Taking The Leap

Since the beginning of my search for a full time pastoral position I have been trying to figure out what mission I want to pursue in a youth ministry.  There are plenty of strategies that can be implemented, and all of them have some merit.  I finally had my moment of clarity however about 3 weeks ago at a conference that our church hosted.  The speaker Bob Rognlien said something that changed my entire conversation on the subject.  He said, "Ministry is hard no matter what you do, why not do ministry the way that Jesus did."  WOW!!!!  This sounds so simple but how hard is it to actually function this way.  When there are 50 people in your church all thinking they have the magic wand to youth ministry and your plan is going to take years to implement fully, there is an enormous amount of pressure to get results.

What I have learned in looking at the life of Jesus however was that speed and immediacy of results was never his primary concern.  It took 3 years to build a fully functioning body of disciples, and he had the advantage of perfect tactics with no setbacks.  So I am making a decision here and now, as long as I am a pastor, I will pursue a model of healthy discipleship in my churches.  


When outside forces compete for my attention and the direction of my ministry, I will be able to stand strong in the confidence that I am following in the footsteps of my rabbi, the one person I am willing to completely surrender to.  You see, discipleship in it's original form has been polluted over the years, and it has gotten to the point where a veil seems to be covering even the most basic components of discipleship.  Discipleship was never meant to be an unattainable feat, or even a stretch for us as humans, it was meant to be the natural progression of our relational lives with each other.

The first and most important principle of discipleship implementation is that you as the leader must have an open life.  I mean open, completely and in every way.  One of the things I have had the most difficult time with in speaking with other pastors is how they are taught to isolate themselves, or part of themselves to remain some level of privacy.  As long as pastors isolate even a part of their lives, they are not committing to a discipling culture.  Discipleship doesn't mean abandoning your personal life in favor of a public life, rather it means that the line between personal and public is taken down and that they mold into the same life.

I will continue my discussion of what I have learned about practical discipleship in another post, but I want to leave you with a sense of the incredible joy and confidence that Christ has given me as I begin this journey to building discipleship within my church.

Pat

John 14:12  “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father. 

Information Overload

As I sit in my office this morning, I am realizing that too much information really can be a bad thing. Since my speaking engagement with a church last week, I have been on a reading kick.  I have read youth ministry articles and books, and I have re-read some of my old business books.  The questions that keeps coming to mind is:  "Are there any sure things in this volume of good ideas?"  I don't believe that most people write without being at least somewhat credible, so what they are writing must have worked at some time right?  In the midst of all this information, I can feel the obsessive side of me starting to come out and over analyze life, so I am taking a step back for a week or so.

What I have been able to determine so far is that in every successful business or ministry book relationships seem to be at the heart of success.  Relationships between leaders, leaders to students, students to students, students to parents, and finally parents to leaders.  Especially in youth ministry relationships are hard, complex and perplexing, but I am willing to accept the premise that they are the heart of what we do.

This is a really ironic realization to come to because even though I am academically trained to excel in relationships, I have also spent my entire life trying to avoid genuine relationships.  This last several months has opened my mind to healthy relationships, but God is absolutely guiding my heart towards investment in relationships.  In many ways I feel like this is it, this is where the rubber meets the road, this is my weakness in which God will be made strong.

I need to love people genuinely and completely, I need to invest in the human and spiritual development of people, and I need to reflect the reality that Christ never missed an opportunity to be in relationship with people.  I am finding this easier as I become more secure in my identity (see last weeks posts).  When I am more comfortable with who God says I am, and I accept my kingdom responsibility in this world, then the relationships will come easier because they won't be a chore, they will be a reflection of my relationship with Christ.

"May your feet be covered in the dust of your master,"

Pat

First Message Down - A Lifetime to Go

Last night I delivered my first official sermon to a group of youth.  Wow!  What an amazing experience.  I have started the process of interviewing with a church and I was invited by them last night to speak at their youth group. 

The entire process has featured God continuing to stretch me in ways I don't necessarily like but I always appreciate.  One of my key personality traits is that I am a compulsive planner, I love organization and I revel in being able to predict possible outcomes and have contingency plans ready for them.  God has made that process anything but plannable however.  The invitation to speak came on Tuesday morning, and so I had less than 36 hours to prepare.  Being brand new to the sermon idea, I have never even written a full sermon much less delivered one.  God held me up though and showed me that my words are never going to matter, it's the heart of the messages and the ability to let him shine through any topic.

I ended up scrapping some early ideas I had for a message and instead focusing on something that was close to my heart.  My core verse was 1 Peter 2:9, specifically confirming our identity as a kingdom of priests sent by God.  I loved it because it was organic, I had a chance to tell a story from my personal life, and I built in several interactive moments with the kids to keep them engaged.

Over all I am really proud of the way things went.  Of course I was nervous, I could barely walk up front without shaking but I don't think it came across as much as I would have thought.  I feel a sense of confirmation from God though that this is really the right path for me.  I don't know if this church in particular is where God wants me, I haven't received confirmation on that yet, but I can tell you that every day I explore this path I grow both personally and in my understanding of Christ and the role he plays in our lives even today.

Now I'm just hoping for another chance to speak so I can get more comfortable!

Pat

Will you be my friend?

I miss kindergarten.  Do you remember how easy it used to be to make friends.  You sat next to someone in the sandbox, shared a nice mud sandwich, and asked each other if you'd like to be friends.  Superficial?  Probably.  But never the less, I miss making friends that way. 

It seems like the older I get the more jaded I get to making friends.  It's hard, really hard.  You have to start with meeting the right kind of people in the right kind of place, and then most of the time the only people I ever hang out with are people that my wife has met and arranges the outings for me.  The outings get more complicated too, when we were kids a sleepover didn't have to be planned weeks in advance, you called me and I asked my parents and then came over.  As adults it seems like we have to compare calendars, make sure a particular date and time works and then probably reschedule two or three times before we actually end up in the same room together.

As an aspiring pastor, I see this as a huge wall to developing quality relationships with members of the church.  Let's be honest, some people have a natural gift for constant hospitality but most of us want to associate with other people on our terms and in a controlled environment.  I truly don't believe that the lack of community is due to people not liking each other, it's due to the fear of being judged as inadequate compared to others that we know.  We want to bring people over to our houses only after we've had a few days to clean, a chance to move that picture to the wall with the hole in, and weed the yard so whoever is coming over doesn't think we don't care about our house.

I don't think that's the model that Jesus had in mind though when he spoke of us being in community with each other at all times.  His ministry was anything but planned with an itinerary.  Jesus went where he was needed most, and stayed where he could, with whom he could.  He lived in community precisely so that he could meet the people he was helping where they were, not in the show they might put on for him.

The catalyst to developing positive relationships in the church I think is a firm confidence in who we are in God, and a desire to share in God's ministry in our lives.  As a pastor, I want to come into peoples lives exactly as they exist every other day.  I want to see kids toys on the floor, I want to see dishes in the sink, because that means that I have developed a trust with my congregation that says I'm not here to judge, just to fellowship.  I want to love being with people and to get away from the need to have my home, my life and my heart reflect anything other than what they truly are.

Making friends may not be as easy as it once was for me, but this is my #1 development opportunity for my "out" component of ministry. 

Pat

....In Search of Identity

For many teams, today marks the start of the professional baseball season. As I watch the commentary and prepare my fantasy baseball lineups, I have had to take a step back and marvel at how one theme has come up more than any other as the recipe to success. Almost to a man commentators reference the teams ability to play as a single unit and find it's identity as more important than the talent level of it's players. This is not always an easy concept for me to understand, I don't always feel comfortable with the idea that the best and brightest don't always get the win.

I have experienced this phenomenon in sports for years but only over this past week have I started to realize the connection that this has with my relationship with God. I can say with 100% certainty that I am talented, capable person with a definitive calling on my life and yet God and I aren't playing as one single unit yet. I spend more time trying to figure stuff out on my own than I spend trusting God to show the way.

So what is identity? This is a constantly morphing idea in my life right now, but as I see it today identity is our internal assurance of our outward relationship, abilities and talents. This definition can be both worldly and biblical I think. The world says that I am defined by who I am married to, how much money I make, who my friends are, what religion I follow, and how intelligent I am. On their own none of these things are particularly bad, but compare that idea with God's view of identity. Our identity in Him consists of: I am child of God, a royal priesthood, with all authority of the Kingdom, destined for greatness if I will submit to his will.

It's such a great identity, we don't have to do anything but listen to God and act when he asks. And yet I have never met a person who is fully engrossed in their identity with God. My education background would suggest that this probably has something to do with the frequency and tangibility of the affirmation we receive. With a worldly view of identity we can always be affirmed, we can always find someone to impress with our abilities. But in a Godly identity, our insecurities are exposed because there are often droughts of affirmation when God wants us to grow. And that leaves us with a choice in those droughts of whether to persevere or to retreat to a place where we can receive empty affirmation again.

The other possible explanation for our lack of identity with the Father goes deeper than human psychology. We are sinful creatures in a sinful world, and our sin seperates us from the fullness of God. I am convinced that the greatest weapon the enemy has against us is insecurity and self confidence. Right now God is exposing all kinds of these insecurities and confidence issues in my life and I hate it. I hate that below the layer I show everyone else there's a terrified little kid who didn't have any friends, who just wants attention. I hate the fact that I put other people down simply because I'm witty and funny and would rather get affirmation through people laughing at one of my jokes than consider the heart of the person I'm laughing at. And most of all, I hate that my insecurity tells me that I should just stop this journey to becoming a pastor now because I will never be good enough for God, or even good enough to help someone find Christ.

My head knows who I am in God, I have read the verses and honestly I've prayed the prayers. My heart desires this identity in God but this is a work in progress. My challenge through this time is to stay in the dark places where God is teaching and molding and not to run back toward the fake light of the world and reject God's identity for me.

God Bless,

Pat

The Calling

A little background for you: My name is Patrick Kilby, I am 28 years old and I live in Visalia, CA. I have decided to create this blog to document the journey I am taking to become a pastor after the calling I have felt placed on my life. When I reflect back on my life I can see that I first recognized God's calling in my life when I was 15 years old. I was attending Bethel Baptist Church in Greeley, CO at the time and felt compelled to dive into the human mind and discover what might impact lasting behavioral change for God in their lives. Sadly, like many youth, my early 20's pushed me far away from where I should have been going. I accepted positions in ministry at 2 different churches, only to be disenfranchised by the idea that politics rule the American church. (I define politics for the sake of this posting as any personal agenda placed into the church setting which seperates the body from the kingdom work for which it was designed.) I left those churches and churches in general for a number of years with the belief that if that was how God designed the church I didn't want to be part of it. And for years I thought that my personal relationship with Jesus was enough to carry me through, and that corporate worship was optional, even detrimental at times. Skip forward about 8 years, and stumbled into a church 20 minutes away from my house called Church of God of Exeter. I live in a fairly large town with 50+ churches but I went to a tiny town 20 minutes away to church with some friends and my life began to change. This church has about 400 members, in a farming town, with nothing particularly special about it and yet for the first time in my life I found the presence of God in the meetings. What an amazing feeling that turned out to be. Knowing that God really does inhabit the praises of his people not in an abstract, unavailable way; but in a powerful and tangible way. Since that first visit 3 years ago, I have found comfort, security and confidence in what the true church was always designed to be. The single most important realization that I found was that you cannot depend on your pastoral staff to develop your own personal walk with Christ. If you go to church dependant on your pastor to "feed" you spiritually, you will always be disappointed and you will always find a reason why they don't deserve your respect. I came to realize that church in it's best form is nothing more than a like-minded community of people loving each other and sharing their experiences with Christ. I think that now I can accept that truth, I can walk in the confidence that the call to pastoral ministry does not require perfect Christians or those above reproach, but rather those who are the most committed to bringing to kingdom of God to earth through community and relationships. Until next time, Patrick Kilby