A Parable in Fathering

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter or have talked with me in the last few days you know that we had a traumatic experience in the Ewaskowitz household this past weekend.

While Bekki and I were upstairs our two-year old son was downstairs playing nicely by himself (or so we thought). Noah has developed a healthy interest (or obsession) in drums. Everything is a drumstick and everything else is a drum. On this particular occasion our flat screen television was the drum. When we came downstairs we discovered that Noah had been hitting the television screen repeatedly with his drumsticks. Apparently these tv's weren't designed to double as drum-sets, and the screen now included a large black spot in the middle of it. The TV, a 37 inch LCD Samsung given to us as a gift almost a year ago, was ruined!

I was beside myself. I was so upset and the worst part is I didn't know where to direct my anger. I was angry at Noah for ruining the TV, I was angry with Bekki and myself for leaving him alone downstairs, and I was angry with myself for caring so much about a TV. So I did what I thought was the best thing at the time: I left the house. In fact, I left to go buy Noah his Christmas present.

As I was on my way to Wal-mart to buy a toy kitchen for my son who had just destroyed my TV I thought to myself, "Noah doesn't deserve this gift. He has been naughty. I should use the money for his gift to go towards my new television fund." And yet I had another stream of thought running through my head, "I love my son. I take delight in him and it fills me with joy to give him gifts that I know will bring him joy as a result."

This made me think of my relationship with God and about how God is fathering me. Even though I damage God's high definition world with my disobedience and rebellion against him, he continues to lavish me with love and grace. He continues to shower me with gifts and he takes delight in it. Sure there are consequences for my actions, but God never withdraws his love from his children.

I have this suspicion that one day I will look back at this experience with great fondness because I will have learned a valuable lesson about the love of my heavenly father and how in turn I have been called to love my sons, to show them grace, and to take joy and delight in giving them gifts even when they might not deserve it.

One day I will look back at this experience with great fondness. Today however, I have started saving for a new TV.

What Staff Position Comes First?

Wow its really been a while since I've blogged. I've had plenty swirling around in the brain to write about, I just haven't had the time to do it. Hopefully I can find some time to catch up because there is a lot that I'd like to share here.

As part of my church planting internship, along with weekly staff meetings I also meet with my supervisor regularly to just talk church planting. He's kind of like Yoda and I'm Luke (sorry if that doesn't work. I'm only mildly a Star Wars fan). Anyways, this week we talked a little bit about staffing as it pertains to church planting. In most established churches the first staff pastor that is usually added is a youth pastor. Now that may or may not be most effective for an established church, but that's for another post.

In the church planting world, conventional wisdom says the first hire is either a children's or worship pastor. There are some who suggest that the first hire should be more of an executive (get things done) pastor. Many propose a children's or worship pastor to be the first hire because if a church is trying to attract unchurched people then the worship (meaning music in these cases) must be high quality and energizing, and the kids must have a lot of fun in a professionally executed children's program.

As our discussion continued I suggested that this approach to staffing is a contextual one. It assumes a few things. One, it assumes that a church plant is aiming to reach families with young kids. What about a new church in a university town filled with unmarried urban professionals? What about a new church that seeks to reach a senior adult community (a weird demographic I know, but I'm just sayin). Two, it assumes a church plant with a corporate worship gathering that involves music. What about a house church, where people meet in a living room and engage in contemplative prayer exercises?

Here's my point. I do tend to agree that to effectively reach people far from God we must prioritize our younger generations and must invite people into holistic and dynamic worship (which is about so much more than just music). In most cases these hires make sense as the first. However, the more important thing is that a church planter listens to her community, to learn the context in which she is planting a church and be faithful to her calling, and not simply just going with the conventional wisdom.

For the sake of dialogue, who do you think the first hire for church plant should be?