Those of you who are subscribers or frequent visitors know that I don’t post about myself or my life very often. Obviously this is on purpose. My life is boring. Just trust me, it is. Today is a different day though. I am going to write about myself.
Many of you know that I started a new job almost two months ago. I think it is time for a little update.
- Favorite Part of the Job- Freedom and Friendships.
- I work weird hours. Practices are at night, band members are free at night. Luckily Rose works weird hours too so it works out fine. I love that I can show up for meetings, go home and do theology reading and then come back for practice.
- Rose and I don’t know a lot of people in Portland but this job has opened doors to new and awesome friendships. Jill, Jay, and I work really closely together and it has been so wonderful to learn from people who have so much more experience with all this than I do.
- Least Favorite Part- All the weekends run together. When you volunteer once a month you are able to hold onto a special weekend in your thoughts. When you play 3 or 4 weekends a month, you can’t hold onto anything because the next weekend is right in front of you.
- Why This Job Works For Me- I think Jenni said it best a few weeks ago when she said that it is so cool when you are able to do what God made you to do. I think that applies to me here. I knew God had been preparing me for music ministry in church. I don’t know if I only want to be a worship pastor but I do know God provided me with the skills to succeed in this area.
- Biggest Challenge- Being an amateur musician trying to lead should-be pros. I can play acoustic guitar to my little heart’s desire, but easily the biggest hurdle is trying to lead with quality thoughts towards all the instruments. All of the musicians on the team are extremely talented and sometimes I feel over my head by trying to help the team reach a new level of musicianship.
- Creative Crunch- 2 parts
- Working at a church in the Northwest and being a pastor’s kid growing up, I’ve come to know that Oregon is a place where people don’t go to church. It isn’t a social norm…even on Easter and Christmas. In areas where church attendance is common, the challenge is to help develop spiritual depth in a relationship to Christ (that is obviously still a challenge here too). The challenge in Portland is to actually get people to come to church. This makes my job harder because my job is in the church.
- The only way for people in the congregation to get to know songs is to do them several times. After doing songs for several times they can easily get old. I find it hard to think of new and creative ways to do a song that has the potential of being done the same ol’ way everytime.
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