I Think My Normal is Abnormal

One of the occupational hazards of spending the last 19 years in student ministry is that you get used to the idea of change. It happens more in my area of ministry than most others. I mean, when I asked a teenager for her e-mail address the other day she told me that it was 2007 and asked me who still uses e-mail. Apparently, with the advent of text-messaging, e-mail is "too slow."

It wasn't long after I got to Crossroads that we moved the middle school ministry to Tuesday Night. Sure, it was a forced change as that little ministry had outgrown meeting in someone's home and our children's ministry used our entire shoebox of a building on the same night. We just changed nights. We eventually had to add a nighttime Sunday School class, too.

Not long after that our high school ministry outgrew Room 22 upstairs. Our Sunday School class got too large and there was no room big enough during our three services...so, we moved to Sunday nights. A stand-alone Bible church Sunday School class out at the end of FM 407 at 6:30PM. We just changed services.

We've had small group leaders come and go due to life circumstances. We've combined in-home groups and then un-combined them.

We've changed the way we do outreach so often that I couldn't tell you exactly how many times we did that. We kept tinkering until we found one that fits, and now we're tinkering with that little coffee shop until we get it right. We're close.

We've added staff & interns. Talented staff & interns have come and gone. Talented staff & interns have stuck around.

We moved into the Dungeon from our shoebox at the end of 407. That room alone has undergone 7 transformations and redecorations. We're close.

We've jettisoned programs that didn't work, experimented with others--some "worked" & others "didn't." We've changed teaching formats. We've done summer things differently. We focused on missions in the summer instead of camps. We moved the ski trip to every other year in hopes of adding a mission trip and/or service projects or the ever-popular financially affordable camp out near town.

So, in my way of thinking, change is usually a good thing. Seems to me that necessity often spurs a creative solution, so professionally, I'm pretty used to things changing. Youth ministry is almost always evolving or morphing or transforming due to the changing dynamics that are happening with graduation/promotion, or a community change (like adding another high school or middle school) and other things like that.

I've grown used to it by now.

It's been a normal part of the warp and woof of my "church" existence.

But I'm learning that my "normal" is not everybody's "normal." They haven't been morphing and evolving as a second language for nearly two decades.

And I'm learning more about serving more effectively as a "grown up pastor" by trying to be more considerate of that reality.

And, I'm thankful to work for a church that puts up with my "normal" as they allow me to understand and figure out their "normal."

I have a really great church family.

And I'm terribly encouraged by what God is doing in and through my church family these days. Even after almost 11 years there, I still wake up and am glad I get to work there.

I should say that publicly more often...which might become my new normal.