May and June, - Retreats, War, and the end of another year.

Good Morning Friends, Family, and Internet Wanderers

It is that time of year again where I must apologize for forgetting last month and blame it on the business of ending a ministry year. That being said a lot has been done and while stressful it was all very good. 

Thankfulness

In the middle of June I had my final youth event for the year, it was a lock-in. For those who might not be familiar with the terminology a lock-in is an event where the students spend the night at the church. For this event myself and one other leader committed to staying up all night to maintain supervision and to spend time with the students a few of which almost made it the whole night. This event while draining was a lot of fun and even featured a surprise visit from the fire department on Saturday morning when some bacon grease smoke triggered our buildings alarm. I feel really privileged to be able to speak and pray and live into the lives of the students in this place.  But I am exceedingly thankful for two specific things which occurred recently. The first is that one of my youth, the oldest current youth made the decision to get baptized and I was invited along with another church leader to baptize him. This is perhaps the most exciting part of my role as a youth leader, to get to see students share about how they have experienced Jesus. To be a part of that decision both as a leader in the preceding months and years, but also to be the one with them in the water, it is exhilarating and an answer to prayer. My second point of thankfulness around youth is that I have tentatively found a new female youth leader. I say tentative because her life is also pretty busy but she has a heart for youth and a desire to serve. Please join me in praying for her and her final decision, I am still awaiting her 'non- provisional' acceptance.

The past two months have also featured a summer course at CMU called War and Divine Violence in the Bible. This class has been taught by one of my favourite professors and one who I also feel that i have a growing peer relationship with as we have spoken many times on various subjects outside the classroom experience. In this course I was able to look critically at some of the most difficult passages in the Bible, particularly the conquest of the promised land by Joshua and the often labelled genocide of the Canaanites. In my study I found many reasons both for why this event occurred, and that indicated the event was much less violent than is often understood (it was still really violent though). But the fundamental learning for me from this course has to do with the difference between Gods actions in the Old and New Testament. As I understand it the Old Testament God acted violently/harshly more often, because the conditions needed to be exactly right to create the correct environment for Jesus to be born into. Overall I found the course incredibly stimulating and expect to get a B+/A as is my new norm.

Finally in the middle of May my church had our annual general meeting. This meeting as usual featured reports from different ministries and the volunteers who lead them, giving the church as a whole an idea of what has taken place over the past year. Leading up to this meeting I had been feeling discourage as my goals for youth and for the young adults this past year had not been met. Yet when speaking to the church, and giving my reports of how the youth, the young adults, and my other ministry responsibilities have progressed I was met with spontaneous affirmation from many in the church. Normally there is a time of questions after each person shares, and as I saw many hands go up I was unsure what to expect, but it was not what I received and the blessings that my church shows me over and over are a clear testimony that God has placed me in the right place for this time.


Prayer requests

So with my writing this I have officially been in summer mode for about a week or two now and my first request is that I would use this time well and wisely. This year has been full of ups and downs and overall has been great, but I have definitely been looking forward to a bit of a break. Please pray that I would be able to both rest this summer but also to be able to prioritize and prepare well for September and the new ministry year.

Implicit in a new year are new courses, and next year I am taking what is called Supervised Ministry Experience (SME). SME is a course which involves me working in a church and reflecting critically both on my experience and my success. But what makes me nervous about this course is that it is both unknown to me and from what I gather mostly about me making my own goals and trying to meet them. So on the one hand this could and I hope it does allow me to think and grow in very specific areas of ministry, but on the other hand this could very likely put a lot more on my plate and make for an even busier year.  Please join me in praying that this course and experience will be one which helps me hone my ministry skills and not one which takes away from what I am already passionate about doing.

My final prayer request is that I would grow as a leader. As I wrote above the youth group is going well and I feel strongly that the next year will be our best  year so far. Yet our growth is slow and intermittent and I often feel like there is more I could be doing. Recently a colleague of mine recommended Simple Church, it is a book about simplifying what your ministry is doing rather than the seemingly default desire to add complexity. I am still in the first third or so of the book but it is all about clarifying vision, and doing a few things really well. Last year our youth group clarified its mission, we exist to Know, Grow, and Sow the love of God. Yet this  past year I used it very infrequently please pray that those I lead would grow in their faith, and that I would not get stuck doing enough to get by, but that our students would really know, grow, and sow the love of God.


Thank you for joining with and supporting me, I could not continue without your prayers and I am so blessed by them and by you.

Blessings
- Stefan Klassen