My first year of [paid] ministry

Traci and I have just wrapped up our first year being lead pastors at Victory Fellowship Church here in good ol’ Blackwell, Oklahoma.  It’s been great, to say the very least, and it has been an amazing adventure.  I could write a lengthy review and summary of the past 12 months, but who would read it? [I probably wouldn't]

Some things I’ve learned:

• God is faithful, ALWAYS.  Seriously, He’s relentless. We have been through a lot, and Jesus has never let us go without and provided more than we could ask for; I guess that’s grace right?
• Ministry is hard work!  Like Driscoll puts it, ministry isn’t just a way to work inside and avoid manual labor.  It’s rough, stressful, and also rewarding knowing that you are working for Jesus directly.
• Your wife is more important than your job.  Always.  Jesus is God, not the church.   It’s okay to love your wife more than the church; in fact, God wants it that way.
• Get a planner and manage your time, because it runs from you.  Either software to plan your time, or old-school day planner [I use both], just something to make sure you do something.  I have a problem with procrastination; this is one way to try to kill it.
• Read.  A lot.  Immerse yourself in the scriptures.  Absorb everything you can from guys who have been there before.  Who cares how much wisdom and experience you lack, you can learn from great men in books, blogs, tweets, conferences, etc… It’s so easy to learn from some of the greatest minds in the world, block out time to read.
• Communicate.  The only time you talk to people in your church can’t be on Sundays during your sermon.  I have to try [that means put forth the effort] to be plugged into the heartbeat of my congregation.  God created us for fellowship; do it.

I could put a ton of things I’ve learned on here, and there is so much more I need to learn to do better, this is just a sampling of some of the things I’ve come to realize in my first year of ministry.

Near-sighted

Like anyone that goes to a highschool that wants to make college more of a reality to all of its students, when I graduated I felt like I could do pretty much anything I wanted to in life.  I was a Christian, had been heavily involved with worship bands and what-not but denied that I would work in ministry some day.

Looking at college I tossed around creative writing, music, design, and other creative avenues and never really felt like any of them were “the one”.  Here I am now several years later beginning a long journey as a lead pastor of a growing congregation which regularly includes me writing sermons, leading worship services and eventually training others in this, and creating various elements of a graphic design nature along with much, much more.

Now looking back I see that those areas I was interested in weren’t necessarily ‘bad’, or ‘wrong’; just that what Jesus had in store for me was something that rolled all of those elements plus more into one big life calling.  In a sense I was very near-sighted [actually metaphorically and physically] and only saw the events immediately in front of me, all the while the Good Lord was trying to show things to me far off.

Sometimes if it feels like God is leading you in 17 directions, there just might be something that combines most of them far off that you just can’t see yet.

My wife is awesome

Not only is she carrying our first child, but my buddy Lackey texts the word ‘Boomer’ to me while I was in the shower and she replied with ‘Sooner’ without hesitation.  How awesome is that?

We Finally Found Out

So Monday we went to the baby doctor for a regular visit, hoping we would get the chance for another ultrasound and find out the gender of our baby.  Radiology was booked up so we had to wait until 5pm the next day.  So we go in Tuesday, and they do about 20 minutes of ultrasounding looking at various organs, and we finally found out that we are going to be having a baby girl!  As soon as we left we went to Babies’R'Us to do some light registering, and just to let it sink in.

Will she join Tulsa’s new WNBA team?
Will she be the first female president?
Will she be a bigger Sooner Football fan than her dad?
Will she acquire more toys than Solomon had horses?

Only time will tell..  But I do know that we are super excited.

Shaking it up

I shook up the routine this morning.  For the past 7 or 8 months I’ve been reading through the New Testament in the ESV every morning.  This morning I shook it up and threw down devo-style in The Message.  Since The Message reads so smoothly, I just went ahead and read through Ecclesiastes.

Total different experience, going from New Testament to Old Testament, and from a more literal translation to a paraphrase.  It was refreshing.  I remember reading in one of Mark Batterson’s books how one of the best things to do once you get your routine down, is to change it.  It really helps to keep things fresh, and to keep yourself from viewing whatever it is as the same old thing you do every day.

Try it.

P. S.    If the Sooners can catch the football, and not just a couple of completions every quarter than Texas will be going down.  However, if they drop every pass like last week, we better pray the defense is ready to do-work.

I need to sync

So, I have been without my MacBook since January.  I blame Obama.  Sims and I were trying to watch inauguration videos and junk when it killed my Mac’s hard drive, seems logical, right?  Sure it’s been nice to be ‘unplugged’ for close to a year now, but I’m not even sure my iPhone knows it’s an iPhone anymore.  Poor guy, he’s been playing the same Coldplay album for 9 months.

Church Lists

So I was reading a post over on ragamuffinsoul about ranking churches.  Actually it was about something Rob Bell said at Catalyst about ranking churches.  It really got me to thinking, who do we think we are to make a list of the ‘top churches’?  What criteria can you judge to make that list?

The only biblical example I can think of are the churches in Revelation.  Jesus is writing to them through John, and from human standards, they seem to be great churches, and I am sure they would have made a top 50 list.  Yet, apparently it’s not the case.  A couple have false teaching, one is rich but arrogant, another is  actually following God’s word, and Jesus says another one is flat out dead.  No human could see these things, because we cannot look into the hearts of people or that of a church.  Only God can, it is Jesus’ job to judge people, to ‘rank’ churches. Maybe a more important question would be why do we think we can do God’s job?

I’m a Bible nerd

I’ve been surfing various ministry-related sites and for the past few minutes I’ve been drooling over this guy’s incredible web album of his calfskin ESV study Bible.  If I didn’t already have the hard cover, and if I had an extra 200 bones…

Back in Oklahoma

Wow, the last few months have been INSANE!  In July, we thought Traci had the flu, took her to the emergency room and lo and behold, we found out that Traci is expecting!  Words cannot describe how excited and happy we are.  The first trimester of her pregnancy were pretty intense, she has had about four multiple-night stays in the hospital and somewhere in the neighborhood of eleven IV’s.  She is doing a lot better now.

Through all of this craziness, we have moved back to Bartlesville for the time being.  Both sides of Traci’s family live here, and my parents live here as well, so this makes it easier for Traci to get taken care of.  I will admit that it feels a lot better to be back in Sooner Country, because I was tired of seeing Mizzou paraphernalia everywhere in Springfield.  Traci is taking this semester off from CBC, and I am finishing my degree up  through independent study and online classes.  So if you are in or around the Bartlesville metro area, give us a shout!

Topless

Well, it’s been a long while since I’ve posted. The main reason is that I’ve been without my lapstop since late January, and it has completely thrown off every routine I had. I downloaded the wordpress app for the iPhone which is what I’m posting with right now and I also found out that I just need a new hard drive for the ol’ MacBook and I’ll be back in business. So here’s a machine gun of updates:
We live in a house now
We have a chow chow named Grizzly Bear
I have a grill
I still don’t have a job yet
Traci works at the school
and that’s about it… I think