Did I mention I didn't go to college?

In late 2003 the youth pastor at Hannah’s home church resigned. I was already a part of the student ministry and was searching for a ministry of my own, but after some prayer I met with the pastor to tell him that if they would have me, I would be happy to serve as the interim until they found a permanent staff member. I also told him that the day they hired someone else, I was sending out resumes again. In late 2004 they hired a new youth pastor and the next day I started sending out resumes again.

Hannah and I had long felt that we were called to vocational ministry in a manner other than serving in a traditional church. Shortly after we were married we began contacting ministries we came across on the internet or had previous experience with expressing a desire to partner with them in ministry. Each time we would get excited, we would call or send a letter saying that we were young, newly married and hungry to be in ministry. We would offer to move and support ourselves if only they had a role for us to fill. Each time we’d get a response along the lines of, “That’s sweet, here’s a brochure.” Time after time we were rejected, so we finally decided that we may need to pursue a more traditional path to ministry. We started looking at different churches, sending resumes, endless phone calls, interviews, meetings and emails. We were actually offered several jobs, but none of them seemed right. Actually, they were all pretty far out there. At one church we were visiting with the pastor and his wife late one evening during an interview weekend and they informed us that even though they had been the ones who contacted us about the position, he actually planned to resign within the month. At another, the pastor spent two hours telling of all the money the church had spent over the past two years and planned on spending over the next two, but unfortunately they could afford no more than $500 a month for a bi-vocational youth pastor. The real adventure came when we visited a church for the final interview and were put up with an elderly couple within the church. Late one night we were sitting on the porch visiting and Hannah commented on how beautiful the neighborhood was. Our host responded, “Oh yes, it’s really cleaned up a lot since,” she leaned in real close and whispered, “since we got rid of all the blacks.”

After the year served as interim, Hannah and I had a renewed passion for parachurch ministry. We began looking both at traditional churches and parachurch organizations with eager anticipation of what God had in store for our newly completed family (I say complete because after we figured out what was causing all the babies we took things a little more permanent route. REALLY crazy story I’d love to tell but not at all fit for public consumption. Let’s just say I have a high drug tolerance and I hope no one ever experiences what I endured at the hands of a little Indian doctor I could barely understand.) Our hopes were that with several years of formal ministry experience under our belts as well as a family that we might be taken a little more seriously. I was kind of wrong. We looked into mission work both nationally and abroad, but our denominational cooperative program requires that all applicants have a bachelors degree and since I am too stupid to have a college education that knocked us out of the running for that one. Each position we pursued seemed like a new challenge that we couldn’t quite meet. Once required x-amount of experience, while another a degree in x-field. Still others had age requirements and even though we had three kids, we were still only 22 years old.

Probably the most difficult battle that I faced through this time was seeing the number of friends and acquaintances who were getting jobs faster than I was having children. I knew several individuals who were offered job after job even after being fired from their previous church. I watched those younger and less experienced receive the very same jobs I had been passed over for. I may not have a little piece of paper telling the world how smart I am, but I am still no dummy (is the sarcasm evident enough?  I never went to college to learn how to be sarcastic, but I’m hoping the world taught me well enough). I could see what the common denominator in those equations was and it made me question everything I thought I knew. I wondered what was so fundamentally wrong with me that made me so evidently unfit to be a staff minister. Through all of this Hannah and I continued to serve at our church leading the college group, children’s church, and Sunday morning prayer group hoping that God’s plan was as good as He promised it would be.

After several months we finally stumbled on a small parachurch organization in east Tennessee that was looking for an events coordinator. I thought that the job was tailor made for me. The purpose of the position was to plan and organize all the area concerts, conferences and events that would normally be handled by local youth pastors in order to allow them to minister more effectively to their students. Hannah and I prayed long and hard and finally submitted a resume. Imagine my surprise when I received word that they wanted me to come down and interview for the position. It felt like things were finally going our way and we had finally found the place where we belonged. It was also the beginning of another crazy stage of our lives. Maybe one day I’ll grow out of those….