Courageous

It’s been some time since I posted here, been very busy with things not related to spiritual growth and that’s been part of the problem. I am going through my MS in Cybersecurity from University of Maryland, University College (UMUC) which is pretty demanding. I have always liked the field of cyber security but it was an immature field until the past few years and the job market is ripe for this career. Unfortunately this means I have had to put my M.A. Christian Ministries on hold. I will get back to it… I promise… I am not going to waste those 30 credits I earned!

However, that is not the focus of this post. My church, Northwest Baptist Church, hosted a church-wide movie night at Harkins Bricktown Cinema where we rented out an entire theater (or screen depending on how you view it) for the movie ’Courageous’, the latest movie by Sherwood Pictures, the church that created Fireproof, Facing the Giants, and a few others. To say the movie is great would not do it justice. I am so amazed at how powerful this movie is. 

The movie really made me realize how far I have fallen from being the kind of father I should be (and used to be for the most part). God has blessed me with a beautiful daughter who despearately needs her father to be the kind of man I need to be. He has also blessed me with the two baby boys who need to have a male role model they can grow to become like as they begin to develop personalities. Sadly, I have not been doing the best job on this and I made the command to myself that I would turn that around before it’s too late. The reality is that life is so short and can vanish so fast, that each passing day could be the last one. I don’t want to spend my whole life regretting what I should have done for my children if I ever lost one of them.

That being said, I have resolved to go and get the Courageous Bible study and follow it to the letter. I have always said that I wished there was a spiritual guide  for all fathers to follow. In fact, when I was active in seminary, I very strongly considered making one. Thankfully, the Sherwood Baptist Church has already produced a strong bible study, the very one that the guys in the movie went through. I am leaving my office early today (it’s a holiday so I don’t technically have to be here but I wanted to make up some time) and I will be buying this when I get off.

For any fathers… I can’t stress enough how vitally important it is for you guys to see this movie or read the book. The lessons it teaches are some of the most powerful and vital lessons you can ever learn as a father.

A Few Funny Moments in ESL

It has been a considerable amount of time since I have posted anything here. To be honest, the only reason is that I have simply been too busy to post to many places and I have not really had a lot of changes occurring on the ministry front. I am still available to consider ministry positions but so far I have not been contacted for any. I have applied to a few different churches needing Bi-vocational ministers and I have added myself to the pulpit supply team but nothing has come out of it. I am sad to say that even though there is a shortage of pastors, the Southern Baptist mentality often comes down to ‘who you know.’ And since I don’t really know anyone outside of my church and other areas I have worked, I am not in anyone’s call list.

No problem though, my ESL class has been very fun. So fun, in fact, that I wanted to take a few moments to post a few of these funny moments. I hope you enjoy…

1.) During a dialogue practice over possessive pronouns, one of my students really made me laugh. She is very shy when it comes to speaking English even though she is quite good at it. Often she will speak if she is called on but won’t usually volunteer to do so. Last night, she was quite excited to be doing so well and got quite vocal on one of the dialogue pieces. The dialogue went thusly:

Me: Could you possibly do me a favor?

Student: Sure, What IT IS?

Obviously the actual words were “Sure, what is it?” but she was so vocal that I responded “Wow, sista! You is jive talkin’! What it do? Actually, please don’t talk like that!” *LOL* Everyone had a good laugh, even the student who said it so it was a good time.

2.) When studying the future continuous verb tense, I was giving the students some practice phrases to review. Basically, I will post a question and then provide only the root form of the particular verb to make continuous in the answer and the students are tasked with taking the question and making an answer since they have learned that most of the pieces of your answer are actually in the question. Be that as it may, I wanted to have some fun and so I came up with a strange question that shared a little of American popular culture. Here you are:

Q: Will Darth Vader destroy the Empire in Star Wars?

A: No, he will not. He will be working for the Empire.

I did my best Darth Vader respiration noise and said “Luke! I am your father!” and the students got a good laugh. I went on to explain that even though the question was really strange, they could still use the same exact structure to answer the question.

3.) Finally, in the same practice of possessive pronouns, I was making up some more examples for the students to try in our dialogue and I did not think one of them through and the result was thusly:

A: Could you possibly do me a favor?

B: Sure, what is it?

A: I’ve got a problem. I have to buy a drink but I don’t have any money. Could I possibly borrow some?

B: I’m sorry, I don’t have any.

A: Oh, I see. Do you know anyone who does?

B: Sure, you should call Frank and ask him I am sure he’ll be glad to help you.

The funny part was that after I said this, I paused and said “Wow, I gotta say. If I am telling you to call someone else to give you some money to buy you a drink at the store, I am not a very good friend. Now am I?” Much laughter followed! It’s really nice to see all of us having so much fun and learning at the same time.

If you get bored, you might check out my new Tumblr. I find that I tend to see random interesting or funny things in my life and decided to use Tumblr to post about them. If you would like to see this strange and unusual Tumblr, you can find it here: http://nottoopolitical.tumblr.com.

God bless!

Changing Angles

After submitting my resume, providing many different references, and weeks of waiting. I have been declined the Youth Ministry position I was seeking at a local church. I have to admit that I am both relieved and saddened. I am relieved because I have found a great deal of joy in teaching ESL with NWBC and I still somewhat enjoy working with the children’s ministry. Yet I am also saddened because it means that God doesn’t want me in the position at the moment  so I must ask myself if I am doing all I should be doing to be a better vessel for ministry.

My heart longs to reach those who are hurting and to help guidance with spiritual pursuits but if God wants me there, He will send me there. In the meantime, I am trying to change my resume angle to look much more like a teacher than an IT person or ministry person. Why? Because if I have a good CV, it will aid me just as much as a resume in most applications. For now, take care and God Bless!

A Great Analogy for Christian Life…

I am in the process of finishing out the last few pages of Brennan Manning’s wonderful book “The Ragamuffin Gospel” and I came across a story that seemed very familiar to me. After thinking back, I have seen it in two other books that I have read recently but this time it really spoke to me as a wonderful analogy about how we should live as Christians. Here you are:

Imagine this! You are being purused by a vicious tiger in the forest and are running as fast as you can. When things couldn’t get any worse, you realize that you are coming up on a cliff edge. Right when you are about to lose hope, you suddenly spot a rope dangling off the edge of the cliff and quickly grab hold of it to escape the tiger. Unfortunately, as you begin climbing down the rope you see the cliff drops over 500 feet down and there are sharp, jagged rocks at the bottom. To make matters worse, you look up and see the tiger is now growling and clawing at the edge of the cliff and two little mice just below the cliff have decided to start chewing through the rope you are on. In the midst of all of this, you look in front of you  and see a wonderful juicy strawberry right in front of you. You eat the strawberry and Yum! That was really good!

The moral of this story? We live in constant worry about our past… what is behind us (the tiger at the top of the rope), we are fearful about what the future may hold (the mice and the jagged rocks) and yet we still need to look around and see the wonderful gifts that God has provided us in this very moment (the strawberry). Often times we will find that as long as we are looking around us at the wonder of God’s creation we will find how great the blessings are in the present moment. If we live every day in constant admiration of what God is doing in our life we will be able to understand how wonderful His love is and trust his guidance to direct us.

As a brief update, I am still serving in NWBC happily yet I am also being considered for a new ministry position. I won’t go into much more detail about it now as there is still no way to know if I will even be considered. I just know that they are researching me as a candidate. As I plan and prepare for this, I have been thinking back to some of the things during my previous ministry position that made it so challenging and now that I am out of the heat of the moment, I can see many ways I could have done some things to change the circumstances a little. Would that have changed the end result? Probably not because God has this planned out much better than I ever could.

I keep repeating the same prayer to myself – whatever you want of me, O Father, I freely give for there is nothing in this world I have earned on my own merits. Yet I pray that you will embolden my mind with your Holy Spirit as I seek Your will in everything I do.

Amen and God Bless!

Open to Options again

It has been over a year since I started at Agape Baptist church and I have been cooling my heels and regrouping myself spiritually. However, on Valentine’s Day this week, I went back to that church to attend the wedding of two of my former students. One of those students is the one who told me that if it hadn’t been for me, he would not have come to Christ so seeing this day was monumental to me.

Being there amidst all of those folks allowed me to take a different look at the church than I had before. I saw how everyone connected with each other, I watched two of my other students just loving all over Madyson and I got to have the time to hang out with these guys and it just blew me away. I miss doing the ministry work, that’s for sure. I also realized that had I been worried less about my college and more about spiritual things, the result could have been vastly different.

Because of this, I am officially out on the market again to try and pick up a BiVoc youth pastor role. I am hoping for a church that is a little bigger and closer to our house but if God leads me differently then that’s what I will do. Would I go back to Agape? I think I would… I would have a more sober outlook of the ministry than I did when I began but I would do it. However, it seems like I was there right when I needed to be (would God have allowed me to do anything else?) because it gave one of their own members, Collin, a chance to finish building his wings up enough to fly as the youth leader. He’s not a Bi Voc like I was but he does do most of the work. However, if I was asked… I probably would say yes.

Even still, I have applied to a few other churches thus far that had posted that they need a Bi-Voc youth pastor so we’ll see how that goes. If the Spirit leads, I will go. Until then, I leave this message with a wonderful ending: “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” (Ephesians 2:10, NLT). I might be a ragamuffin but God did give me hands to serve Him.

Yo Hablo Español Un Poco

Hello friends! I am excited to tell you that God has led me to a new ministry opportunity in my home church of Northwest Baptist Church, OKC. I have been working rather actively in the Children’s Ministry with the 3 year olds and that’s been fun but now a new ministry has been placed in front of me – the English as a Second Language (ESL) classes at NWBC.

Starting in 7th grade, I took Spanish classes and made it all the way up to Spanish III before my life became too hectic. I could speak Spanish relatively well and even comprehend it pretty well during my heyday. But, after high school, I found that I rarely used it or at least not often enough to remain super fluent. However, I never forgot how to speak it, and I would often read the Spanish labels on various products I had just to see how much of it I could comprehend. I am not sure why I remembered it until now. God wants me to use it.

As it stands, I have been serving in this capacity for about two months even though the freezing weather and other schedule conflicts has made me not able to go for a while. But when I am there it is loads of fun. I have never seen people so excited about learning as I did with these folks. One of my favorite students works every day of the week except Wednesday and yet he comes to the church just to learn. I have also learned a great deal more about their culture which has been very exciting.

One side that I am still not sure about is how much the ESL leader brags about me. I have spent my whole life trying to not let pride get the best of me but it seems like every day I am there, the whole teacher group goes on and on about how good of a teacher I am. The one Wednesday I missed (the others were missed because of the ice closing down OKC), the leader of the ESL classes said everyone was asking where I was and that I was very missed. I can’t believe how much these people brag on. I am flattered but that also puts me with big shoes to fill.

God is realy working on my heart and helping me to dig through the various experiences I have had in ministry to better clear my heart for new options. It’s an exciting time but also a time of anxiety. God has this all under control though, so I am doing a good job by letting Him do his work through me.

My First Developmental Psychology Essay

Well, as the days have gone by, I have been working hard on my college classes after changing my major to Marriage and Family Ministries and the first class in this vein that I have taken was Human Development better known as Developmental Psychology. The class requires a thorough final essay regarding some topic of human development and naturally because of my child’s history, I chose to examine Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and it’s impact on Early Childhood Development. The end result is a wonderful essay that really is the essay I have been wanting to make for a while since it sheds some much needed light on a particularly darkened subject. Do take a moment to read it if you can, you can locate it here: PTSD and Early Childhood Development.

Changing Tides

It has been some time since I was able to update this blog with anything substantial and although I don’t like the fact that it happened, it was a necessary evil. Simply put, the world as I know it has been in a constant state of flux ever since I started this quest for ministry education and in the recent months, the intensity of the flux had reached a fevered pace. Although some of the changes have been rather large, I have faced more challenges with the little changes that have been building up than I have with the larger scale activities. I will do my best to state what is new and important to my current ministry life and hope that the details of the smaller things will be few.

The first factor is one that I have expressed previously but left much unsaid information. I have been working through my Spiritual Formation class the past 8 weeks and have been trying to give it my utmost attention. You see, one of the biggest challenges I faced when I was leading the Agape Baptist Church student ministry was my spiritual immaturity as a leader. This immaturity was fueled by the fact that I desperately needed some spiritual balance to help me keep up with the ever changing situation at the church but I was inept at doing so as I had no clue how on earth to strike that very balance while still keeping up with the other demands of my life.

It is this and many other things that the Spiritual Formation class teaches. That being the case, I wanted to focus as much on the class as possible. Not only has this paid off in that I have so many more wonderful techniques for balance but I have scored nothing below a 94 the whole time. I do hope that by the time I get all my grades back, I will be in the 96% range because that will help me move my GPA closer toward a 4.0. Suffice to say, I plan to repeat this level of devotion once my new class starts in a few days. This brings me to my next discussion point.

In late 2008, I felt the call to ministry on my life. Feverishly, I searched for degree programs to fill this need. I started with a Master of Leadership in Public Administration (MLPA) from Mid-America Christian University (my alma mater for my bachelors) but after only two classes (modules as they were called) I realized that I needed to focus on seminary. After talking with my beloved spiritual mentor and friend, Dr. Ben Brammer from Northwest Baptist Church and a series of eye-opening meetings with Dr. Anthony Jordan, the Executive Director/Treasurer of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, I decided to attend Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. Originally, I started to pursue a Master of Religious Education because I thought it would be a good degree for Children’s Ministry. However, after some further consideration, I changed my degree to a Master of Divinity.

The next phase in my life is one everyone who knows me is aware of, the day I chose to actually take on a ministry role. The way I saw it, I had a great deal of knowledge that I had been learning and I wanted to use it for some people who needed me to use it. I answered the ad to take Agape’s Student Ministry over and was very excited to be offered the position of Student Pastor. The challenges mounted quickly after that and as I discuss in my entry over the resignation from the position, it was too much of a challenge for me to spiritually handle.

However, I did realize that the position of pastor for a church or for youth is one that I won’t be able to do unless it is a very specific church: larger, liberal instead of conservative (not in politics but in mannerisms), with a vibrant community of faith attached to it. Most of the churches that I could be hired at for some time are not going to really fit that bill. Also, while I greatly enjoy preaching and teaching, working with people to help them with their faith and simply being there for someone… I do not like the obsession with perfection placed on most pastors, the need to play to the crowd I am speaking to, and most of all… I don’t know if I could handle things like the hospital chaplaincy work. Will I do it? If God calls me to then, yes, but it won’t be my preference.

Now I am finally able to lay on the next big thing… I changed majors. You see, the prospect of what kind of positions I see in the future of a straight M. Div were not exactly what I had hoped for. Besides, all this time, all I ever wanted to be was a Children’s Pastor. I was reminded of that once great love I felt for Children’s work when I started working with the Kindergartners at NWBC when I returned. I love kids, I love how they are not biased against people most often, I love how they openly accept grace just like Jesus wants us all to (See Matthew 18:10) and furthermore, I actually have something of a knack for reaching them. That being the case, I searched for the best degree to let me work with kids in the ministry setting and found the Master of Human Services – Marriage/Family Counseling. This gives me the developmental psychology and the family counseling I need to be taken seriously as a children’s pastor.  The degree program is only 30 credit hours as opposed to the 96 it would have taken for my M. Div so the overall time I am spending in college is lower by a significant amount.

However, there was one nagging question… what about all those credits I got in seminary? After all, the classes do not transfer to my new degree. As it stands, I have completed 25 credits toward my M. Div. If I were to do nothing but get the MAHS degree, I would lose essentially two years of my life. So, I discovered that a smaller seminary degree, Master of Religion – Christian Ministries Specialization features all of the seminary work without the challenging Greek and Hebrew classes and with less demand for challenging classes. Basically, if I complete 5 more classes (2 1/2 semesters or a little shy of one more year) then I would actually get to use ALL of my seminary credits and I would have TWO Masters Degrees. My first would be the core needed to work with children in ministry and the other would provide me the theological basis needed to make a good stab at most standard pastoral roles were I to be called. It’s a no-brainer! To make matters even more wonderful,  even by getting TWO Masters, I am still only taking a grand total of 60 credit hours… that’s 35 credits less than my M.Div so that means I am still getting out sooner than originally planned.

As it stands, I am now serving actively with the Children’s Ministry back at Northwest although I have changed from working with the Kindergartners and have moved down to the 3 year old class. Honestly, this is better for me because there were already 4 teachers in there and usually only 10-12 kids whereas in 3′s, there are usually 10-12 kids and one teacher who leaves early and one who does not always make it there on Sundays. I still see my Kindergarten kids when I come to church on Sunday night because I also am a teacher with the Awana Sparks class which features kindergartners and even some first graders who I had when they were in Pre-K. I want to do more with the kids but to work on Wednesdays would be impossible because of my schedule, Tiff’s schedule, and Mady’s bed time.

Over the time I have been in my classes, I have learned a great deal about being humble and learning to seek closer for God’s voice in my life. I still lament for what I feel like was a failure in the youth ministry but the Good News of Jesus tells me that I am forgiven and accepted any way… at least from God’s perspective. I am trying to get myself more spiritually centered so I can lead my family through the storms of life and so that I can teach my daughter how very important she is to God and whatever else happens is simply an additional opportunity for change and growth.

Skimming over the last few details… I attended my 10 year high school reunion during the second weekend of October and although I had to explain how I had stepped down from the pastoral role, I was amazed at how well I was received. I felt socially awkward plenty of times but that is not a problem to me. I was able to catch up with some of the people I have been friends with on Facebook and offer hugs and smiles to them personally. I even had the chance to speak rather openly about my faith and about the wonderful changes in my life to a few people that I would never have imagined I would make connections with, it’s funny how God works in ways like that. It also seems that I will be able to start some music again soon as I found that a good friend from church likes guitar and wants to play so I am building up a studio computer so he and I can play on it and make some wonderful music.

Lastly, I have found one of my new favorite books, The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning. I greatly respected Manning after I learned that he was the one who initially stated one of my favorite quotes about faith: “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians. They acknowledge Jesus with their lips, they walk out the door, and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” This very phrase can be heard at the beginning of the song “What if I Stumble?” off DC Talk’s popular album Jesus Freak. The entire book focuses on the true reality of God’s grace as provided through the Lord Jesus Christ even fore the most lowly of people… especially for them. It’s an amazing book and I literally cannot put it down unless I have to.

That’s all for now. Do take care!

More writings have been added

I am still around but seminary and ministry at NWBC are keeping me very busy. I have added a new book critique and an essay over spiritual formation that can be found on the “Academic Writings” page. God bless!

The Onset of August

August, the ‘work month’ has led to several things happening in my life both physical and spiritual. It is certainly the time of the year when things start getting busier. My child started Kindergarten, and I started seminary. But it doesn’t end there, read on.

Seminary Starts

Today marks my first day back to seminary since the Spring. I greatly enjoyed the Summer off and it provided me a lot of time for personal reflection and for simply enjoying life at a little less frantic pace. I believe that I will continue to take off the summers since it gives me a much needed break and time to catch up on things. Furthermore, since my sweet daughter started going to Kindergarten this year, that means she will start being out during the summer. Of course, there will still be daycare for work hours but this will give me more time to connect with her on my downtime.

The first class I will be taking, B Term, is “Spiritual Formation” which will focus on growing myself spiritually and increasing my discipline for prayer, bible time, and further enhancing my spirit for the work of the ministry. The second class will be “Pastoral Counseling” which will aid me so much in learning how to ease the spiritual pressure felt by those God calls me to pastor to, whomever they may be. I look forward to God’s plan changing courses now that I am at this junction.

Chruch Changes

I have eluded to this before but now I will make it much more public. Tiffany and I, after trying several other churches, felt that we simply did not feel as much at home as we did at Northwest Baptist Church. The church is vibrant, missional, and always reaching out and serving those around it. That being said, we decided we simply wanted to go “home” after our brief vacation. I certainly enjoyed some aspects of serving as a youth pastor but I think God wanted to show me that I wasn’t ready to be “THE GUY” as in, the head of an entire branch of the church, that is what caused me to fail against the spiritual warfare. However, I am not at all objected to serving in other capacities where I am serving under another until God refines me enough to stand up on my own again.

After only a few short weeks back, Tiff has already been called in to work in the 2 year old class which is rather funny because she has already worked with these exact kids when they were in her Creepers class before we left. I ended up being called to work with my original ministry passion – kids. I work in the Kindergarten class now and have the same story as Tiff, most of these kids (including my own daughter) have moved up from the class I used to be teaching in and are now in this class. The only exception is that there is no such thing as “extended” for these kids, they go up to ‘big church’ once Sunday School is over. Tiff and I don’t like this too much as although our sweet child will sing at the top of her lungs to the music, once we start listening to Dr. Ben, she starts getting bored and restless. We have given her coloring books, toys, and other quiet things to do but she is still relentlessly bored.

That being the case, we have been inspired to pursue creating Children’s Church for the kids aged K-5th grade or so. Dr. Ben has been preaching lately about missionary work in other countries but reminds the congregation that there may be missions right here in our city. Both Tiff and I feel that this might be something that we can do to aid the church as it has been requested by members even as long ago as when we started which is over 6 years ago now. Clearly, there is a need in the church and Tiff and I have gifts that can help fill it. Now, the question remains, can we get the pastoral staff and the deacons to approve it? That is what we have asked Dr. Ben about now. Keep praying that God will guide the church and Tiff and I towards the goal He has in mind.