How a TV Show Planted a Church

Have you ever had a movie or TV show that you connect with a specific time period in your life? I always identified with Gilmore Girls because the main character was the same age as I was. When I was a college freshman, most of the girls in my hall watched a ridiculous show called "Average Joe". It wasn't so much about the content of the show, but that we would all gather in a tiny dorm room for an hour every week and bond. I think we could have picked a better show, I still remember way more content about "Average Joe" than I should.

One of the shows that coincides with with milestones in my life has been So You Think You Can Dance (if you've never heard of it, the show is like American Idol for dancers). I am partly fascinated with SYTYCD because I am an awful dancer, so it's great to watch people who are talented where I am not. But what really stands out about this TV show is not what was on it, but what was happening in my life as I watched it.

The first season I watched was also the first summer I spent in Spokane, in between my junior and senior years. It was one of the first times I learned to love this area and not just tolerate it. My friend would walk over to my house or I'd go over to her's and we'd watch it together. If she was busy, I'd watch it with my Grammy and discuss who we liked the best. It was a show that guaranteed a weekly time spent with friends and family, which spilled out to the rest of the week and made that summer my favorite one in Spokane so far.      

I would watch it here and there for a few summers, but I didn't have a friend to watch it with every week, so I didn't watched a whole season again until last summer. That's when I started spending a lot of time with Kym and Jacob. A couple of months after it had already been decided that I would go with them as they planted a church, I was over there for dinner and we realized we all really liked that show. We decided to dedicate our Thursday evenings to SYTYCD. Every Thursday after work, I would head over to their house. I'd play with their two amazing boys (I always ended up getting my arms and legs "cut off" by their swords), we'd eat dinner together and then after the boys were put to bed, we'd settle down to catch up with the episodes they had DVRed.

It was during these times that we would talk about our church plant. Sometimes it would take us over two hours to watch an hour long episode. We'd pause it and end up talking for an hour about how we would want discipleship to look like, how we would want to raise leaders, where we would plant the church, when we would start a small group in the area and other things like that. At times, it was fun to sit around and talk about what would happen in the future and other times we could hardly stand that we weren't planting a church the next week.It was definitely fun and it was all talk, not quite any action.

A couple of weeks ago,  the 10th season of SYTYCD premiered. And again, after the boys were put to sleep, we went downstairs to catch up on the episodes. But it's different this year. We're watching it in Kym and Jacob's new house, in Airway Heights, where we're planting the church. It no longer takes me 20 minutes to drive across town to get home after we watch it, because I live 5 minutes away in the same town. Instead of pausing the show to talk about what we hope our small group will look like, we just finished up meeting with our growing small group. We didn't spend very much time talking about our church plant because we'll do that in a week with our launch team.

A year ago it was all theory and hypotheticals. Now it's happening for real. We are being stretched as we continue to follow God's calling for this community. Some details we have figured out, some we don't have a clue about and all of it hinges on God, not us. We simply chose to say, "yes" when He asked us to do something. 

What has God done in your life in the past year? What expectations do you have of Him in the next year?

Adage #25: Location isn't everything.

When I was a little girl, my parents put me in one of those snowsuits that makes you look like the kid in A Christmas Story and set me outside to discover, for the first time, the wonder of snow. I was so excited to venture into this whole new world of white fluffiness. I touched the snow with my little hand, looked up at my parents and started to cry. This has been my basic outlook of snow ever since, especially when I have to drive in it. Given this inclination to hate snow and cold weather, you would never guess that I would have chosen to live in it for the past 9 years instead of moving back to the land of warmth, happiness and sunshine from whence I came. 

After college graduation, most of my peers moved back to their hometowns, found themselves on exciting adventures to other countries, or moving to glamorous cities such as Portland or Seattle. I stayed in Spokane - a city heralded for being a great place to raise your kids and not so much praised for being a great place to be a single twenty-something. I spent many years after graduation asking God where I was supposed to be. Was is Seattle? California? Surely, it cannot be here? This was the most important question to be answered, I couldn't get on with my life if I didn't know where I was supposed to live. I received no other answer other than that I should continue to be a part of the church family I was involved in.

Then, after 8 years God gave me an answer. He said I was going to go with my friends, Kym and Jacob, to plant a church. In Airway Heights. This is a small community (about 5,000 people) that is 10 minutes away from downtown Spokane with an air force base just down the road (with another 6,000 people). Spokane has some beautiful qualities: an exorbitant amount of pine trees, some great rivers, hills and valleys. It's full of beautiful views that I have learned to love despite being cold for half the year. Airway Heights possess none of these things. It's flat, ugly, just far away enough that I don't see my friends all that often and for the past three weeks it has been so foggy, I've almost ran a few red lights. Not so reassuringly, 3 out of 7 days a week when I have left my apartment complex for work in the morning, I have found a car that slid into an icy ditch.

Photo credit: MDP Photography

I've been told this has been a big thing with my generation, that choosing where we live has become a much bigger deal than the generations before us. I think maybe we've got something wrong. Despite all of the things I don't love about Airway Heights, there is no other place I would rather be. Not only is this the place God has called me to for this time, I am learning that being a follower of Christ means a lot more of living out God's will in the everyday mundane things and a lot less about making huge, life-altering, I'm-going-to-change-the-world decisions. It's not about me and how cool or indie where I live is, it's about losing myself in who Christ is. I can no longer wait for some big revelation about where I am supposed to live and what God is someday going to use me to accomplish for Him. I can no longer sit around waiting to be told what my future holds for me in 5 years, 1 year or next week. I should be too busy helping my neighbors take the trash out, getting to know the same cashier I see every week at the Airway Heights Wal-Mart, sharing the story of what Christ has done in my life with others, helping my friend paint their house even though I'd rather take a nap, talking with my server at the delicious Thai restaurant down the street and serving other people (friends and strangers alike) with no expectation of a reward. These things will accomplish much more for the Kingdom of God than spending hours praying and thinking about where I should be instead.

That being said, when Jesus comes back, I'm asking for some beach front property in Southern California. 


What is God asking you to do today for Him, where ever you might be?

Women's Retreat

I had never been to a women's retreat until a month ago. I had also never been in charge of running activities at a women's retreat until then. I would be lying if I told you that I enjoyed every minute of the planning process, in fact a hated most of it. But as soon as the weekend started, it all came together and it was awesome! Here are some of my personal highlights from my weekend spent with 100 women:

Pastor Laurel's messages
We spent the whole weekend going through the Jewish wedding customs and rituals. They paint such a beautiful and amazing picture of what Jesus has done for us! If you've never looked into that image (which gets used all over the Bible), here a few places to start: Isaiah 61:10; Matthew 25:1-13; John 3:29

Unexpected Friends
As I was walking down the hallway on the 1st night, I ran into one of my former college roommates. She was a part of the group of women that had come to the retreat from another town. I hadn't talked with her since she moved out of our house 6 years ago and I can't say that our relationship was left in a great place. Turns out, I had one of the richest and deepest conversations with her during the retreat. What an amazing experience!

Activities
I was basically coerced into this job, although, I happily agreed. This was the first big ministry event I had been involved in since my ministry sabbatical in the spring and it was a little rough to get into the swing of things again. However, everything turned out great! Here's the rundown of some of the things we did:

Friday Night:
We started out with taking the bridal theme of the weekend and planning a bridal shower to start out our weekend. This plan was quickly abandoned for multiple reasons and we ended up playing just one game which was bridal shower-inspired. We took the classic shower game of dressing someone up as a bride with toilet paper to a whole new level. We assigned each group a celebrity (and provided them with some pictures) that they would have to emulate. I was blown away with the creativity of these women (see pictures below)!

Saturday Afternoon: We brought back the Zumba, prayer time and massages they had done in the past, but we added some other activities this year:

- One of my team members, Tonya, spearheaded the bookmark making operation. She brought more craft supplies than I could count and helped woman make really cool bookmarks they could take away as a reminder of the weekend.

- Another team member, Sue, hung out with ladies and showed them how to make sugar scrubs. We had made this at a previous women's event and they were a hit for the second time!

- We also set up a DIY nail salon, this was my personal favorite! We supplied nail polish and Pinterest tutorials. It was so fun to watch ladies paint each other's nails and hear lots of laughter!

Saturday Evening:
This was the big event of the weekend - a wedding reception! Amber's hospitality team did a stellar job putting all the decorations and refreshments together for this! They also supplied the super fun props for our photo booth.

My Activities Team
I worked with two ladies I had never met before and they were awesome! Without them, nothing would have gone smoothly. It was great to get to know people out of my usual church circle who were better at my job than I was!

My Cabin
For the first time in my life I was not in charge of a cabin full of teenagers and it was a wonderful change of pace! Although, we did have a certain member of our cabin (cough*Meg*cough) who was a major prankster. I think there was maybe an hour of the whole weekend that she was not concocting a plan. One of them involved her dumping cold water on me while I was in the shower. It's good to know that I'm good humored enough that my response (after the quick yelp I let out) was hysterical laughter followed by a "That was awesome!" comment.

Dance Party Time!

Activites Team

Have you had a chance to retreat lately? Either with a group or solo?

Adage #24: Lists are your friend.

As you might have guessed based on past posts, I love making lists. it's more than love, it's really a compulsion. So I have made a list of some of my favorite lists:

1. Things to never ever do in the video cafe again.

I mentioned this list in another post a while ago. During my first year of leading youth ministry at my current church, I took part in a 30 Hour Famine. The leaders collectively decided the best way to start the event involved herding all the students into our multi-purpose room (aka the video cafe), turning all the lights out, playing some loud music and bursting in with silly string. Sounds fun right? It was. Until we spent an hour sweeping and mopping the silly string off of the floor. This was the the event that started our list. For years we kept a mental list of materials we had used in the video cafe that made a giant mess or had backfired on us. We finally wrote it down and framed it and when we moved buildings, we immortalized it on the floor underneath the carpet in the auditorium. The best part of this list is referencing it when we hear of some other youth ministry using one of these items and making a mess, it's a little like an "I-told-you-so" moment.

Our list as immortalized on the auditorium floor.

2. Top ten favorite people in the world.

When my fellow youth ministry worker, Buz, realized my unhealthy love for lists, it could only go downhill from there. Buz challenged me to come up with a list of my ten favorite people in the world. I couldn't just brush it off and joke around about it. No, instead I spent weeks perfected it. I think it ended up taking me a month to report back to him with my final list. Before I finished the list, there were weekly discussions about who had made the cut so far and how I had four people I wanted to fit into two spots. It was rough. You probably want to know who's on the list, right? I can't remember who's on it. And you would be correct in assuming while writing that last sentence I am now trying to make up a new list in my head.

3. My to-do lists.

Yes, that's right it's plural because I have to-do lists everywhere. They are on my desk at work, they are on my phone, they are sticky notes by my bed, they are at the bottom of my purse and they are on the whiteboard calendar in my room. It's a disease, really.

4. Random youth ministry lists.

Along the same time Buz challenged me to come up with a list of my top ten favorite people, we also started making all sorts of ridiculous youth ministry lists. It was like the baseball stats of youth ministry: favorite message series during the spring, favorite events on a rainy Saturday afternoon, top ten Doug Field's resources used in a year ending in an odd number, etc.

My favorite list was of the people who had been in youth ministry the longest - it was topped by five leaders who had been involved in the ministry for a minimum of 7 years. These five people chose to stay involved in one ministry long enough to see the students they started with graduate from high school and often even longer than that.

Within the past year, all five people on the list have stepped out of youth ministry. What I love about this list is that these 5 people might not be doing youth ministry on a weekly basis any longer, but I know that they are all still involved in lives of young people (some who have graduated from our youth ministry) and more importantly, they are dedicated to the gospel. They understand that stepping away from a ministry program does not mean stepping away from ministry itself, whether they find that in volunteering in a different ministry, being actively involved in their neighborhood or whatever else God has called them to do. It's okay to be so committed to something that it feels weird when you miss a week of youth group. It's also okay to step away to do something else God has opened the door to. 

What kind of lists do you make? When was the last time you stayed with a commitment for 7 years? Is there something you need to commit to? Or is there something you need to be willing to walk away from?

Adage #20: Get your eyes checked.

Now that I've thrown someone else under the bus concerning vision problems, I can admit to my own story. My office building has nice big windows that look at a hill outside. From those windows, my co-worker Laura and I can enjoy the wildlife. We've seen a lot of birds, squirrels, people walking their dogs, and some neighborhood cats. One of my favorites has been a mom and baby turkey which we saw grow up. And now there's a male turkey chasing around the ladies right outside our window (there's a part of me that hopes he doesn't catch one during office hours).

Laura's desk is the one by the big windows, so when she sees some exciting wildlife adventures going on outside, she'll summon me over to see what is going on. On one day in particular, she asked me to come over because she couldn't tell if what she was looking at was a little cute furry animal or something else. I couldn't figure it out either. After quite a few rounds of squinting, discussing if it was moving or not and then squinting again we were still at a loss. We both expressed our wish to have a pair of glasses at our disposal. It was at that moment that I remembered I did in fact have my glasses in my purse. I went back to my desk,  returned to the window with my glasses on, glanced at the subject of our study and said something deflated like, "Welp..." as I handed my glasses to Laura so she could take a look. In an extremely anticlimactic moment, we realized we had spent all that time looking at stump.

 (This is a tree stump and not a squirrel.)

Jesus spent a lot of his ministry time giving clarity to people. Most people had thought the Messiah promised to them was going to be an earthly king who would be a strong conqueror, but Jesus went so far as to flee the crowds when they wanted to force him into that role (John 6:15). Jesus the Messiah did more than the people could have imagined, he conquered sin for everyone.

The Pharisees never received the clarity Jesus was trying to provide to anyone who would hear what he was saying, they were too busy trying to trap him. The woman at the well (John 4), the woman who touched his garment and was healed (Mark 5) and Andrew and Peter who dropped everything to follow Jesus (John 1); these people experienced Jesus and were given clarity about who he was. This also meant that their lives were drastically changed, they could no longer live like they had before. The knowledge of who Jesus was gave them metaphorical glasses to see the world more clearly.

Is Jesus giving you clarity in certain things? Are you ignoring him or are you letting him transform who you are?

Adage #19: Never give a baby a dog biscuit.

For three and a half years I worked at a large coffee chain. There are always entertaining things happening around you when you work in customer service. The level of entertainment grows exponentially when most of the people you are working with have gotten out of bed between the hours of 3:30-6am. I have no idea how they expected me to be awake enough to serve coffee to the crazy people that chose to be up at 4am. Most of the business at our store was from our drive through window. I have said some absolutely ridiculous things to people while working in that drive through. One time instead of greeting the car at the speaker box with the name of our store, I said, "Welcome to Wandermere donuts." This is a mystical donut shop that does not exist and this greeting led to hysterical laughter from myself, the customer in the car and everyone I was working with. Of course I said it again a week later because I was trying so hard not to say it.

Our customers really liked their dogs and loved when we gave them dog treats (although this is completely against health code, just a little FYI). There were some of my co-workers who loved giving dog treats to customers in our drive through. Shockingly enough, I was not one of those people, but I can appreciate a well behaved dog who isn't trying to attack me as I hand the treat over. I'm really glad that you love your dog, but I do not, especially when it's about to jump out of your car. But I digress, back to the story. One morning I was working with a particular co-worker in the drive through who is just altogether friendly and fun to work with. In fact, she trained me, so I'm a bit partial to her. She is also a better person than I. She was doing her due diligence and cheerfully giving every car with a dog their treasured treat. As I finished making a coffee beverage and I turned to hand it off to her, she looked back at me with a sheepish grin which immediately turned into fits of laughter. She explained to me that she had just offered a dog biscuit to the baby sitting in the back seat.

We often make judgments with our peripheral view. We notice the skateboarder out of the corner of our eye that is about to run us over and we get out of the way. We duck when we see a bird flying right at us from a a glance we caught while shifting our eyes. We make a decision without all of the facts. Our peripheral view is important to keep us safe, but it also can be misleading. Sometimes that bird was really far away or the skateboarder turned the corner and we look like an idiot jumping out of the way for nothing. Our descion turns out to be pretty ill-informed. Or we give a dog biscuit to a baby.

When we take the time to look harder at the peripheral view, we get better clarity and avoid some embarrassing situations. But it's impossible to focus on everything that comes our way, right? When we bring these things to the Lord, he can give us the things we need to focus on. He can help us heal from hurts, let us know we need to let go of the pain someone caused us, he can send us in a specific direction. He might take something out of focus and put something lying in the outskirts to the front and center of our attention.

Earlier this week I took a whole day to do a personal prayer retreat. To take all the stuff running a thousand miles a minute around my brain and dump it all. I put it in front of the Lord and asked him to help me sort through it, what's important and what's not as important? 

When was the last time you spent a significant amount of time in one day with your Creator? What has he been asking you to focus on lately?

Adage #18: An avocado a day keeps the doctor away.

I was standing in a line for some sort of Whitworth cafeteria lunch concoction when I felt a tap on my shoulder from a fellow Californian student. She excitedly told me that there were sliced avocados in the salad bar (for the first and last time while I lived on campus). It did not matter that I would now have to stand in line for even longer, I would get my hands on some avocado! I got out of my line, retrieved my avocado and moved to the sandwich line to have my turkey avocado masterpiece created. I looked around and noticed that the other students from California were doing the same thing and soon the sandwich line was full of us, all eager for this special treat.

This moment in college has stood out to me more than many others, a life long memory created by a vegetable (or maybe it's a fruit, I'm not actually sure, which is a little embarrassing). My Pinterest recipe board is 60% recipes containing avocado. At the top of my list of things to know about a potential boyfriend is 1. does he love Jesus? and 2. does he love avocado? When I am at a restaurant, I find my choice so much easier when I just rule out everything without avocado or guacamole on it.

Imagine my elation when I discovered that avocado is actually considered a super food! This delicious fruit/veggie I consider a treat, is actually good for me. How can this be possible! It's so tasty and it gives me vitamins and the good kind of fat - unheard of! Do these people realize they've just given me permission to eat this everyday; in fact, they have encouraged me to eat it everyday. 

Serving God should be like eating an avocado. Serving such an amazing God, getting to use your passions, your talents, and your gifts for him should be so enjoyable that you think, "how lucky am I to get to do this?" You should get to do things you already enjoy when you serve him. You must also know that there will be sacrifice. You will have to get out of the line and stand in an even longer sandwich line. You will be fulfilled in ways you didn't know you could be and you will be asked to give up things you didn't think you can live without. When you choose to follow Christ and give your talents to him you will have to make some sacrifices, but in the end you will find yourself thinking it couldn't get any better than this.

What are some of your gifts and talents? Are you using them?

(Here is one of my new favorite avocado recipes from Oh She Glows. She's got a ton of great recipes, so check it out if it's time to mix up your usual diet!)

Adage #17: Gimme a break (Part 3 of 3).

There have been some unintentional things come out of this time of rest above what I was expecting. I am about two thirds of the way through and here some of the things I wasn't planning on:

1. Spending time with my family.
My immediate family lives in California, but I am lucky enough to live in the same town as my grandparents and a set of aunt/uncle/cousins. I suddenly had free nights when I stepped away from ministry for three months. One of those nights happened to be when grandma, aunt and cousin would get together for a movie night. This has easily become my favorite night of the week and I have loved the extra time I have been able to spend with my family!

2. The emotional side of stepping away from my home church.
When I first choose to take a sabbatical, I knew that I would return to ministry, but I wasn't actually positive that it would be at Life Center North. My main purpose in visiting other churches was to go somewhere where I didn't feel I had to do ministry, to go to church to be refreshed. I was not intentionally "church shopping", but if God moved me somewhere else, I wasn't going to ignore it, either.

I found myself missing LCN when I was gone for two or three weeks at a time. It has been refreshing the weeks that I found myself back there, around the people I consider to be a part of my family. These were the weeks that I longed to be at LCN on Sunday and I longed to be involved again. When I stepped away for three weeks at a time, I began to feel a little lost and without a home.

 On the other hand, some weeks I found myself eager to go somewhere other then LCN. I wanted to do something out of the norm and to go somewhere new. My home church was the last place I wanted to be some Sundays.

All these feelings are pretty natural. What I think is important is to never leave a church with anger or resentment. In the end, God has asked me to keep LCN as my home church and I will be faithful to that. I will also probably visit other churches every month or so just to get out of the ordinary. 

3. Learning to say no without guilt.
I remember talking a lot about boundaries and knowing when to say no in my college classes about ministry. I have slowly been getting better at this over time, but taking a sabbatical meant three months of saying no to ministry and serving. I learned quickly to not feel guilty because I was doing exactly what God wanted me to do for this time. There was one time when I gave in and said yes. When I showed up to serve, there was nothing for me to do - draw your own conclusions from that.   

4. Learning from everything around me.
I found myself able to glean lessons from everything that was happening around me. Going to new churches jolted me out of my routine and it became so much easier to take important points away from every sermon I was hearing. Because I have been more intentional about seeking God out in my life, he started showing up everywhere.

5. Living in community.
My living situation is pretty crazy, in a good way. I live with an amazing family from church. A husband, wife and their two young girls. There are also two other roommates in our house, which is not large. There have definitely been times in the past year and half that I have missed having my own space and less people around. But overall, I think this will be one of my favorite experiences when I look back at my life. Since I have extra time while I take a break, I have actually had time to sit down with some of roommates and have actual conversations and meals with them instead of running out the door to my next event or task. I am so blessed to get to share my life with these people!

What are you learning in your life right now? Are you being a lifetime learner? Are you spending time with people who are important to you? Are there things you need to say no to? Or maybe there is something you need to yes to?

Adage #14: Never overestimate sticky notes, either.

I have a love for office supplies. Perhaps, an unhealthy one. One Christmas while I was in high school, I received a $50 gift card to Office Max in my stocking. The only think I found more exciting than the gift card was the huge Office Max office supply catalog sitting next to it. I spent the next week pouring through the catalog carefully choosing what I would use my precious gift card for. Going to Office Max with my dad to use my gift card was just as exciting as getting the card in my stocking.

Of all the office supplies, I particularly love sticky notes. I have a reputation in the office for having a ridiculous amount of them. I wrote a previous blog post about starting to organize my day using a sticky note prioritizing system. This amazing new way of taking charge of my life lasted me approximately two weeks. I come up with organizing plans like Zack Morris comes up with schemes on Saved By the Bell (such as getting cheap class rings that turn your finger green). I fall into the trap most busy Americans find themselves in - I use all of this technology at my fingertips to make my life more efficient and fast paced instead of taking the time to slow down. What if I took the time I spend concocting ways to live more "efficiently" to take a breath, slow down and think about what I needed to accomplish that day instead?

Even though checking to-dos off of our lists feels like we've accomplished something, sometimes it can be harmful. I burned myself out in ministry once because I became so wrapped up in getting all the stuff done, that I blew right past the time I should have spent with God. One of my professors at Whitworth once read us a quote by Martin Luther - the gist of the quote was that when Luther had a busy day in front of him, he would spend the first 3 hours of it praying. I have spent years trying to find this quote so people don't think I just made this up, but I can't seem to find it (apparently, googling "Martin Luther quote about praying for 3 hours" and variations of that is not helpful). But even if I had made it up, the main idea is worth taking some time to think about. How often do you just dive into a day instead of taking the time to center yourself in Christ?

We can all find a thousand different techniques to prioritize our time and get through our to-do lists, but without Christ is there any meaning behind our checklists? My favorite times in ministry were the times that I took a break and prayed. I would go into the room our youth group met in or a quiet, dark room in the back of the church and I asked God what He wanted me to do, what was important to Him that day, that week, that year.  When I did that, I felt focused and centered. Sometimes God would give me clear direction to take and sometimes it was just a reminder that He needs to be my priority.

How can you slow down this week and make Christ your focus? What might God be asking you to give up so that you can pursue him?