Two Weeks In

Well I am now two weeks into the service aspect of the program. It has been great to engage and put to work the skills I am developing and have been training to use for so long. These last two weeks have been a lot of what you might expect for a pastoral intern. I am working on sermons, praying a lot and spending regular time in God's word. I am spending intentional time with those I am serving and just trying to be a resource for them. But what stands out during this time is the value of a small youth group, how important humility is, and the importance of understanding the personhood of God.

I went with the church I am serving at to a MB mission event called AWAKE a week ago. As part of the event I invited my youth group to attend, and of the four regulars, one came and attended. When accepting this placement I excited and a little hesitant about the size of the youth group. I was told of eight students who were in the church. My first Sunday I was told that it would be down to five, because of factors out of my control, and then a couple of weeks in it became apparent that one of the students just did not want to attend for reasons I do not fully understand. So a small group has become even smaller. This is a real struggle for me, a bit of my pride became wrapped up in the size of the youth group, and without me really doing anything it was cut in half. I was and am still eager to serve, but it still felt like I had my wings clipped before I could even take off. But it was at this AWAKE conference that I realized that the group I have the privilege of pastoring, is populated by students who would not enjoy, and likely not attend a larger program. Now I am still going to and have been making efforts to seek out and invite other youth in the church community, but instead of feeling shame for a small group, there is a sense of privilege that I get to reach out to those who might otherwise not be reached. This is not to say that these students are at a higher risk than other students, just that they would be unlikely to enjoy attending a larger youth group.

One of the struggles I have had over the past few years has been the idea that I received from many different people and leaders in the church that I am not ready to lead. I always found it odd because people in and out of the church would compliment my leadership abilities. I would often look out from hurt eyes at pastors who seemed as if they did not want to give me a chance to serve in my gifting. My struggle at the time is that no one seemed to be able to point me directly to where I needed to go, or what I needed to do to be 'ready'. Throughout this program and particularly over these past couple of weeks it has become apparent. I need to humble myself. You see my natural response to people telling me I am not good enough is to protect myself. I did this by over compensating and adopting an attitude of arrogance, lifting myself up because no one else was doing it for me. I have been told I am arrogant and I usually snuffed it off as another criticism from people who were already to overly critical. But here I see the importance of how one approaches an issue. people came to me ready to rebuke what they felt I was doing wrong and as a result it just re-enforced said behaviour. However in this program as I have been routinely and regularly invited to a place of humility I am beginning to see my errors and work to correct them. Even now as I am writing this, the truth of my words are speaking to me about how I have failed others by acting similarly.

God please help me to learn from my mistakes and the mistakes of those around me.

Finally I am noticing how much my christian brothers and sisters are struggling with things I take for granted. And in this my masculine tendencies towards problem solving try to take over and fix situations. I do have many good Godly ideas of how to bring people into His light, but sometimes that is not what is needed. Sometimes God allows his children to 'walk through the valley of the shadow of death' as an opportunity to trust Him. Other times He lets us follow the path we have set for ourselves, and sometimes there seems like there is no reason whatsoever for our suffering. It is in the midst of these times that I feel called to be in community with others and adopt a more pastoring/shepherding role than that of the teacher. You see some of my faith family see our Lord as an abstract unmoving deity whole looks down from his heavenly  seat to judge, or not judge, the world. Other members seem to believe that faith is a deeply personal and spiritual thing that can be expressed through a host of gifts and abilities. Both are natures and personalities of God, but our creator is triune and as such can be both of these things. But there is a third personality in the Trinity, the person of Jesus, fully man and fully God. His call for the lives of believers is to be one of relationship with God and man. We are to commune with God regularly and then commissioned to share what we learn with others. Our God is not just one person, but rather all three and we cannot choose to only accept one or two and not the others.

Prayer, Missions, Commissioning, Week 8

Hello All,

My final week of training has been completed and I am filled with anticipation and sadness. I am incredibly excited for the road God has put me on and how it is going to be realized in these next 6 months. But at the same time I am saying farewell to several good friends that have been made over these past 2 months. And while I know God has many good things in store for all of us, I also know that we will never be the same again as we just were.

Yesterday, or Sunday November 1st was the commissioning service in which all ten of the Trekkies shared a bit of their experiences over the past few months and a bit of the vision for the next six. We were able to be prayed for as individuals and as teams, really just an encouraging time for all of us. But then all of the sudden it was over and we are left moving our separate ways and into our varied and exciting ministries

This whole past week has been busy and it went by in a blur. I know we had two distinct speakers who offered valuable insights on cross cultural ministries and global discipleship. I found their information interesting, but between the fact that I am staying locally and the fact that we were in the homestretch of our training I do not have many insights to offer from their time with us.

What I did find immensely valuable this past week was the opportunities for each of us to pray, listen, and intercede to and with God for each other. All ten of us participants took a turn in the hot seat and had the others pray and listen for them and then share what was heard from God. I really value this exercise and not just for encouragement, but because it is always astounding how the same themes repeat in a variety of ways that different people receive words from God.

So with this I will conclude my update. As the weeks unfold I will continue to update this blog, but I will start doing so every other week as my weeks will be a fair bit less diverse, but likely just as intense.

God Bless
-Stefan