I have been in PA now for almost a year, and what a difference a year makes. This week I went to my first Leadership meeting for GBC, and I must say it was a different experience for me. I sat in a room with 5 other adults and discussed plans for the upcoming events and growth of GBC. I was given respect and treated like a competent adult. These are new experiences for me. I am generally on the outside looking in desiring and hoping to be of help. Any advice I have given has been dismissed or smiled at with a gratuitous thank you. In short, I have never been taken seriously.
I am being given an opportunity here and I do not wish to fail. I want to succeed because that means people are growing in their walk with Christ and lives are being changed. This is my field of study. This is why the Lord lead me to study Christian education (or discipleship, if you prefer). This is my desire in serving the Lord.
It is difficult to describe the inner change that happens when you go from struggling to make ends meet (even when you have no ends), being an after thought in the majority of people's lives, and feeling like your life has no direction or purpose to making a livable wage, being sought after to help a church, and having people believe in you. It is like going from dark to light, death to life, empty to overflowing, despair to hope. It is remarkable the change that happens when you believe that someone else also believes in you. When someone else believes that you have worth and have something of value to share, it is easier to believe it yourself. A minister and coworker at a church I once was employed at asked me why I wasn't on staff there (he meant on the ministerial staff), and I told him it was because I didn't have "IT." I explained that I meant whatever "IT" is that people or churches are looking for, they haven't seen it in me. He emphatically stated that I did have "IT." I agreed, but not verbally. I believe I have something of value inside me to offer to the Lord in service to His Church, but no one else, who had the ability to give me an opportunity, has ever agreed with me. The Lord has now seen fit to open those doors of opportunity in His way and in His time, and I must say, it is surreal.
