Enjoying My New Job

I'm enjoying my new job as administrative assistant. People ask what I do, and I can actually tell them now (I was developing a job description for a while). One of the roles I'm just getting into is leading our life groups at church. Right now, I'm just touching base with our leaders once a week via e-mail to find out what is going on in their group, who attended and to pass on a few tips that hopefully help them as leaders. I also help them find curriculum for their group and will soon begin a leaders' meeting every six weeks or so.

One of the things the Lord taught me my last 2 years as youth pastor was to relax in who He made me to be. When I first joined the Arlington Youth Ministry Network a number of years ago, I was intimidated by most every youth pastor I met. It seemed most everybody was more outgoing, more of a "people person" and had more kids than I did. In 2000, we did an event called CRASH which was a city-wide evangelistic outreach. Everybody was asked to be part of a team...promotion, program, fundraising, school assemblies, etc. I noticed that these teams would need to communicate with each other and there was no system in place to allow them to do this. When I volunteered to do this, I was overwhelmed at the response...the guys were THRILLED to have someone do this. They had the outgoing personalities, the people skills and whatever else, but administration was not their thing...I had found my "nitch". The Lord used that experience and my time with the Network to teach me to relax in who He made me to be. It wasn't until my last two years of youth pastoring that I felt like an adequate youth pastor. It was not so much how I had changed over the years...I just finally figured out that God made me the way He did for a purpose, and he put me into the job I had for a purpose. As long as I was leaning on God, I could do a GOOD job.

Having said that, I'm trying not to have to relearn a lot of those lessons as I transition to working with adults. Trying to help adults lead other adults (in our life groups) has been a task that has kept me humble and seeking the Lord. Just this week I was praying about the life groups and what to share with the leaders in an upcoming leaders meeting. I was starting to feel inadequate, and the Lord reminded me HE was the one who had something to say that would help our leaders. He shared some of this "good stuff" with me through an article I had skimmed over previously (He brought me back to it) and then showed me how that applied to our groups. I'm excited to have this opportunity to stretch my faith and grow in who God created me to be.

Besides life groups, I also do "administrative stuff" and "maintenance stuff" around the church. The administrative stuff comes naturally...the maintenance stuff I am learning. Sometimes I get to combine administration with maintenance...like this last week. I cleaned out and organized our church attic. It took most of my day on Thursday, but it was rewarding looking at it when I was done. I've trimmed hedges, added baseboard trim inside the church and pulled some NASTY vines off a fence line.

All of this maintenance stuff has rubbed off at home, which makes Brooke happy. Ever since we moved into the house, our back screen door has not stayed closed because I needed to replace the latch. This is a simple job I could have done when I was in high school, but not liking "handy man" tasks, our door has not been fixed in the six years we have been here. I was at Lowes the other day buying stuff for the church and saw door latches. I spent the $2 to get the latch and fixed our door. Now I'm asking myself...why didn't I do this six years ago? I also fixed a door in the house that would not stay closed and...are you ready for this...finally finished painting the kitchen! We started painting in the kitchen in December, and it is finally done. Yea! Brooke thinks we are going to start on the main bathroom next...but I don't know about that.

I was thinking the other day after I ripped all that NASTY vine off the fence and again after I finished cleaning the attic...I need to take more "before and after" pictures. Nobody can really appreciate the work that went into clearing the vine off that fence line...and how do you explain to somebody what the attic looked like before you took that dumpster-and-a-half of junk out? Anyway, I'm learning new stuff and enjoying my new job. At least there's a lot of variety!

- Rob