What A Difference A Year Makes!

Wow!  It has been well over a year now since my family and I followed God's leading and moved from small town East Texas to Metro Denver and, my how things have changed!  My home church pastor retired, my present church is in the middle of staff changes, my wife is becoming director of a day care again as well as being a major part of the church youth group, I've already overseen my first two VBS's, my two eldest sons are starting at the charter school at our church, I'm no longer lost trying to learn a new trade and now getting better at it all the time, I'm working all the time keeping the children's ministries running at church and planning new events and that's the watered-down, summed-up version of it.

It hasn't been easy at all!  Like anyone else who follows God in faith, I haven't found the road paved in gold, or even yellow brick for that matter.  I'm constantly learning ways to try and balance everything.  I'm so thrilled to be part of a church staff, but doing it part time while having a very demanding full time job at the same time is difficult to keep together for someone who isn't exactly well-organized most of the time.  But I work with an amazing pastor and with wonderful workers.  That helps me through a lot.  I've found the need as well to make sure I find time to be nurtured spiritually.  This is all a growing process for me and I am so blessed to have people willing to help me get to where I need to be.

There have been a few things that get me through some of the roughest times.  First of all, I haven't leaned on God near enough through a lot of it because I'm so bad about trying to do things on my own first, but I've found He is still so gracious to give me strength and bail me out of my messes.  I'm trusting in my Father more and more with each new day now.  I couldn't go two steps most of the time without the support and love of the best and most amazing wife I could have asked for.  Terri has been my rock many times when in truth I needed to be hers.  But she loves me through it all and I'm so blessed to have her in my life.  My kids have been so resilient with all the changes they've had to endure and yet they press on with great enthusiasm. It's such a blessing to see them grow and still be active in church without us forcing them into it.  We have family and friends from far away that still reach out constantly and bless us.  We have friends here in Colorado that have been a God-send.  And I couldn't be in children's ministry if I didn't have a God-inspired passion and love for being around kids and making a difference in their lives.  I had the blessing of working with so many different kids through the years back in Texas and working with the kids here has been just as much of a blessing.  Getting to work with smaller groups has given me the chance to know them even better and I can tell that God has allowed me to already make a difference.  The two VBS's I got to lead were so much fun and I'm so excited to get better at it and make an even bigger difference next year.  Most of all, knowing that I'm where I'm supposed to be is the greatest encouragement of all!!!

A Little About Our New Church Home In Colorado

  In order to let you know more about our new church home, I think I should first say some about the church we came from.  Not long after I was born, my parents took me to Central Baptist Church in Sulphur Springs, Texas.  I went from the nursery all the way to adult classes, faithfully attending just about every time the doors were open.  I loved it there.  I knew most of the people and most of them knew me.  My parents taught Sunday school classes for the kids and even started the children's church when I was little.  I grew up around children's ministries and I loved everything about it.  I helped my parents with puppets, skits, VBS's and anything else they would let me do.  It was only natural for me to eventually be heavily involved with children's ministries as an adult.
I met my wife, Terri, in the youth group at Central.  After we were married, we lived in Dallas for a little while and I just couldn't bring myself to go to any other church but "my church".  We went back on the weekends until we eventually moved back to my home town to raise our new son, Dylan, in a small town with a great church.  As soon as we moved back, Terri and I got immediately involved in Caraway Street as actor/puppeteers and we fell more and more in love with working with kids, especially me.  As an added, wonderful bonus, we got a chance to work with a wonderful couple there for over 15 years, Steve and Ali Wittmer.  To say we became friends is an understatement.  Family is a much better word!  Talking about them is actually hard because we miss them so much.  Anyway, Caraway Street was such a blessing and I eventually got the opportunity for about 5 years to be in charge of our graded children's church program.  I learned so much in serving and leading that it was only natural when I felt God calling me into full-time ministry to children.  It was also an amazing blessing that my 3 boys, especially my 2 eldest sons, had the opportunity to serve with children and were very good at it.
In 2003, I was given the chance to work full-time at "my church" as custodian.  They were in between custodians and the youth group was actually working off camp money by helping clean the church.  Pastor Rhoades gave me the opportunity to try it out for a weekend and make sure I could handle it.  So I came in ready to make a great impression and run circles around all these teenagers.  One of the first things I got a chance to do was mop the restrooms.  On my way out of the first restroom I mopped, I proceeded to spill about 4 gallons of mop water directly onto the carpet just outside of the church office.  I could only hope that no one would see it but I was horrified when our youth pastor walked around the corner just as the last bits of water gushed into the carpet.  What happened next made a lasting impression on me even to today.  He didn't yell at me or make a huge deal out of my mistake.  He didn't belittle me and tell me how it should've been done.  He didn't even tell me to get out and never try cleaning again.  What he did do was help me immediately with the most generous servant's heart one could have.  At least that's how it see it.  If you asked him, he was just helping the idiot out that spilled all that water on the floor.  He never ever made me feel that way, though, if that was how he felt.  As far as I know, he didn't even tell the pastor about it.  We just got it cleaned up and moved on.  In case I've never said this before, I'm an idiot!  The next week, when I took the job for sure and was just getting started, I spilled the bucket again!  I never did it again for eight years after that as I served as custodian there, but I can't remember ever hearing our youth pastor, Derald Gautier, bring it up again.  It's not that he wouldn't have but I think he was just so busy that it never came up.  I loved working at the church, even though I loathe cleaning.  I loved working around everybody and the servant hearts that everyone seemed to work with, especially Derald and our music pastor, Tommy Starrett.  Their examples went a long way in teaching me how to be a minister which is simply to be a servant leader.
In 2004, my wife felt led to call our church's preschool director about becoming a teacher. The director had been praying that God would send the right person.  At the time, Terri was director of a day care in town that was doing very well and she was making great money.  It sounded like a bad idea from a practical perspective but God stirred both our hearts to the point where we knew that she should make the move.  Working for her new boss, Penny Gautier (Derald's wife), Terri was so happy.
In 2007, Derald & Penny made a huge decision.  Derald accepted the pastoral position at his home church in Lakewood, Colorado.  But it was in very bad shape.  A series of events had taken place to where a fairly large, thriving church for many years had been reduced to about 40 members with a massive amount of debt. By anyone's standards, it was not a good idea to sell your house and move your family across the country to work for a place that can't even support you.  But Derald & Penny were faithful to God's call and they did exactly that.  God blessed them because of it and Belmar Baptist Church is still around after 5 years.  They now have an average of 125 and counting as well as a full-time youth pastor, Brandon Dobson.  Both of Derald's younger brothers, Micah and Zach attend there with their families.
Last April, God had stirred Penny again to reach out to Terri and offer her a job at her daycare center as a teacher.  At the time, Terri was director of our preschool at the church and it seemed like a bad idea to move.  Sounds familiar, huh?  God had been faithful before and we knew we could trust Him if it was what He called us to do.  So we left "my church" to move to Colorado and serve alongside a man and a woman that God had shown them to be faithful servant leaders.  Following Derald and Penny was the easiest part of this entire ordeal.  There was no doubt that God had arranged our reunion with this couple and we are still so thrilled to be working with them again!
I may not be working full-time as children's pastor at Belmar Baptist, but I'm about as close as you can get to it.  Derald gave me the opportunity right away to get involved in the older children's church.  He recently has asked for my help with the younger children's church as well.  We just started a Wednesday night program for the 1st through 6th grades and it is becoming a great outreach already.  I wanted to give our kids an identity and we settled on the idea of "B Kids".  It's pretty basic when you consider that they are Belmar Kids but the meaning goes deeper into what I believe about children's ministry.  I personally believe, whether anyone else agrees or not, that children are the most important group in the church to minister to.  They are the ripest field of harvest because of their ability to believe most of the time without seeing.  Jesus made it very clear that it is easier to believe as a child and enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  Even deeper than that belief is my thought that kids need to "be kids" as they learn about God.  They will have plenty of time to act like adults when they get there.  In the mean time, they should enjoy the time they have as children, play games, sing kid songs and fellowship like kids do.  We can teach them about God and how to serve, but we shouldn't expect them to do it like the grown ups do.  B Kids!  I got together with Brandon Dobson and came up with a logo idea.  He made it look awesome!!!

The "B" is from out church logo.  He also came up with one for the preschool age kids that I wanted to call B Kids Jr.

Brandon's pretty good at this stuff, I must say!!!
Anyway, I'm so excited where God has led us!  I never thought I could call another church my home, but God did the changing, not me.
God even brought a family from Central, the Wright's, to join us here and help start a school at the church.  They have been such a blessing and their story is also one of how God was moving things before they even knew it.  There are so many wonderful families that we've gotten to know here and it feels so warm and inviting.  Our kids really enjoy it here and have made some amazing friends.  God has been so good to bring us to this place to call home!
I just wanted to share some about that in case anyone was interested.

Wow! What a year!

It's so weird when I think about what was going through my head this time last year.  I had no idea what was coming, that's for sure!  I remember Terri telling me that she felt like she wanted to try looking for a different job in the next year.  She was the director of our preschool at the church I grew up at in Sulphur Springs, Texas and I was custodian at the same church.  Both our jobs were starting to feel like it was time for a change, but we had no idea what to do about it.  I am the kind of guy who doesn't do change very often.  Understatement of the year is what Terri would say to that.  I attended the same church since I was born, lived in the same East Texas town for all but 3 years and stayed in my last 2 jobs for about 8 years each.  Terri and I have been happily married since May 28, 1994.  We hardly ever move around unless we have to.  Little did we know last year what kind of change was going to come our way in half a year from then.

We managed to settle back in to our lives for a while after that.  We had some great friends and family to get us through, as well as wonderful ministries with the children in our church and preschool.  But there was a definite unsettled feeling in both of us.  I've always felt in tune when God calls me to something and I knew for a fact that I was called to do even more in children's ministry than the opportunities I was getting at my own church.  It is my God-inspired longing to someday be a children's pastor.  I've even taken several online courses to get it started.  I loved serving in the church as custodian but I never exactly liked the monotony that came with it each day.  One day, I hit a point where I felt like I ran into a brick wall and knew I was being called to do something else.  Within a day and then the following 2 weeks, Terri and I were faced with opportunities out of nowhere and I was on my way to Denver, Colorado as a 1 week trip to see what God might be preparing for us.  I left Colorado that week with jobs for me and Terri, a church home ready for us and an undeniable feeling that we were meant to move all the way to the Mile High City!

Just over a month later, I was headed off with the 2 youngest boys to Denver to our new house we'd never seen while my wife and eldest son were about to fly to Peru for a missions trip for 2 weeks.  I was the only one of us who had actually been to Colorado before, so they were all moving to a brand new state.  With all that said, you should know this, I never would have done something so seemingly crazy if I didn't trust that I was following God's lead.  I trusted Him so completely to not lead us into disaster and it has been anything but a that.  We moved here and have a small but decent house in a pretty good neighborhood.  We really, really miss our family and close friends but God has blessed us with lots of new friends and opportunities since we've been here.  And I must say, we absolutely love the weather here!  We had the hottest summer Denver has seen in years and yet we thought it felt like springtime in Texas, on a cool day!  We've seen lots of snow and it is certain that we will have snow on the ground for Christmas!  That's definitely a first for us!  It was a huge deal to move a junior and freshman in high school, as well as a 5th grader to a brand new city and new schools without their friends.  It has been difficult in some ways, but our boys have been blessed with some awesome new friends and a wonderful youth group and youth pastor, Brandon Dobson.  They've been able to do things already in just over 6 months than they ever could have done where they were.  God has blessed us with wonderful jobs and an absolutely amazing church!

I never made a real big deal out of the added bonus that I was going to a church that had a need for some leadership in children's ministry.  The reason why is because, again, I trust God to follow through on how He's called me into children's ministry and time will reveal how all that works out.  I have a full-time job as an animal/pest control tech that is very time-consuming, but let me add that I have never in my life enjoyed a job more than I do this one.  But it only leaves me part-time to work with the children's ministries at Belmar Baptist and I think it's totally fine.  We have a small church that averages about 125 or so and we love it there!  Our good friend, Derald Gautier, who grew up here, is our pastor and he, his wife, Penny, and their family, including a slew of Gautier's and Sundeen's, have been unbelievably awesome to us all!  Terri has been able to work with the youth group, which is something she always wanted to do and I still get to work with some amazing kids!  I've slowly worked into the children's ministry here but the next year holds promise of lots of great things.  I did get to help lead my first VBS this summer and we are starting a midweek program for the kids that coincides with some Bible studies the church is providing for the men and women.  I am so looking forward to seeing how all this plays out and I thank the Lord so much for all His blessings and provision!!!