All That I Long For

I didn't have much motivation to do anything today, so I ended up sitting in my office for a couple hours playing guitar and singing. It's been a long time since I've been able to do something like this; and I wonder why I don't do it more. It's been difficult for me to find opportunities to be filled and uplifted, so it's funny how it almost always comes back to my passion in life: music.

I had my Bible opened in front of me to 1 John, and the verse reads: "We love because he first loved us" (4:19). I was praying last night, crying out, really, about how I've been feeling rather empty lately. Maybe my lack of motivation today was a good thing, to put me in a spot where I was able to do something I love and make some music.

So I browsed through some older songs I used to sing when I lead worship regularly - yeah, I'm archaic like that. I got to my favorite one; and, after I had played it, I felt satisfied.

I don't really do this, but I will share the lyrics here for us to read and ponder

Beholding Your beauty

Is all that I long for

To worship you Jesus

Is my sole desire

 For this very heart

You have shaped for Your pleasure

Purposed to lift your name higher

Here in surrender

In pure adoration

I enter Your courts

With an offering of praise

I am Your servant

Come to bring you glory

As is fit for the works of Your hands

Now unto the Lamb

Who sits on the throne

Be glory and honour and praise

All of creation resounds with the song

Worship and praise Him

The Lord of lords

 The Spirit now living

And dwelling within me

Keep my eyes fixed

Ever on Jesus' face

Let not the things of this world

Ever sway me

I'll run 'til I finish the race

Now unto the Lamb

Who sits on the throne

Be glory and honour and praise

All of eternity echoes the song

Worship and praise Him

The Lord of lords

Holy Lord

You are holy

Jesus Christ

Is Lord

Now unto the Lamb

Who sits on the throne

Be glory and honour and praise

Call all the saints to join in the song

Worship and praise

The Lord of lords 

Reference of Time

I look at how a lot of kids are getting excited for summer, and it makes me miss that part of life. As kids growing up, your year is pretty defined by schooling; so whenever summer approached, it was always filled with excitement. Not going to lie, I do miss that feeling of freedom. Summer time meant no school, no homework, no real responsibilities, and it was more about having fun and relaxing. I never really did the summer job thing until post-secondary too, so I just ran around the house and fooled around all day. Haha.

Hearing the kids run around outside this time of day while I am stuck in an office is pretty frustrating. Also, for whatever reason, Vancouver feels really peaceful today. I'm guessing the weather has something to do with it, but it felt a lot like home.

Beginning life as a pastor really seems to just blend all of time together. I have a hard time figuring out what day of the week it is, or what's going on in the upcoming weeks, etc. My only real reference of time is typically Sunday. Every other day of the week just gets mashed and scrambled together.

Since everything just gets blurred, it's crazy to think that I'll be seeing my family next week. The first of three weddings will be taking place next Saturday, and it's going to be one crazy family reunion. I'm actually really excited, as this really allows me to take that pastor hat off for a little bit. I still have to work, but I think the celebration atmosphere will let me loosen up a little bit. In all honesty though, I think it's probably better if I allow my "pastor" life to slip into my personal life. I'm talking strictly in terms of how I carry myself and how I behave on a day-to-day basis. Being a pastor has forced me to be more disciplined as a Christian in general, and I think it's a great benefit of carrying that title. In helping shape others, I also get to shape myself to be able to grow.

With everything else, there isn't a whole lot to report on. I'm just grinding away at the tasks I have to do for the summer and in preparation for the Fall. I've been vision seeking over the last month or so, and I'm starting to get a much clearer picture of where things are to go with my church here in Vancouver. I was asked, not too long ago, on how long I plan to stay with this church. I haven't had to answer that question in a while, but I think what gives me the confidence in knowing I need to be here is that I still get excited for where we're going in terms of our ministry. I feel that as long as that excitement is there, I can keep going. I've spent so much time trying to build a foundation and infrastructure that it'd be a shame if I left before I even got to see it really start to grow. To be frank though, I don't even know why I have to answer that question when I'm not even a year into the ministry.

So there you have it. Apologies for a lame blog post, since I didn't really say much of anything. I saw that I haven't posted in a couple weeks, so I just wanted to drop a few lines.

This 'n That

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.

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.