When I started college over 4 years ago I also became a Youth Pastor at a small church in Shasta Lake City called Calvary Chapel and after over 2 years of great experiences and difficult lessons and amazing blessings I stepped down. Now 2 years after stepping out I find myself back at the same place ministering to the same students in a much larger capacity. Now that is SERIOUSLY RIDICULOUS!
Have you ever said to yourself, I'm never doing that again? Well be careful because God may call you back to the very thing you said no towards.
2 years ago I left a position at Calvary Chapel in Shasta Lake as Youth Pastor because God had been leading me towards a different area. Upon leaving I was lonely, burnt out, tired, blessed, and yet I never wanted to work at a church again, most definitely not as a Youth Pastor. And again here I am back at the same church working with a different group of people, under different leadership, carrying an even larger vision than before, and thankful for every thing I have gone through in the past 2 years to get me ready to come back to this position.
Shortly after leaving the church I wound up back at little country church helping out in the High School minstry again. It was much different during that time then in the past when I was just a small group leader and an intercessor. I was teaching a couple of times a month and meeting with students every week and working at DQ. My time back at Little Country became a time of healing for me. I needed some real healing and refreshing from all that I had gone through and I was able to find a portion of that while working in the high school ministry and attending Simpson. Then I co-lead a team with one of my closest friends to Australia. What a life changing trip showing me how God has called me to not only be a youth leader here in my own country but that He has called me to be a world youth leader, to impact the youth of the world and not just of the nation (which is still pretty huge). I also was able to attend a National Youth Workers Convention where i was given so many tools and felt like I was really being ministered to and God gave me so much confidence in Him and help me be secure in who I am in Him. So much happened in me that year it was crazy and yet in 2009 as I got closer and closer to graduating it was like everything was falling apart again.
It is a difficult feeling to describe when you get to a point in your relationship with God after doing some amazing things and seeing Him move in such amazing ways and yet you just want to stop living for Him and start living for the self. I stopped saying God what is your will and started saying "God what about me." I became lost and confused. I reached a point in my life again where it seemed absolutely pointless to keep doing what I was doing in terms of ministry because I couldn't give up the life I living in secret and the things that I was longing for. So I stepped out of ministry, took out all venues for accountability, and become completely obsorbed with self. I spent a lot of time being angry. I was angry at myself and angry at God. I tried isolating myself from others and just doing whatever I felt like doing but I remember saying one morning to God before I taught a group of High School students at Little Country, "God no matter what happens don't let me go." The funny thing is, He actually listened. The more I tried to run from Him the more I felt Him pulling me back in to Himself. It is hard to run very far when He is calling your name.
So in the midst of all of this and feeling like I didn't have any purpose I began to remember the one vision that God had given me for the city of Shasta Lake and from that point I began to feel God stirring me and pulling me towards something I couldn't explain but I knew it was bigger than myself. I held on to that vision and went for walks in Shasta Lake city and began to dream new ideas and visions for the city and what I wanted to see happen with the youth. I only told a couple of people the vision that God had given me for the city. I had no idea how the vision I had would work out but God had told me that I couldn't do it by myself and that I needed a team to go out in Shasta Lake in order for it to work. Little did I know that God was working on a lot of hearts of other people for the same city. Later I told a couple of people the vision I had for Shasta Lake and starting a Youth Center and all that it encompassed and how I knew it had to be a team of people and that it was what I was going to do. I told them I didn't know how I was going to do it or how it was all going to work out but that it was what I was called to do.
Maybe a month later I recieved a call from an excited person telling me that he was going to be stepping in as Pastor for 7 weeks and teaching and that it might become a permanet thing and he wanted me to pray about becoming youth pastor. It was a very short prayer for me. Then about 4 weeks later I was actually announced as the churches youth pastor because the guy who had been doing it stepped down. The very next week I called all of my old students in Shasta Lake and had a group of 11 students show up and it has been a very consistent and growing group of students and I am absolutely thankful and blessed by each and every one of them. 4 years ago when I started a youth ministry at this same church there were 3 kids and now restarting another youth ministry from scratch there is a much larger group.
God has blessed me so much and soon I will be quitting my job and asking everyone I know for support to do this full time as I start working on an after school program where kids can come get food and help on homework for free at the church building. But that is a whole other blog, and a support letter. ; )
There is no end to the goodness and faithfulness of God. Even with a member of our family dealing with cancer we have faith in Him who is greater and lives within us than he who is in the world. Our God is Seriously Ridiculous.
-B
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