Secondaries

I just showered, so while I wait for my hair to dry before I go to sleep, I thought I'd throw down another blog post!

This one will be more casual and nonsensical because I just wanted to share a few things that I've found interesting since moving down.

First one is the whole dichotomy of an English congregation and a Chinese congregation in a Vancouver church. It's very hard to distinguish the difference because if it's a Chinese church, it seems like regardless of your associated congregation, you're going to be a regular user of the Chinese language. For example, pretty much my entire congregation is quite fluent in Cantonese even though we're the "English" congregation. There's a few small group or fellowship type groups that I am still, to this day, confused as to whether they belong to the English or the Chinese side of the church. This is because they use both languages regularly.

Following up on the first one, the second one is a bit of an "out of left field" thing for me. Being someone that is from a Chinese church in Edmonton, and now that I am pastoring in a Chinese church in Vancouver, I consider this a cross-cultural move. I didn't realize it until someone from my church told me; but when she did, it made a whole lot of sense. I'm thankful that she is a wise one and is able to recognize the situation I'm in. I'm actually a bit surprised I didn't catch onto it fast enough. When I think about it, most of the time I'm trying to translate in my head something that's been said. During meetings and other gatherings, it's also generally in Chinese so I'm the only one that has a strong preference for English. It all makes sense.

Living alone is quite the experience. I'm so bad at maintaining my place that there are times I'm wanting someone to live with me who is more willing to keep everything neat and tidy. So far, the only reasons I've cleaned or organized things were either because someone was coming over or I just couldn't stand the mess. Since I am a bit OCD and a slight neat freak, I clean and tidy somewhat regularly - as in once a week. But what bugs me is how fast I can make a mess. So between the times I clean, I can have things everywhere very quickly!

Meeting people and making friends as a pastor is so difficult! It's a little unfortunate, but for everyone I meet in my church, I have to gauge whether or not we can be friends outside of the pastor-member relationship. This is basically trying to see if, after I leave, will we still hang out and keep in touch as friends do. Naturally, my inclination is to primarily be everyone's friend. So as a friend, you know how I am. Some of these things that are part of my personality aren't appropriate for me to display in a pastor-member relationship. So it sucks that I have to be careful what I show due to my position of being a pastor. Don't get me wrong, I still consider myself as friends to these people. I just have to understand, from both parties, that I am also their pastor. On the contrary, I sometimes wish I could be a pastor to my actual friends.

Again, expanding on this previous point, I don't get a chance to go out to meet people and explore the city very much. I'm basically in the vicinity of the church or a church member's home 24/7. Because I can't meet people, it doesn't help when I get my weekly comment of someone telling me that they're praying for me to meet a wonderful girl to be my wife and partner. It's nice that you have concern for me in wanting me to get married, and let me be the first to tell you that there is no one that wants me to get married more than I do myself, but I put so much time into my job, how do you expect me to spend enough time outside of church to meet someone? It's not easy, I have to find a different outlet. So this is why I'm contemplating the possibility of me joining a small group at a different church as an extracurricular thing, where I can just be Nathan and not Ps. Nathan.

Well, my hair is mostly dry. So I'll leave this post here. There's a bunch more on the topic of "secondaries," as I've labeled it, but it will have to wait until next time!