I'm not great at this

Hello again, it's Saturday January 4th, 2020 and today is the day I accept I'm never going to be a great consistent blogger no matter how must I would like to be. But I would like to keep writing, whether there are people to be reading or not. About once a week I'll hear something and think huh that would be great to write about, I should sit down and starting doing that again. Up until this point there's always been a great excuse not to what with being a full time seminary student and working at the same time. But life has changed drastically in the past few month and I'm thinking there might be a little more head space for being creative and faithful in worship through writing. 

So here's what's been going on...

I finally graduated!! After three years of blood, sweat, tears, theology, laughs, and way too many cups of coffee we finally finished as the first class of MAYM students from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (for those who may not speak seminary degrees that's Masters of Arts in Youth Ministry). Three years of studying youth ministry and working in the church is a long time, and my heart is torn in two ways between missing being with my beautiful Texas Five and other fellow CYMTers once a month but also LOVING not having to do homework anymore. I keep saying I'm going to sit down and figure out the total amount of pages I wrote during school, but I haven't quite gotten there yet. 

TBH, totally thought I would never survive a grad school program. I'm super dyslexic, don't enjoy reading at all, and have the attention span of a goldfish like 90% of the time. So it's all thanks to my good, good Father that we crossed that finish line in May. 

During my time in seminary I was also serving at Director of Children's and Youth Ministry at Canyon Lake UMC in Canyon Lake. As hard as a decision as it was, I knew God had been saying that my time at Canyon Lake would end when my contract through CYMT would end with graduation. My heart will always be with my sweet youth and kids of CLUMC, and as they have dubbed themselves, they are my "OG" or my Original Group. It was hard to say goodbye, but as the three years of school unfolding so did better my call to ministry. Being at CLUMC helped show me that I have a unique set of gifts and graces for ministry with kids and families, and even more a passion for innovating ministry to youth that starts before they even get to the youth group. I started feeling God's invitation into children's ministry in December of 2017, and through the next year in a half God began shaping that passion, love, and excitement for children's ministry as well as develop within me more ideas for how to push ministry to kids as part of kingdom building than may have not been done yet. When it came time to start thinking about what happened after graduation I finally said yes to God about full time children's ministry, something that I had been fighting for a much longer time than just my time in seminary. 

Fast forward to January of 2019. Out of a long set of occurrences and connections within the Rio Texas and San Antonio area youth pastors, I met a youth pastor from a church in San Antonio who would soon be in need of a children's ministry director. Carly and I chatted for a bit and she said she thought I'd be exactly who they'd been looking for and promised to keep me in the loop about when the application for the job would come out. A few days later it did, I applied that moment, interviewed a few weeks later, and was offered the job after a painstaking month of interviews. I accepted the Children's Ministry Director position at Northern Hills UMC in San Antonio on February 9th and started June 2nd, just a week after graduating seminary and finishing my contract with CYMT and CLUMC. 

It's  been quite an adventure into life in San Antonio at a new church in a new position. There's been many, many highs but with those highs have also come lows. I am so incredibly thankful for all that I have learned through picking up someone else torch and following Christ call into kingdom building in Northern San Antonio. Children's Ministry is teaching me so many new and wonderful things about what it means to love kids and teach kids to love each other and Jesus. The Lord has been faithful to the work we have done at NHUMC, and I can't wait to see how He's going to work as we move into spring and the start of my second summer at this church. 

Ministry is great, and a huge part of my life, but it's not my whole life...or at least it shouldn't be. Recently, I've been asking myself the question who am I and what do (or should I be doing) with those pockets of time I have outside of my job and my ministry. I have to be honest, most of my free time has been spent coming home and lounging around either watching Netflix or devouring audio books like there is no tomorrow. Through the movies I've watched, and books I've listened to (and I do have to admit since I've left grad school 14 of those books have been Harry Potter x2) I've noticed a trend.

If you know me well, you'll know I can hardly watch a movie without finding some way to tie the story, or themes, or characters back to something Biblical. I actually spent a good bit of my time at Canyon Lake writing a series of curriculum based of kids movies to be used in my Sunday school classes. I REALLY love writing about where I see Jesus around me, and I really love the game that has become "how can I find a way to use this movie/book/tv show to teach people about Jesus" that I now play with every form of media I consume. So I'm going to do an experiment, and you'll have the maybe unfortunate pleasure of being invited along with me for this. 

This year I really want to try and see if I can make my time that I'd usually spend mindlessly watching movies mean something more. I love story telling through books and movies, and I love theology, so I want to see how much I can write bringing those things together. Every time I watch, read, or listen to something I always start to have those connections and always think I should write these down...and I never do. 

So this is going to be real messy, but I'm just going to go for it. For each movie, book, tv show etc. that I have that thought "hey this connects to faith", I'm going to write. Clearly, not everything I'll consume will fit this mold. But it's time to start recording those place in which Christ shines through even in places we least expect Him to. So, feel free to buckle up and come with me on this ride into this vaguely shaped blob I'm calling a new...hobby? 

I don't know, we'll see where this takes me. 

As a teaser I'll tell you the straw that broke the camels back was a moment when I was watching Star Wars Rise of the Skywalkers yesterday...I won't give it away but I totally saw a Hebrews 11 (nicknamed the Hall of Faith) moment and got real nerdy excited. I've actually been going back and watching the entire Star Wars saga from episode 1 and want to end seeing the new Star Wars again. We'll see if I can muster enough to watch Episode 1-3 again as they're basically trash (sorry not sorry if you're someone who loves 1-3).

So, I guess I'll see you back here when I've formed some intelligible thoughts about Jesus and Star Wars.