A Thursday afternoon, late last July, I was at home taking a couple days off to recover from two weeks at kids camp before starting a week of VBS. My phone rang and I didn’t answer it. Soon after, I received a text message and a Facebook message asking me to call the church. I was asked to help with a transition time in our media department. I was excited to help! Church media and production are two passions of mine. Seventeen days later, I was asked if I would accept the position as our new media director.
I didn’t know what to say! While it seemed like it was seventeen days in the making for some, it was twelve years in the making for me.
Around the age of 15, I was praying and seeking direction for my life. I decided I wanted to be an attorney. I was going to get a college degree in history then work my way into being a Constitutional Law Lawyer. That was my plan. It was set in stone for me…at least I thought it was.
During my prayer time, the Lord told me I would go into youth ministry as the person who oversaw the service elements, like worship and drama so that the youth pastor could focus on the message. A couple years later, it turned into working with all church drama and worship. By the age of 19, I knew that I was supposed to be in church production.
My college plan changed from law school to theater school. The thought in my mind was that if I wanted a job in a church, I would need to attend a Bible College. After all, where else do churches get their staffs from? My first two years of school were at a local community college. After that, I was set to attend a Bible College in the Pacific Northwest. After I had been accepted and given a room assignment, my parents and I were going over the financial part of things. The cost was more than they had anticipated. I was left with a choice. Go to a school that didn’t have the exact major I wanted and take out massive loans to pay for it.
(I wanted a school with a theater department. I chose this school because it was close to family and I could stay there over breaks. They didn’t have a theater department. They had an education department with a focus in drama.)
Or, I could go somewhere local and have help from my parents.
I didn’t want to be in debt at the age of 20. Looks like I was going to “settle” for a local school. I looked at some schools that were not in town. But again, I “settled” for UNCG. Their theater program is incredible. With only a few days to spare, I applied, got accepted, and enrolled for classes.
I had no idea that my “settling” was actually part of His plan. At the end of my first semester, my advisor and I had a meeting. She asked me what I wanted to do. She wanted to know why I was a theater major at UNCG.
While I was not ashamed of my answer, I always said it waiting for the reaction. In the liberal theater world, telling people you want to work in a church is not always accepted. I had heard before that I would be wasting my talent to work in a church and that it wouldn’t be possible for me to make a living doing that. My first reaction was always “I’m a theater major, I don’t expect to make much money anywhere I work!”
I told my advisor the short version of my story: I wanted to work in church production and help give it a better reputation.
She thought it was great. In fact, she wanted to help me succeed in that area. She gave me the name of the production crew at a local church and said I should see about interning with them. I couldn’t get any school credit, but the experience would be good.
I didn’t know how to take this news. Here I was trying to get out of town. I started my internship in January of the next year and was there for a little over a year and a half. In the summer of 2008, I was offered a job at my home church…
…It was in Children’s Ministry.
I struggled before applying for this job. I knew I couldn’t work at a burrito shop and be an intern forever. The Lord really worked on my heart and said I was to go for it. I did and He was faithful. I spent almost five years not only working in Children’s Ministry but gaining experience in leading people, learning the ins and outs of how a church functions, and becoming a better, more mature person.
My summers were spent at camp and running supplies for VBS. My winters were spent preparing for Christmas musicals. All the time in-between was spent teaching, pasting, and drying tears for little ones. I did a lot of data entry and troubleshooting when our equipment didn’t work.
It was a time I wouldn’t trade for anything.
Plus, it lead me to where I am today. A blog post like this has been on my mind in the past several months. I even started a post talking about my story. Most don’t realize that a call was placed on my life at 15. Well, maybe they would, but they wouldn’t guess it was for this. I’ve always been involved in Children’s Ministry. It was and still is a ministry that my entire family works in…both as a profession and by volunteering. I would often get asked if I was going to take over as Children’s Pastor if ours ever left. Politely as I could say it, my response would be “no and I have no desire to be.”
My inspiration to write today comes from several things I’ve read about working in church production and media departments….and Oprah.
More on those soon.
Before I can get there though, it seemed logical to share how I got to where I am today.
It is not a spectacular, dramatic story. Well, to me it is. I can look back now and see where I was, who I was and what I thought I should do. Then I realize that it was never about where I wanted to be, who I wanted to be and how I wanted to get there. It was all Him. He had the plan. He directed me steps. He taught me many things about leaning on Him. That is how I got to where I am today.
