Job

Yeah! I have a job offer and now a job.... after a little bit negotiating and talking to the fellows at church... I now have a part time job at Lakeshore Vineyard. Most people probably won't notice I am now "on staff" because most think I was on staff anyways... but I really wasn't... I did a few things with video but for the most part I just did freelance video work and worked out a deal with the church so I could use some of their equipment.

Anyways, I am excited and nervous. It is a big responsibility and will actually give me a better idea of what ministry is all about (so I am for the most part going to be doing what I feel call into right now). I think this will be fun. It is going to push me though. I am going to have to improve on follow through and just getting everything done on time (administration). But, truthfully I really want to grow in those areas... I need to grow in those areas.

So for the next 5 months (5 months because that is the end of the fiscal year for the church) I will be on staff taking over a lot of what the worship/media guy was doing (on the media side) as well as video and some other creative areas. So I will be heading up a small video team, the audio/sound person team and also the website and print media team... so that is a lot. I need to find people that are passionate about those areas (or good at those areas). I am excited to train people in those areas too. I am looking forward to hopefully getting more people involved in church and in areas they are passionate about. Because that makes people feel apart of the church... Honestly, I am just excited just to be able to invest in people....

I actually didn't think it was going to work out with the church. They sort of put a job offer out that I really didn't want to do. It was to few hours for me to fully invest myself in the job. It is not that I didn't want to do the work in the job description, it is just that I didn't want church just to "be my job"; a job that I did just to make money.

So because of the few amount of hours the church wanted me to work, a ministry job could have turned into just "another job" and I just didn't want that. Maybe my philosophy of ministry is wrong but it would be hard for me to not jump into ministry with my whole heart. I am passionate about the Church and am passionate about Lakeshore Vineyard so not fully investing myself just wasn't an option for me personally.

You see, I believe that ministry is all about investing in the people around you... and with less hours I just didn't think I could do that the way I wanted to. I could have worked as fast as I could to get the "tasks" done that were needed to be done but that really isn't a ministry model; that is a business model.

I think that is where the lines blur for so many churches. In America, and for that matter in most countries, business is about efficiency and that is a good model, for a business. BUT what so few people seem to forget is that churches, for the most part, should not be run like a business. That is a major problem with a lot of church philosophy; we so often think we need to run them like a business. Working with people, loving and listening to people is not all about how efficient you are. Church SHOULD NOT be a business.

I just won't do that.

We do all know that most of Jesus' teachings were all about how to minister to people in manner that was as quick and efficient as possible. Jesus was all about the business church model. The Sermon on the Mount was actually called "The Five Steps to an Efficient Church" and his philosophy on ministry was "the less time I spend with individual people the more masses of people I can reach" because its all about numbers and efficiency... right? Wrong.

It was and is all about investing in people. Jesus never taught about how to minister to people quickly. He so often got his message across to many by spending quality time with a few. He knew it was ALL about the PEOPLE. And frankly, people are messy and they take time. The 12 disciples were a group of people that Jesus fully invested himself into.

I just want to be able to invest fully into the people in the church and the people I am leading in my areas. And for the next 5 months, or maybe more, I will be doing just that.