Find Your "Why?"

One of the most important questions, if not THE most important question, we can ask is "Why?"  If you were to ask my mom, she would tell you that I almost drove her crazy as a young child with this question.  I am analytical, curious, and observant.  Sometimes the answer was "it just is."

But in our faith and our walk with God, it's important to ask not only why things are the way they are, but also to know the WHY in our life.  My last blog entry was about serving, volunteering, and today I'm addressing one of the most important parts of serving-- know your "why."

No matter what area of ministry you choose, it's vital to know what motivates you to serve.  It's important.  Without knowing why you do what you do, it's easy to give it up.  It's easy to dismiss it, or to lose focus and burn out.  And as a speaker reminded our young adult leadership team a few weeks ago, God CAN choose someone else to do what He's calling you to do... BUT no one else will do it in the same way you could have.  That's a lot of responsibility, and I think it needs a good motivation.

Yes, we should all be motivated by the fact that God called us, that He has a plan for us that involves reaching others.  As a speaker named Derek Moody once shared in chapel when I was undergrad, "A faith worth having is a faith worth sharing."

I've been involved in a lot of ministries in my church over the years, and over these last few I've found myself more and more involved in the preschool services.  I have built relationships with kids and volunteers.  I love watching the kids grow in who they are, in their gifts and talents, in their relationships with each other, and in their relationships with God.

But here are my reasons WHY I believe so fiercely in preschool ministry and why I spend so much time investing into this:

1. I believe that preschool is a time in everyone's life when they first begin to remember things.  Most people's first memory is somewhere around age 3 or 4.  What if a child's first memory was about how loved they were when they came to church?  What if it was about how special they felt and how welcomed they felt?  That's what I want my church's ministry to be.  As a speaker once said to us back when I was in undergrad, the church should be such a welcoming and loving place that we're like Flintstone's Vitamins-- 10 million strong and growing.  She also wondered what it would be like for a child to feel such a sense of family and love and acceptance from their church family that when the child is older, he or she doesn't have to look for that love and acceptance anywhere else.

2. I believe that preschool is a time when kids are curious and starting to open up to new people and new experiences.  They are forming beliefs and values and learning at one of the most rapid paces they will ever learn in their lives.  What if we were opening them up to faith?  What if they opened up and increased OUR faith?  I love their imaginations and ideas.  I love that one of my 5 year olds was so concerned about Captain Hook's meanness that the little boy wanted to us to pray that Captain Hook would know about Jesus.

3. I believe that when kids are having fun and feel loved and accepted, that they want to come back.  When that happens, parents feel confident about leaving their children with capable staff and then the parents are able to relax and receive that day, too.  I hate when we have kids who come to us crying only because I know how excited our volunteers are to see new and familiar faces..  We have fun things planned, and we hate to see any kid go through stress of separation.  But... I secretly love when they cry because they have to leave.  Because they had fun and don't want to go home.  Because they weren't done playing.  If you love and accept their kid, you've almost always won over the family.

But most importantly...
4. Because they really do learn what we are teaching, and it is getting into their hearts.  We do NOT, let me repeat do NOT, babysit kids.  Both our Sunday and Wednesday curriculum is designed to engage kids in God's truth and to help them learn about who God is and how much He loves them.  For those curious, we use What Is Orange's First Look on Sunday and a curriculum called Lil' K on Wednesdays. 

And here's the thing... there are always those kids that you kind of wonder about.  You're not sure if they really get it or not.  You talk and teach, try to engage, hope it's sinking in.  We've had some really funny stories from preschoolers who said that Jesus had two dads-- Abraham (we were singing Father Abraham that day) and God.  Sort of right, but I digress.

And then some days, when you least expect it, they totally stun you with the depth and breadth of what they learned.  Last fall, some time in  mid September or so, we were doing a unit on Joseph and his family.  That Sunday we drew pictures of our family.  That was it, no extra things involved.  We were simply talking about how Joseph had so many brothers, and could they draw pictures of their families to tell us about it... And that's when one of my 4 year olds drew this:

We were almost ready to go to the next room for the Bible story, when the little girl handed me this.  Before I could ask her to put it on the stack to hang up for later, she began with no prompting to tell me that it was her family.  She is in the middle and her mommy is on the right.  But the first person in the picture is her daddy, and he doesn't have any hearts because he doesn't have Jesus in his heart but he needs to do that.  My jaw dropped open, and the other teacher and I couldn't look at each other because we were both so in shock and so emotional.

At four years old she understood the spiritual truths that were being poured into her.  Her attendance is semi-regular, so it's not like one of our every week kids, either.  But the truth was getting into her mind AND her heart.  At four she already had a heart to reach her family.

So go out there, find a place to serve.  And somewhere in there, find your why.  Your why might be in the place you least expect it.  It might not be obvious.  But find it.  You won't regret it.

The Chocolate Bunny

Several years back (we're talking something like 2007 ish) I spent a lot of time with my friend Cindy and her family.  That year her youngest son, Matthew, was about 3 or 4 years old.  For Easter, he received a chocolate bunny.  It wasn't one of those little ones; no, this was a huge chocolate bunny, several feet tall and in a shiny box.

He insisted that she display the box in the living room, where he could look at it when ever he liked.  Most kids would be eager to eat it immediately, to savor every bite of the milk chocolate.  But not Matthew.  He refused to let anyone open it, because he didn't want it to get messed up.  It sat there and sat there, before Easter, and I think it lasted a bit after Easter as well.  He was so preoccupied with having that chocolate bunny that he didn't want to enjoy the bunny for the reason it was actually created-- to EAT it.

At a leadership meeting earlier this week, our speaker talked about Colossians 1 and about building spiritual legacy.  He began to read from the chapter, reading verses 9-12:
 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives,^{[e] 10} so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹ being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, ¹² and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you^[f] to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.

We began to discuss what it means to have knowledge of God's will and wisdom and understanding.  One of our leaders talked about how part of that knowledge and understanding is helping those we lead to see and understand their gifts and abilities, as well as giving opportunities to draw out and develop those gifts and abilities.

Ultimately, though, we are still left with the choice to USE the gifts or not.  We can leave them on the shelf, admire our gifts, and maybe others will even admire the gifts, too.  But gifts are meant to be used.  To be put into practice.  Otherwise they are merely decoration, and in time might even grown stale.

My church, Woodlake Church, has 2 main objectives, which our pastors discuss when people want to join the church, objectives they have done their best to ingrain into all leaders:
1.  That the lost are would be found
2. That everyone finds their sweet spot in ministry.

I have friends with many talents.  My friend Katie is an extrovert, she is gifted in welcoming people, in drawing them into conversation.  My friend Jerrid is gifted in planning and putting together events.  In the preschool ministry I'm a part of, I have friends who love babies and can spend all morning with them.  Others in our ministry don't really enjoy babies, but they can spend hours with five year olds.  The point is, they are using their gifts, developing their gifts.  They opened the box.