So I
spent the last three years before coming on the World Race as a
children’s pastor at an amazing church with incredible kids and
volunteers. Looking back, I feel like I had no idea what I was
getting myself into when I took that job. I learned so much along
the way about kids and ministry and life. But it wasn’t always easy.
In my heart, I always still had the desire to do missions, to be in
another culture, to be a part of God’s work around the world.
Thankfully, my church family supported me in my heart for missions
and gave me the freedom to share that heart with the kids and the
rest of the church, all the while growing in my passion for children
and helping them to know what it means to have a relationship with
Christ.
But when
I left my job at the church at the end of September, I thought
(bittersweetly) that my role as a children’s pastor was over. It was
time for me to be a missionary. No more kids’ sermons or leading
children’s songs. I’m not really sure what I thought being a
“missionary” meant, but I don’t think I had in mind that I would
be doing the same things that I had been doing as a children’s
pastor.
And yet,
ironically, that’s exactly what has happened over the last week.
I have
been helping to plan services for a church where the entire
congregation is children. I have been trying to come up with songs
that kids enjoy that can also be easily translated into Spanish. I
have been recalling all of the many kids’ sermons I have taught over
the last several years in order to teach children who know absolutely
nothing about Jesus the basics of the love of Christ.
It’s
funny how God uses everything in our lives for good. He is taking
all of the lessons I learned in the last three years, all of the
knowledge I gained, all of the experiences I had, and is using them
to reach children in the Dominican Republic.
I guess
I’m still a children’s pastor, after all. At least for this week 🙂
