Chase the Setting Sun...

A lot of us have been in a church worship service and recited the Lord's prayer in unison with the congregation. I grew up my entire life reciting this prayer in church, most of the time in a monotone, uninterested manner. I always made fun of it because we all sounded like a bunch of mindless zombies as we recited, "Our Father, who art in heaven...".

Our father, in heaven

Hallowed be your name

Your kingdom come

your will be done

On earth as it is in heaven

Give us this day our daily bread

and forgive us our debts

as we also have forgiven our debtors

And lead us not into temptation

but deliver us from evil.

As I was studying this prayer the line "your will be done" struck me particularly hard. As I thought about Jesus' example of prayer for my life I realized how often I bark orders at God and completely ignore His will.

Every Wednesday I have a group of students that come over to the church after school to hang out and play video games. Most of the time they play Madden 2010 or Halo.

I am not your typical youth pastor. I almost never play video games. Seems that most youth ministries have a huge focus on video games; having multiple game consoles and TVs to play them on. I'm just not that interested.

I have now been doing full time ministry for about three and a half months. November 1st marked the end of my third month here at Castleton UMC. There have been a lot of fun and exciting things going on here in Phao Student Ministries along with the Contemporary worship ministries here at Castleton.

Along with some amazing things that have been going on in ministry it has been a time of figuring out how to balance full time ministry with marriage.

As probably anyone in ministry will tell you, it takes up an incredible amount of your time and energy. The passion God has given those of us in ministry, for those we minister to, often occupies our minds long after we leave the doors of the church. Ministry is not a 9-5, 40 hour per week kind of job. It tends to be a "whatever it takes to do it well" kind of job.

I have run into the struggle of not only dealing with full time ministry's time commitment, but being involved in two (or three) totally different types of ministries presents maybe a greater struggle to balance ministry with being home with my wife. I am supposed to spend half (or maybe a little less than half) of my time working on contemporary worship for our two worship services, and the rest of my time ministering to teenagers.

As perfect of a job as that may sound, it is difficult because handling music, musicians, and organization of two separate services and bands tends to be more than a 15-20 hour a week job. Student ministry, even though I work alongside a great full time Director of Student Ministries, tends to also take more than 20 hours a week. Add on leading a Tuesday night discussion group for young adults every week and the weeks tend to get pretty long.

As much as I absolutely love my job, the struggle has been finding time to be home. Not just finding time to be home though; finding time to be home when my wife, Courtney, is home. My schedule tends to make it so it is easier to be home in the mornings while she is at work because ministry often extends into the evenings, when she is home.

I am constantly trying to find ways to be home more but I'll admit, it's pretty hard. I'm thankful that everyone I work for, and with, are supportive of helping me find ways to get more time at home with Courtney.

I'm sure this is a struggle that I'll be working on forever, or at least as long as God is using me in full time ministry. Every pastor, youth worker, church staffer, deals with this kind of thing. It's nothing new. It's not specific to me.

I'd be curious to hear from those of you that are doing this, or have done this before and are (or were) married. How do you, or have you, balanced ministry with home life and family? What are the secrets I haven't come up with yet? Thanks.

P.S. Courtney has been a rock star throughout these last few months, as hard as it's been, she has been more than supportive and willing to adapt her life to meet the demands of being a "youth pastor's wife." Thank you.

I am now one month into my new job at Castleton UMC. It's been a fun and crazy month. Here's what's been going on for those of you that care.

My last post was on the Fear of God and what that might look like. Whether that be a simple reverence and respect for God or an actual fear, or terror, when in the presence of God. It is important to understand the fear of God. I'd like to talk about that a little more as I study through Proverbs for our Student Ministries WISE UP! study of Proverbs. There is a decision we have to make before we can be led into wisdom and an understanding of the fear of God.

"My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God." ~Proverbs 2:1-5

This passage clearly presents a specific choice that each of us has to make in life to determine whether we go the way of the wisdom of God and on to a relationship with Jesus Christ, or if we turn away from wisdom and lose our salvation and life completely.

This is where the Church comes in. When I say "Church" I mean the people of the Body of Christ and not just the individual churches in our community (though they are obviously a huge part of this). The Church has the responsibility to present all people, but specifically young people, with this decision.

The book of Proverbs is clear that ignorance is not an excuse for not making this decision. It says that "Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech." Wisdom is out there and in our face, screaming in our faces.

The Church is where Wisdom screams it's loudest (or should be). We are the mouthpiece, or bullhorn, for Wisdom. We are the ones that should be screaming wisdom into the streets and to all that we come in contact with.

If we fail to do this, specifically for young people before they have a chance to turn the wrong direction, we fail and they do not understand that they have a decision to make. We need to make this appeal to our young people so that there is no confusion about the choice they need to make; to follow the way of Wisdom to Jesus Christ, or as Proverbs basically puts it, dig their own grave. "For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them."

Granted, a lot of you might point out that I am still really a young person at the ripe age of 25. However, I feel this call strongest of all being one of the Student Ministries Directors here at Castleton UMC.

I love Proverbs, always lights a fire under me!

This week was my first week working full time in the office at Castleton UMC. It has been pretty busy. The first day was chuck full of meetings to get myself and Steph, the Director of Student Ministries, oriented to our new jobs.

So far we have done some planning and set some dates for events and programming for this coming fall for the youth and are pretty excited about it. I have had a chance to do a little organizing of some of my contemporary worship things and get that in order, which was long over due.

It's been a pretty good week. I'm looking forward to next week hoping things will really start to settle in and get into a routine.