18 - 24 months ago...

I was leading a group of 20-30 teenagers, most of whom I had known for years. Now I lead a church of 90-100 20-30 year olds the vast majority of whom I have met in the last 10-12 months.

I was a worship leader and therefore spent a lot of time messing with sound gear and tech stuff. Now I still start every Sunday with an hour or so of messing with gear.

I preached 8 times a year and was supposed to fill in gaps when the Senior Pastor was away. Now I preach 47 times a year and it’s my job to be the primary expositor of the word for the congregation at Deep Water.

I oversaw a band, 3-4 youth leaders, and very, very occasionally some small group leaders. Now I lead a team of dozens of volunteers each week in a variety of different ministries.

It was a five min drive to the office. Now it’s a five step walk from my bedroom. It was far healthier the other way. Must do something about that.

I went to LBA meetings and threw in my ten cents on where the church was going. Now it’s my job to cast the vision, initiate the discussions, foresee the obstacles, convince the un-persuaded, develop our leaders, set the direction for the entire church, and suffer the vast majority of fallout from any bad decisions.

It was my job to spend the few thousand bucks I was handed on youth events and sound gear. Now I have to raise our funds, create our budget, figure out all the financial systems, work with our treasurer on charitable status and tax stuff, figure out how salaries and housing allowances and EI and CPP and Blue Cross and pension work. I have to make decisions like how much to spend on what, do we get office space, do we hire additional staff, do we save for a rainy day or make hay while the sun shines.

I could take anything that was too big, too scary, too complicated, too hard, or too messy and drop it in my bosses lap to figure out. Now I take those types of things to bed with me instead.

I was responsible to disciple a small group of great teens and lead 5-6 songs every Sunday. Now I am responsible to lead a church bumping up against 100 and everything that entails with no pre-existing structures to support stuff and no pre-existing patterns of ministry to rely on and with limited material resources. Oh yea, and I’m responsible to bring the gospel to a largely un-reached people group who have been accurately described as the drunk and disinterested.

I didn’t find it next to impossible to disengage from work. I never used words like “under stress” to describe how I’m feeling. I never found myself wishing for a break because I felt drained but also dreading my day off because the relative lack of stimulation meant 16 hours of intense boredom. I never drove around late at night asking God to show us how to reach the folks I passed. I never cried about ministry. I never laid on the floor in my office and said to God “this is to big, to heavy, to much. I’m not smart enough, talented enough, creative enough, or strong enough to pull this off. It has to be You, your strength, your power that builds this church.” I was restless, I didn’t feel a clear sense my place in God’s will. I never felt a crushing weight or a burning passion. And now… now I feel overwhelmed and under-prepared, over-challenged and under-resourced, overstretched and under-skilled, overjoyed and under-girded, overshadowed and understood.

Jesus has called me to a mission. I have His Spirit, His power, His Word, His people, His peace, and lots of clean underwear. I am embracing the next 18-24 months and I'm excited to see where He leads, how I grow, who's lives He's changes.

Isaac Speaks the Truth

Name Dropping and Focus

Just got back from Catalyst 08. It was a decent event for sure with a few great speakers and several solid ones. They have plenty of room for improvement and if I thought anyone who runs the event read my blog I'd mention those areas but the point is it was really good but if I had to pick between it and the Leadership Summit I'd go to the leadership summit every time.

Several of the speakers there had a tendency to do what came across as name dropping but I guess if you really are friends with "Pastor Awesome" and the two of you were camping together when he told you this story it's relevant to mention his name. But that's not the name dropping I'm talking about - mine has more to do with Facebook. When I first go into Facebook it was a great way to reconnect with some people I had lost contact with and wanted to reconnect with and then it became an easy way to stay in better contact with friends I don;t always see regularly. And then it became a way to collect names of people I knew 90% of the time and the other 10% of the time people who knew me. The problem is facebook doesn't know who I want to hear about and who I don't so it became a useless mess.

At Catalyst one of the speakers mentioned the whole idea of thinking about how we use technology, including facebook, and being intentional about it. I'm sure there are lots of other great things to use facebook for but I have decided that for me it will be a way to keep in contact with people I, for lack of a better term, truly care about. Folks from church, friends from wherever, and a handful of people that I just find interesting. In order to do that I have downsized my friend list significantly. I dumped about half my friends and continue to edit the list. Some of the people I dumped I didn't really know. Some of them are people I met once somewhere but will likely never see again, and some are folks I like plenty but am not close enough to to try and keep up with their life. This allows me to focus more on keeping up with the folks that are left.

Which leads to the lesson I'm learning and the question I'm asking. We have limited resources in life. Most of us get the idea of limited time and money. The smart ones also understand limited energy. But I think even fewer, myself included until recently, understand that we have limited focus. Putting more time and energy into less things (focus) yields a greater reward. I will not be putting any more time or energy into facebook but I will accomplish more "staying connected with friends" because I am connected to less friends. This has huge implications for church but it's a holiday so I'm not going to think it out for you here.
-What areas of your life, work, and relationships are you working on because you are being less effective and productive than you would like to be?
-What if instead of dumping more time, energy, and resources into this area you instead gave it more focus?
-How will you decide what to stop focusing on in order to free up some focus for this area (Jim Collins might call this your "Stop Doing" list)?

A Confession

They say confession is good for the soul and so here goes. I have a confession to make. There is side of me that most people don't know about. It's something I have hidden for some time now because I'm ashamed of it. I'm not sure how long I've been like this. I guess on some level I've always known but the last few weeks it's become so much more clear to me. I've experimented and dabbled here and there, on and off, since I was quite young but I've come to the place where I'm ready to embrace this part of who I am. I've tried to meet these needs other ways and while I have managed to keep myself temporarily distracted it would be a lie to say I have been fulfilled.
The truth about me is something that will cause some of the people I love the most to look down on me, some will mock me, many will just not understand. Some will call me a hypocrite because this is something I have spoken out against and mocked others for on many occasions. Some will think me less of a man. Whether you try to blame it on experiences I have had, things I have been exposed to on the internet or a choice I have made ( I think it's a combination of all three) the fact remains the same, this is who I am and although some of you may now have to decide if you can still love me, still associate with me, and still call me your friend I've come to the point where I'm not willing to live a lie any more. I will not hide, I refuse to pretend. And frankly who am I fooling anyway, I'm sure some of you have suspected this for a while now. So here it is, the authentic gut level truth about me: I love cats. I'm a cat person. There, I said it. I love my kitten Princess Sophie von Fuzzybuttons. She is snuggled up on my shoulder right now and it makes me so happy I could cry. She is soft and warm and just plain lovable. I am a subscriber to icanhascheeseburger.com. On several occasions lolcats have actually made me lol. I love to pet my cat, play fight with my cat, and most of all to snuggle with my cat. We took a nap together today, it was awesome. Sure, some cats can be bitches but so can some dogs. That's where they got that name from after all. But a good cat is a great thing. I am AJ Thomas: Follower of Jesus, son, husband, father, friend, pastor, creator, communicator, and cat lover. Say what you will, call me names, think less of me if you must but I will go to sleep perfectly ok with who I am and with a fuzzy little kitty curled up next to me.