this time as I was on my own. But I reminded myself that this was about the 2 youth that I was going to baptize, so it didn't matter so much about the little not-so-relevant details I may have missed.

Having spent the last 2 months doing the baptism class with these 2 teens, I spent a lot of time getting to know them a little better. The best thing about the whole process was to see their eagerness and willingness to try and to learn. It was cool to see them begin to learn how to process their salvation in a way that they can describe it because everyone tells it in their own unique way. I know that I'm a little nerdy, so the way I teach certain doctrines or other Christian-ese things may be a little complicated, but the 2 of them were right there with me.

Finally being able to dunk them in the tank on Sunday brought a tremendous sense of joy and honor for me. The image of a shepherd baptizing one of their sheep is such a cool sight to see. I was asked recently if only pastors are allowed to baptize people. I thought about it for a while, and never saw anywhere in the Bible that says it must be a pastor. I could be wrong, but to me, the person who baptizes you should be someone who has walked alongside you in your spiritual journey and has helped you along the way. So seeing myself in this kind of a situation from a broad perspective means that I must've done something to put myself there. It was a very humbling experience.

All in all, these types of scenarios are worth all the difficult times and hard work I have to put in to get there. I often tell people one of my greatest passions is to be able to walk alongside people in their lives, and baptism is a symbol that I've been given an opportunity to do just that. So I'm left here being incredibly glad and thankful that God gave me the privilege to play a role in someone else's life.

To Love

August 9, 2008 -

Okay, first of all if you look at what time it is right now, it is shortly passed 6:30 here in Vancouver on a Saturday morning and you might be wondering, "wow you're stupid to be up so early on saturday." Well thing is, I couldn't sleep very much last night because I kept thinking about camp and how much I'm gonna miss it.

I've been hit pretty hard about something yesterday when camp ended, it just stuck with me in my mind and kept coming back over and over again throughout the rest of the day and even till now. It works as a bit of a story followed by an explanation...

Camp has finally ended and we've gone to say goodbye to most of the children and began cleaning up for the final time. There are always kids that like to hang around even after camp because they live close and they love to be with us. I had met and created an amazing relationship with a set of twins called Rachel and Sarah over the course of the summer and I've spent alot of time with them getting to know them. So we were donated slurpees by one of the kids mom and Blair told us to stop what we were doing and to go grab a slurpee first. The twins usually stay behind with us because their sister is a street leader here and they have to wait for her. I don't teach these 2 girls bible or any class so I usually got to know them during rec or after camp. Most of the "bonding" came after camp because thats when we were more alone and the place was more quiet.

So anyways, we were walking to macs and Sarah was with me almost the entire time there and when we almost got there, I said to her, "man I'm really looking forward to this slurpee." It was a hot day okay. So there's a slight pause and with her arms around me she laughs a bit, looks at me and says,

I look forward to seeing you again.

This hit me SO hard at first, I didn't know what to say and all I could come up with was "aww, me too." But throughout the rest of the day, this phrase kept coming back to me again and again and it made me so mad that all I had to respond with was 3 stinkin lousy words.

I quickly came to realize the amount of love I had for Sarah and Rachel that I just want to bring them back to Edmonton with me so badly. They've become like part of my family throughout the summer and we've spent alot of valuable time together hanging out during camp and even afterwards when I'm supposed to be cleaning. I was pretty devastated when I finally came to admitting that I could quite possibly never see them again. There's alot to what I was feeling during this time and I guess I won't put it on here because it'll probably sound real cheesy, so lets get to my point.

Through my relationship with Rachel and Sarah and what Sarah said to me on our way to macs, I came to experience God's love at a much higher scale. God let me experience what it was like to have so much love for someone that you refuse to want to let them go. It's really hard for me to put this into words because the feeling is so great, the only word I can use to describe it is indescribable. Surreal is what it really is and I'm so amazed that God has allowed me to know what it's like to an extent.

So while I was laying on my bed thinking about this stuff throughout the night, I came up with the best way to interpret what I'm saying. It's like taking a measuring tape and trying to measure the amount of love God has, and when we first become followers of Jesus, we would put the tape down and start pulling it out to bring the tape out. Of course when we start, we know that it'll take a while to get to the point where God's love is based on all the stories we here and all that other stuff. So you would pull and pull and pull on the measuring tape unwinding it. And soon, after 5 years, 10 years, 30 years, you realize.. "Wow, I'm still pulling and it hasn't stopped." And as you're pulling, you look back at the amount of measuring tape that is pulled out and you think, "man, there's just no end to what God's love is like." And even throughout the course of pulling all that measuring tape, there may be moments where you pulled really slow, and moments where you pull really fast. But in the end, you're still at where you're at in realizing how much love God has for us and that's what matters.

No matter where we are, or how long our measuring tape is to knowing how much love God has for us, we should recognize that, yeah there's a whole lot of measuring tape behind us, but we should focus on how much more there is in front of us and that we should pursue making this roll of measuring tape as long as we can. There really is no way we can completely measure how much God's love is because no matter how large you already think it is, it can only become bigger with time and more experience.

So through Rachel and Sarah, I was able to experience something absolutely amazing and I would not trade this feeling or experience for anything worth any amount of money or anything else. I am so glad that God has helped me come to see this and I know for sure that there's alot more from where this came from.

Love you two! It was definitely hardest to let you two go.

I found this entry that I wrote for a different blog that I had back in 2008. Hard to believe it's been 8 years; it's felt like an eternity.

What's happened since then? I entered into the UofA, dropped out of the UofA, answered God's calling into full-time ministry, moved to Calgary, interned in Saskatchewan, moved to Vancouver, began pastoring my own congregation. Each of these events were hugely significant events in my life.

However, when I look back at my life in its entirety, nothing comes close to this event that I described in the post. People often have defining moments/times in their lives, and this one is amongst the biggest ones for me. Back in January of this year, I wrote about not knowing how to love. That was part true, but I also left out a part that relates to this relationship I built with these twins. The complete and total truth was that I was afraid to love because of the knowledge that eventually I'd have to let people go. In having to let the twins go the first time, it destroyed my ability and willingness to give myself in to loving people.

As God allowed it, I recently reconnected with these two, and I got to meet up with them. A lot of times, you don't realize how much you miss people until you get to see them again. Even in just a short few hours today, I'm reminded of what they mean to me. Of course, I can't really look at our relationship the same way anymore because they're grown up. But I can confidently say that these two taught me how to love. I don't know anyone else in my life that I have this type of affection for, which represent it in a way as if they were my very own children.

This was then.

Now, I remember how much I cared about them and what I learned about what it means to love someone. I think that until/if I have my own children, I won't ever view someone the same way as I viewed these twins. I think a big part of being able to see them again today, I have closure in knowing that they'll be fine as humans on their own. The next step for me will be learning in how to fully let them go. I know that the first time I had to leave them, the pain scarred me. But I feel good about knowing now that I have to have faith that they'll be fine even if I never see them again. Although, it would bring no greater joy for me to be able to hang out with them some more in the near future.

My feelings for them today don't differ too much from how I felt when I wrote that post. Except the difference now is that I'm not writing it in sorrow or bitterness, I'm writing it with joy. And it reads so differently.

Hopefully, my grammar and articulation has gotten better over the 8 years. LOL

Point of Limit

Last week, I had the great privilege of attending the Multiply Conference held by the C2C Network over at Westside Church. It was two full days of messages and sermon-like workshops where many pastors who had been part of a church planting experience shared about some important things they wanted church pastors and leaders to know.

The big names, of course, were Francis Chan and Jeff Vanderstelt. I was really excited to listen to the two of them speak live, and they did not disappoint. I took so much away from not only these two, but from the rest of the speakers as well. The different speakers all came from a different background of church planting and from different areas of the world.

I don't think there has ever been a two day period where I learned anywhere near as much as I did during this conference. There was so much to take in that in I felt, in some ways, over-stimulated. There was no way I was able to absorb and digest everything before needing to turn my attention to the next speaker.

One thing in particular I learned was from a pastor named Larry Osborne. I knew of his name prior to the conference, but I didn't know what to expect from him. He spoke twice, and I was far and away the most convicted from listening to him speak. He said one thing that really sticks to my mind.

We as pastors are the shepherd of the church who are the flock. When making disciples, we have to love and meet each person at their limitation. So often when we talk about discipleship, it's about training leaders and equipping people to play a part in the church. Larry separated this idea into discipleship and leadership. He said that discipleship is about helping people take the next step of obedience to Christ; leadership is to help people take the next step in sacrifice for Christ.

Having heard that, I couldn't help but look at myself and seeing my frustrations at church come from joining discipleship and leadership together. If you ask me, discipleship is the hard one. Because you have followers at the front lines, the mid lines, and the back lines, you have to meet each one at the point they seemingly cap out at, and allow them to take that next step. This means that if you have someone in the backline, you're not to get them straight to the front, it won't work.

This was so incredibly convicting because I'm guilty of wanting everyone to jump straight to the front. And when I see some of my members seemingly stay stuck in the back, I get upset because I count them as immature spiritually and unwilling to step to the front. For that, I have to apologize because I simply wasn't aware that there should be a distinction between disciple making and leadership training.

Then, the challenge for me is now to be able to meet each member at their point of limit and then love them at that point. This is tough, but it makes sense to me because that's where Christ meets us. Even a step further, Christ not only meets us at our best, he meets us at our worst. And since God himself is the great shepherd, I need to learn how to be able to do this, to engage people wherever they're at and help them take that next step in obedience.

I can't wait until the recordings from the conference get released so I can go back to listen to them again!

The Message: The Pastor

A neat little reminder I had today after a long chat with my senior pastor, I'm challenged and encouraged about what it means to give a good message wherever I speak.

Ps Isaac had actually told me this before, but I heard it in a fresh new way today after talking about some really deep challenges and burdens that we both share. One of the biggest lessons Ps Isaac said that he learned from a mentor was about what a good sermon is like. It's a simple lesson and one a lot of people already know, but it becomes very relevant for those that are in positions of leadership.

As a pastor, no matter how much time you spend on preparing for your message, the second you stand up onto the stage, the sermon is already delivered by how your audience views you and the person you are. The way that you live your life and how you pour into other people's lives will often determine the power that comes from the words you speak.

I love how this applies not only to preaching, but also to so many other "stage front" type scenarios as well. You can spend 60 hours a week studying and preparing a message, or practicing a set list, but if you get up on that stage and do not represent what you say, your message is practically useless.

So much of my time is spent trying to make sure I'm saying all the right things or not making any mistakes, I often overlook the fact that it's all empty words if I don't practice what I preach. Most of the impact I'm going to make is not on the pulpit. It's really hard for me to see if I've made any real difference since being here, but I know it's not up to me to decide. All I can really do is live the life that I want my church to live, so at the very least, I owe it to these people that even through the garbage I deal with, I remain faithful to what I'm called.