Ministry Boundaries

A couple of weeks ago I started to feel strongly that I did not want to work over 60 hours a week for the ministry that Bethany and I are currently a part of, we both felt it was too much. Bethany and I began to pray and seek wise council about the situation. Part of this search was to send out a request for prayer, scripture, and advice from around a dozen people we respect and trust. The replies we recieved were wonderful! They were thoughtful, wise, gracious, contained scripture, and stories of how God had worked to teach them in the past. Our question was this: "In ministry what are some guidelines or principles that help you know when to say no? And how much is too much?"

Some of the wise advice we recieved contained the following lessons we are taking to heart:

1. Everytime you say "Yes" you are also saying "No" to something else. If you can name what that something else is, it may help make your decision more clear.

2. We want to be in a place to minister out of an overflow of God's love for us. It is possible for the life, energy, creativity, spirit, and passion to start to dry out of your ministry. When you feel this start to happen you need to go to God: His Spirit gives direction, He is the source of eternal life, His creativity is displayed in the magnificent world around us, and His passionate love led Jesus Christ to the cross. By making time for prayer, worship, reading God's word, and spending time with God's people we are able to accomplish this "filling up" or "feeding". Also the simple fact of working less allows Bethany and I to have more energy for the kids.

3. We are not responsible for or capable of saving every lost soul or feeding every hungry mouth because the task is too large for us finite beings. God has other instructions for His discipes besides preaching the gospel and caring for those in need. He desires for us to seek Him [Jeremiah 29:13], come before Him in prayer [Phil 4:6, Hebrews 5:7], love our spouses [Eph 5], have fellowship with others [1 Peter 2:17] and take Sabbath rest [Mark 6, Hebrews 4:9-10] to name a few. As we seek to maintain a healthy and well-rounded pursuit of God and His kingdom we can trust Christ to take care of His sheep. With this perspective Bethany and I can have the blessing of joining God in His work instead of the burden of accomplishing a task too large for us.

So now the moment you have been waiting for: Bethany and I have told GAP we will not work more than the 60 hours a week we originally agreed to at this point in time. This has been quite freeing and has already begun to breathe some new life into our ministry with GAP.

Since we made this decision another couple has left the ministry and it is becoming more clear that the ministry is understaffed. One of the staff discussions was about maintaining focus and Godly prespective when there is so much work to do. Bethany and I have recently been thinking of ways for the ministry to be more plugged into local churches and for couples to be invloved in small groups. One of our friends said, "Perhapes you are called to be a voice for boundaries, balance and health within GAP." God only knows what will happen here but I believe He is at work for the sake of this ministry.

Praises: God has been answering our prayers to show us how He is using us here in GAP! We have had two good respites in a row and two couples who said they wanted to keep us. Another praise is for our small group who has continued to be an amazing source of support, prayer, and fellowship. We have certainly felt the love of Christ through them!

Prayers: For spiritual health and vatality in the GAP staff. Also pray for Bethany and I as we begin to work at Splash 4 this week because it has been one of the most difficult houses for us to work in. We have had some miscommunications with the house parents and the kids have taken advantage of the situation to create disorder. Pray for good communication with the house parents and for structure to be established in the house.

Good Respite

Bethany and I had a good respite at Splash 2. This was encouraging because we have begun praying for God to show us some of the fruit of us being here. It seems easy to think you are being unsuccessful in this job because the kids don't like you, the house is never clean enough, and there is almost always some little mistake you made to fall short of state standards. But I dare say we had a pretty good respite this past week.

I got to play some fun games with the youngest kid - including army men warfare. God graced me with the privaledge of talking to the oldest about where he is at spiritually and we had no major blow ups.

Prayers: That we will be able to establish order, feel peace, and see fruit in the ministry we are doing. Pray that Bethany will be able to see and know how valuable her contributions are to our ministry.

Praises: We had a good respite and the kids seem like they are just starting to genuinly respect us.

2009!

We are already 10 days into 2009 and Eric and I are finally getting around to blogging about our many adventures since we last wrote about sledding in a winter wonderland. Much to our enjoyment, there is no more cold and snow in the forecast but sunny skies and 70 degrees! (although when we arrived back in Tucson, it was rainy and cold and did not feel like much of a change in climate.) The nights here are chilly and we have enjoyed our fireplace because of that but the sun still shines and warms us up through the day. The last time I remember being this warm in Jaunary was when I was in Chang Mai, Thailand with YWAM. I think I could get used to this!

After a day of unpacking and repacking, we went back to work for a week long respite on December 27th. This was the first time we stayed at a house for 7 days and I was pretty intimidated by the idea since it was all during school vacation. We prayed a lot and headed into it knowing there would probably be challenges. There were definitely moments of angst but all in all it was one of the most fun respites that we have done. Every day the kids were excited to go play in the park or go to the zoo or celebrate New Years. We watched movies at night as a way to chill out and calm down and for most of the week there were only 5 kids so it was easy to pack up quickly and go out to eat or go find something fun to do. Below you can see some of our pictures from an afternoon at the zoo in Tucson. It's a small place but still pretty cool to see real lions and tigers and bears! Sadly, we were informed that we won't be doing respite with those kids anymore because they trained another couple to take that house. However, we are moving to a house that we really like and we have become good friends with the parents so we are excited about this new opportunity.

We were looking forward to a week long break before we started our next respite but our plans changed this past Wednesday when we were asked to take over a house for a few days while one of the parents was in the hospital. She collapsed on the bathroom floor on Tuesday and didn't come home until Friday. They did lots of tests on her and couldn't find anything wrong but she is very tired and weak now. All of their kids have been distributed to other houses for the weekend so the parents can have a chance to recover and then go on respite. We finished there last night and then went out to enjoy the Olive Garden after a crazy few days.

Today we have the day off and tomorrow we are starting our regulary scheduled respites. We've been trying to take today as slow as possible but it is finishing up quickly as I write this. Eric is trying to install a new sound system that we purchased today with a lot of help from Christmas gift cards. This new system has in iPod dock for our newly purchased used iPod (also thanks to Christmas money!). I never thought I would own one but the day has come. I think it will be a lot of fun to use. We have also been busily cleaning up the apartment and hanging some more pictures and posters because the couple we are doing respite for tomorrow is going to stay at our place this week. It's fun to know that others are enjoying our little nest but it also means lots of extra tidying up! As you can see from the pictures, Eric is enjoying his new Braveheart poster (a present from his wife) to go along with the Gladiator poster that he got on our first Valentine's Day.

Our other exciting purchase of the day was a new pair of roller blades for Eric and some bike helmets so that we can go roller blading with the kids and use our bikes. We have ambitions about being more physically active in 2009 but our days never seem to go just as we planned in this job. Perhaps the only resolution that we are still intentionally pursuing after 10 days of 2009 is spending time with God and desiring to know Him even more this year. We have both separately been reading The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer which we highly recommend. It has challenged us to get back on our knees and to continue to cry out to God to know Him more intimately. We are so blessed by the church and small group that we attend because they encourage us whenever we are with them to keep seeking God.

The rest of the month is busy for us. After this respite we will take next weekend off and then do another two respites almost back to back. One of them will only be 12 hour day shifts because we have been having a difficult time establishing order at that house. With the 12 hour days there will be time at the end of the day when the parents come back to talk about how things are going. It has turned out to be a busy month for us but also a month where we can see how God has taken very good care of us in our transition to Tucson. We are developing wonderful friendships, have a fun nest to come home to, and we left a very supportive and encouraging family that will hopefully come visit soon!

Praises: Safe travels, a great Christmas visit, new friends, a great week long respite, our fun and cozy apartment, being happily married for 6 months!

Prayers: 3 respites to go this month! GAP has lost more staff and others are sick or stressed. Prayers that we continue to find a sense of purpose and belonging here and that we are contributing and using the gifts God has given us.