A little transition
October 15 will mark the beginning of my 4th year at New Life Christian Church. It has been a great few years there as I’ve gotten to be apart of a great environment and a wonderful group of people.
Every time I am asked, I keep saying that there are a few different reasons why I love working there. For starters, its a Church that doesn’t settle with good and are always looking for ways to help people to discover God. It would have been very easy for New Life to build the nZone and say, “great job everyone, we are in a building, let’s just stop and minister where we are at”. But they didn’t do that. While they are continuing to make sure the nZone is operating good, they are looking at more opportunities to reach people.
The other reason why I love working at New Life is because they are always looking to put the staff in the best position for them to minister. Since I’ve been at New Life, I have served in a few different capacities, ultimately landing as the Student Ministry Pastor, a place where I have served most of my ministry time.
But in the past 6 months, New Life saw a new opportunity with Online Church. Just like a few other churches around the nation, they saw that by streaming church services and providing other online content, they could reach out to the online community and could help people to discover God.
That is when New Life approached me about possibly being the Campus Pastor for this Online Campus. I had recently taken on additional responsibly in regards to the social media in the Church and nZone, so this would be a natural transition for me in my career. I can be a Campus Pastor and can to use some gifts and passions of mine to help people discover God in a digital world. So, after prayer and talking through it with some close friends, I gladly accepted this position.
So where does this leave me?
I’ll still be serving in Student Ministry working primarily with the Middle School Ministry (where I got my start in student ministry and that I’m passionate about). I’ll continue to serve as the Student Ministry Director as I train and coach the future Director. I love student ministry and anticipate involvement in this for quiet some time as my children are all in that age range or soon will be.
I am also going to continue to blog about Family and Student Ministry. But, I will be blogging about these ministries within an online context a little more.
As I have written before, student ministry is about assessing where your students are and adapting to the changing culture. If you fail to adapt, you increase your likelihood of failure. That is why I am excited about this new opportunity to try ministry in a new environment and to use online and social media to reach students and the world for Christ. New Life and I are adapting to the ever changing world and I cannot wait to see where this all goes.
It’s a very exciting time for me and the Church and look forward to what this new season in my life has to bring.
