dream the journey: seven spotlight

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

seven spotlight

I completed an email interview yesterday for Seven Partners to be featured as their student pastor spotlight in their upcoming resource newsletter.

Here's a copy of the interview:
1. What is the name of your ministry, your church, and where is it located?
Thrive Ministries/ Harvest Time Assembly of God/ Sherman, Texas

2. How long have you been there?
My wife Lacey and I have been the Student Pastors of Thrive for 7 months. After graduation from Southwestern Assemblies of God University, we were offered the position and moved to Sherman.

3. What’s been the most exciting thing since being there?
For the first few months we really focused on building the students we had and casting vision for what God wanted to do in Thrive. It’s been so cool to see sparks of “I get it” begin to come out, and then also we have just have several students who God has really transformed their lives. Nothing excites me more than progress and life change.

4. What has been the greatest challenge since being there?
Serving God is the greatest decision someone could ever make, and it should affect someone’s entire life. But many times neither one of these is true. We’ve been working hard to change the paradigm of our students to create a culture that is conducive to fulfilling the vision that God has given us. We want all of our environments to be marked by relationships, student ownership, excellence, creativity, and a dependence on Christ. This by far has been the greatest challenge. Changing programming and systems can be done fairly easily. But changing the way someone thinks and lives is extremely difficult. It’s who they are and what they have known for at least 13-16 years. It’s a reprogramming process. So it takes time and it takes God working in students’ hearts to do this process.

5. For this summer, what do you feel God is teaching your group at the moment?
This summer we had the opportunity to test-launch homegroups for about 5 weeks. We kicked it off with a sand volleyball tournament between the homegroups and the next few weeks took off from there. It’s been incredible to see student leaders take ownership of the ministry, deep relational connections begin to happen, and this mentality that living for God really can be fun began to form throughout our students.

6. What has God been teaching you, personally, as a pastor?
First of all, who I am is more important that what I do. My heart must be right, including my attitude, humility, and submission to God-given authority. I must first be a complete follower of Christ before I can become an effective leader of people. Secondly, God has been teaching me to pray ridiculous God-sized prayers… to pray for things only He can take care of and do and watch him answer prayers