This Time's For Real

School was basically wiped out of my mind, so it was strange to see so many people with backpacks on the streets going to and from school. Life is busy again. For the second time in my life, I'm sitting at home while everyone's back to their routine. Though I must also say that as time has passed, more and more of my age group is moving past the school stage.

Now I've joined them.

First things first, I got the job. My official start date is Oct 1, and the move in date to my new place is also Oct 1. Let me tell you about how it all went down. EDIT: I'm the English Pastor at Newbern Memorial Alliance Church.

Well, when I got to Vancouver, I wasn't prepared for the weekend (and that might be an understatement). Thankfully, my cousin picked me up from the airport and I got to have a good chat with him over supper before heading back to my hotel. I was scheduled to attend the youth group BBQ on Saturday night, preach Sunday morning, then have the official interview after lunch on the same day.

So I spent most of my Saturday preparing for the sermon, and thankfully, what I preached on was a lot of what I needed to hear myself. The area that my hotel was in was rather noisy, especially with construction going on, so it was tough to keep focused; there was also an Eskimos game that afternoon on TV. While I made decent progress on my sermon, I had to take a couple hours to go meet the youth.

A few things that surprised me about the youth: they are extremely tight knit, and they speak amazing Chinese. The latter is probably a Vancouver thing, so I'll let it go. They're all really nice and polite... in most senses. After we ate, we were to have some kind of sharing thing, in which I would be sharing about myself and my spiritual journey. So the part-time pastor that was there started talking after we gathered to sit in a circle, but the kids wouldn't stop talking. I was a bit baffled as to why it took such a long time for them to settle down. However, when I started talking, and because I'm the new guy, they all listened pretty well, I think. Overall, it was a good night, the kids are really nice. The group's only about 10-15 big, but I like that size; I can work with that.

The next morning, I got to the church, and as expected, the congregation is young and small. What blew my mind, though I don't know why, was how insanely traditional their worship structure and format was. It's strange because I was told that this is a more traditional church, but maybe I didn't expect it to be that traditional in the sense that I haven't seen such a traditional format since I was a little child. Ultimately, I think this was what held me back the most from being excited about the job. As for the sermon, it was pretty good! It went a lot better than I expected, and from what I heard, it seems to have been received well too.

After the service, I sat in on the adult Sunday school class. Before the class even began, I knew what I needed to address first in this church: DO NOT, EVER, WATER DOWN YOUR COFFEE! That was such a crime, I almost cried. Instead of topping off their cups with coffee, they filled it with hot water - sad days. All jokes aside, these adults are really awesome and it was fun to listen in on their conversations about several things.

Moving ahead to the interview, and to put it quite frankly, it wasn't much of one. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, it only lasted about 45 minutes, most of which I answered questions that I already answered when I met them the first time. I didn't really get to ask any of the questions I had for the church, but I guess that's okay; I'll find out the answers in due time.

Originally, I thought it'd take about a week or two for them to get back to me with an offer or decline in my application. However, they contacted me that very night to give me the job. I was so caught off guard that I wasn't ready to accept it. I was still trying to recover from the exhaustion after preaching, and here they basically throw the next several years of my life at me, saying, "come! Come now!"

I wasn't ready.

So after having talked it through with a few people I highly respect, it ultimately came down to me and what was holding me back from accepting the job. When I talked to the senior pastor on Wednesday morning, something hit me. During the conversation, I was reminded of how I felt when I originally went to Saskatchewan to do my internship and how it eventually turned out. For some reason, this feeling of reluctance to accept the offer felt the same; so without hesitation, I immediately accepted the job during that phone conversation. I had asked for a week to pray and decide, but I knew then that this job was for me.

Skipping ahead, because this post is already way too long, I got all the details figured out, and all that was left was for the move down to Vancouver. When I accepted the job, my parents immediately began helping me find places to live. This being Vancouver, everything is beyond ridiculous in terms of rent. And with what I am getting paid, there's literally no way I could live comfortably given the position I'm in. I won't tell you how much I make, but I'll let you know that I make even less than starting/new pastors in Alberta. The C&MA has guidelines given out to churches to let them know roughly how much pastors should be paid, but it doesn't account for the cost of living and all those things. I really don't want my salary to influence my ministry here, so I'm going to try to make as small a deal of it as possible, but I do feel like it will affect me in my work if I can't even afford to meet my basic needs.

With that being said, on Sunday, my parents and I had basically given up on finding an apartment for the time being because everything was bloody expensive and way over my budget - even the crappy places. However, my flight randomly decided to get delayed by about 2 and a half hours, so we managed to arrange a last minute visit to a house with a 2 bedroom basement suite. We got there, had a nice viewing and a good chat, found out that that family is pretty new to the church as well and attend one of the Alliance churches not too far from the place. They were nice enough and understanding enough to see my job and took the rent down to $920/month when they could've easily charged over $1000 for the place. So I signed away my lease, at least for the first year. My ultimate goal is still to have my own apartment (renting, of course), but I'll make do with what I have for now. $920/month is still almost half my take home salary for the month, so that tells you how much I make and how, if you've done the rent/mortgage thing, that almost half your salary on rent is WAY too much. But, it's the best that we could do, and I know God always provides, so I'll stay faithful in this regard that things will ease up a bit.

Finally, to wrap things up, I'm super stoked to be starting a new life down in Vancouver. I'm ready for the culture shock, the burnt/undercooked meals, the independent life that awaits me. Of course, there's also stress that comes with it, but I'm going to focus more on what excites me, and that is the ministry that God has placed in front of me for the next few years.

Feel free to talk to me, send me an email, or give me a call if you're interested in knowing more. I've really only covered the surface of things, so if you're interested, I'd love to chat.

Now to plan out the things I need to do before leaving.