19 Sep 07 Preaching VII (The Youth Ministry Years)

Following the class I taught at the Youth Ministers Seminar two individuals approached me to see if I would be interested in talking with them about a youth ministry opportunity in Fresno, California.  Where?  Is that in the continental US?  The initial process ran its course and I headed to Fresno for a week long interview.  Did you catch that last part?  It was a week long interview.  The best interview experience I’ve ever had.  There was no doubt that in that amount of time I had a good idea of the opportunity.  There was also no doubt that by the second day I had decided not to go to Fresno. 

I met the preacher for lunch and he informed me that he checked up on me and had heard that I was a good preacher.  He wanted me to know that it was his pulpit and I wasn’t going to come in and take it from him.  That I should "do my time" in some smaller churches first, like he had to do.  I left that lunch and called my dad and said "I am not coming to this church" and began to explain to him the reasons why.  He listened and said something like "well, you’re going to be there for five more days, stick it out, do your best and see what happens at the end of the week."

By the end of the week I knew I wanted to move to Fresno.  The kids had won me over.  My time in Fresno, not without it’s challenges, was a bright spot in my ministry career.  To this day I consider that church family my "home" church.  I was given the structure to succeed and the freedom to be creative.  There’s hardly a week that goes by that I do not think about our remember in some way my time with this church.  Of course meeting the girl you married in that church lends some helpful reminders!

I spoke for a number of area youth rallies and had the occasional opportunity to preach on Sunday morning.  The biggest change in my preaching style was definitely  content and length.  I would usually have between 2 to 4 weeks to prepare a sermon and that was always enough time to over prepare.  I had moved from one side of the spectrum to the other and found myself having to fit everything into one sermon.  When you preach on a weekly basis you can spread the joy.  I wanted to pursue every angle of the text, every connection point and often made the mistake of doing just that.

Partway through my time the preacher resigned and the regular preaching duties increased.  This increase in opportunity began to reignite the desire I had to preach on a weekly basis and fueled my desire to pursue my education.  Having completed a Masters degree I began to investigate opportunities to pursue a Doctoral degree.  I found a program that seemed to fit my criteria and tried to work it out so that I could stay in ministry with the Fresno church.  This turned out to not be the case so 1 month after the birth of our first child we moved to Oregon (my mother-in-law still hates me for that - but she hates me in that good sort of way) to be closer to the school and to begin my first official full-time preaching gig.