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.
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