unpacking catalyst, part two.

The speaker (and the message) that is sticking with me the most is Steven Furtick, lead pastor of Elevation Church in Charlotte. His bio reads as pretty impressive - with just a handful of other people, he started a church two years ago that now has thousands of people attending every week. This could make for an easy comparison, because the Bridge Church is about the same age, though we're not nearly in the same place as far as attendance. But this story didn't start two years ago - it started over 10 years ago when God made Steven a promise that he would one day be a pastor of a megachurch.

This is what Steven talked about at Catalyst, that in between God's promise and the deliverance of that promise is a process - a sometimes long and difficult process when it may not seem as though the promise will ever come to pass.

As I've been thinking about his talk, I've been thinking about my vision for our church and for our children's ministry. The first thing I'm wondering is, does my vision line up with God's vision? Is this just something that I've come up with in my head, or is this where God is moving? So I've started praying that God will give me a really clear picture of what our children's ministry should look like, that he'll fade out the stuff that doesn't really matter and clarify the things that do.

Thinking about these things is also serving as a great encouragement for me, because we are very much still in the process. In my perfect world, our infant and toddler nurseries would be fully staffed with people who love kids and feel specifically called to care for and minister to them. And, because I think its important to give back by serving where your family is getting fed, I think parents should also help out in the nursery (and ideally, they would be so sold on the ministry to their kids that they would fall into that first category).

But that's not where we're at, frankly. Unless there are several people sitting in church on Sunday morning feeling called to children's ministry and just refusing to do anything about it, we need more people than we have. Which means that I either resort to filling the open positions myself, meaning I'm in nursery two or three times a month, or I beg people to help out who don't really want to. And that's not where I want to be. I don't want to see anyone serve in a place they really don't want to - it's draining for them and me, and it keeps us from doing children's ministry with excellence and creativity and enthusiasm.

But, this is a common theme. We had a few short months where both our infant and toddler nurseries were fully staffed, and that was wonderful, but I feel like I'm always looking for more volunteers. And maybe this is all just because we're still in the process.