Aotearoa Diaries: Job Hunting (Or Discerning Vocation)

I was talking to a friend the other day and we came to the realisation that this new season of my life isn't just a turning to a new page, but a whole new book altogether.

Even though I tried not to think about it in those exact terms, I had spent my first four years in Aotearoa as a missionary because my funding came from overseas (I know the term "missionary" means a lot more than that, but globalisation and all that--ask me about it another time). But this year marked a huge transition. It wasn't just a year of discerning what's next with The Bridge, it was also the year I'm transitioning out of "missionary" status--and not just because I got married to a Kiwi bloke. No, it's also the year I'm transitioning into doing things the way local ministers would.

For most local ministers, being bi-vocational is the only way for ministry to be healthily sustainable unless, of course, we are with one of the bigger denominations. (But this isn't a conversation about denominational affiliations--feel free to ask me about this in a different conversation). And while I had known this since starting up The Bridge back in 2014, it wasn't until June this year that I finally had a work visa that would allow me to work outside of the religious organisation that sponsored my Religious Worker visa.

Nearly three months after I received that work visa and at least 30 job applications later, I'm still unemployed. At the advise of a friend, I went to a recruitment agency and managed to get this close to securing a job, only to receive a phone-call last Friday to say the organisation had decided to hire someone else. Never mind that the recruitment agency had been impressed with my typing speed and data-entry accuracy, I didn't even get a second interview.

So of course, last weekend was spent with a lot of crying and frustration, and my poor husband got the raw end of it when I raged at him for not going to work because he had a tummy bug (he was feeling miserable, and I was jealous that he had a job to go to while all I could do was sit at home and play Suzy-Homemaker. Seriously, job envy is the dumbest). I got angry with the world because it felt like all I had to offer to the world had no monetary value attached to it. And then I got angry with the Christian voices in my head that I could hear saying, "But think about the eternal value..." and wanted to rage at them and ask if that meant they were offering to pay our bills. And then I got angry with myself that all my training and work experience had been within Christian circles and blamed that for my lack of success in the secular world. And then I got angry with all the nay-sayers who tried to convince me to work in the secular world before going into ministry (believe me, I tried--it just didn't work out that way) and how it seemed they had just been proven right.

When all the raging subsided, I heard my friend Brett's words of wisdom in my head. Something along the lines of... "'Rejection letters' sound so harsh. Why don't you think of it more like, 'vocation discernment communications'?" And then I thought about all the job offers I had received before I got my work visa. It offered a bit of comfort to know that I wasn't being unrealistic with my job search--the jobs requiring my skill sets were out there; the timing just hadn't been right. And then I thought, "Ok God, you win this one. But then when is the timing ever going to be right, and how the hell are we supposed to pay our bills in the meantime?"

And then I thought about all the company we had over the weekend. And the anger and laughter and exhaustion and Truth-seeking and Life Together we had done. And suddenly I didn't feel like as much of a loser for only doing things that had eternal value even though we still have no idea how we are going to pay the rest of our bills.

Some concerned friends had asked a little while ago if I would still be willing to give as much to Church and ministry, and whether I would still want to be a pastor if we couldn't even financially support ourselves. I gave a half-hearted yes because I knew it didn't sound rational, and even though in my heart of hearts, I knew it was a resounding yes, I was fatigued. But having gone the round-about way and actually doing a bit of hard questioning, my answer is still yes. Because pastoring and ministering is more than what I do--it's who I am (Shut up about giving me crap about acknowledging I'm a minister.)

And now back to the drawing board with job applications all over again. Hopefully the timing will be right sooner rather than later, but until then, just keep swimming. Because... What Would Dory Do?

Aotearoa Diaries: Re-imagining Sunday

Growing up in church, one of the markers of being a good Christian was if my friends knew to never invite me to do stuff on Sunday mornings because they would know I would be at church.

That was never a problem for me because I didn't have friends. (I wish I was kidding, but it's true. I didn't really learn social skills until I was in uni and living in a foreign land, and it was sink or swim to find social skills. But that's beside the point.)

After moving to Auckland and working in a church full time, I wrestled long and hard with how "Sunday = church" wasn't a norm for so many who considered themselves Christians. It wasn't necessarily that I had a personal issue with those who didn't show up at church faithfully every Sunday--no, for the most part, I understood where they were coming from.

It was more, how am I supposed to do my job and sustain our programme if we didn't have a faithful attendance?

In the first year after I left my full-time job in a traditional congregation, I convinced myself to take a break from the Sunday routine to allow room for healing. And the struggle was real. I missed having a weekly community, but more importantly, I missed the music and the congregational singing. I plugged myself into a congregation a friend pastored, and tried to find fringe ways to get involved so I could feel like I was still being a good Christian.

Then I began to realise the main reason I was doing that was so that if anyone was to ever doubt if I was being a faithful Christian/pastor, I could have an easy answer: "Hey, I AM going to church. Don't ask further questions about my relationship with God or my ministry life or any of that."

But I was drowning in my own inauthenticity. It wasn't that being in a traditional congregation wasn't fulfilling my spiritual need, or whatever the new-age/millenialist term for that is. It was that I knew in my heart of hearts I was created to imagine a different kind of church for the other misfits like me. But I was too busy covering up my insecurities about looking unChristian to venture into this unknown of Church of the Misfits.

And then I met Stephen, who was at basically the same place where I was with regards to our relationship with the traditional Sunday congregation. And it became slightly easier--and slightly not. Being raised in church meant that we had been brainwashed learnt to believe if we were to take our relationship with each other seriously, we needed to do better about our relationship with Church.

So for a while, we tried Sunday evening church. We found somewhere we liked enough, but the question kept coming back: Is this really where we should be, or are we just feeling guilty about not being at church on Sunday?

There was one particular Sunday evening that became a turning point for me. Some friends whom we hadn't seen in a while were popping in for an afternoon coffee. It got closer and closer to the time we were supposed to leave for church, and Stephen and I started getting a little antsy about how to tell them we had to leave shortly. But something prompted us to wait, so we did. The conversation turned a corner and we found ourselves learning about our friends' thoughts on church and why they were no longer a part of a traditional congregation.

When we eventually pulled into the church parking downtown, we both had the same thought. We may be walking in to the church building ten minutes after the service had started, but it was a no-brainer. That last little bit of conversation over coffee was more Church than either of us had experienced in a while.

I don't know for sure if that was when it started, but it wasn't long before we gave ourselves freedom on the weekends for encounters like that. For a while, we still tried to make sure we made it to Sunday evening service, but more often than not, we would have had friends popping in and out all weekend long. Our kitchen would be a complete mess after brunch and pizzas and chips and hot chocolates and dumplings and nachos and rugby that trying to head out the door for Sunday church just became too hard. And I began to understand at a deeper level why I struggled so much with the Sunday programming when I was full-time at a traditional congregation.

So what is the Church of the Misfits going to look like? We're slowly experimenting with a few ideas. But it probably wouldn't all take place on a Sunday.

Aotearoa Diaries: 返来 Return

Hello, 2015. It's nice to meet you.

First things first.
The last 3 months have been a whirlwind. 6 countries in some 80 days. Whoa.

Would I do it all over again? I don't know.

Don't get me wrong. The last 3 months on the road have not managed to kill my spirit of adventure or love for the world. But maybe that's the problem. Travelling stirs up all kinds of thoughts, feelings and dreams that I'm not sure I have the energy to keep up with anymore.

Let me back track a little bit.

2014 was a great year. Sure, it might have been because 2013 had been one big hell-hole, such that 2014 felt like a completely different life altogether. And even though ministry-wise, nothing had gone as I had expected, things were slowly taking shape.

The only problem was the one main one I had been ignoring all year long hoping that some miracle would just take care of it. That money problem.

I don't like talking about financial stuff because it's awkward and I like pretending that ministry doesn't involve money. But we had reached a point where reality was sinking in: something desperate needed to happen with the finances for the ministry or it's not going to go on. Then some friends sat me down and had me actually figure out that we were only at about 20% of what we needed each month.

That was when it hit the fan.

In the 3 months that I had spent on the road, I had a couple of offers for full-time ministry positions with a more stable income. When the first offer came, I still felt very strongly about returning to New Zealand. That the chapter with The Bridge isn't over. How could it be when we still have plans and dreams for this year? But by the time I began having more conversations with people and the other offers came through, I began to wonder if returning to Auckland was a stupid idea. 3.5 years of living with limited resources and moving every half a year or so because I couldn't afford to pay rent was beginning to wear on me emotionally. It's one thing to say, "I choose to live by faith and trust that the resources will come in." It's another thing to face the reality that this "live by faith" mentality was becoming a waste of resources because it was greatly limiting the effectiveness of the ministry. I hated going in to the city because it was a 40 minute commute each way, and parking was limited and expensive (The cheapest Auckland city parking costs $3/hour for the first 2 hours, then $6/hour after that). How could I really call The Bridge a presence-based community ministry when I wasn't even all that present in the community?

And doesn't the lack of financial support coming in also translate to the lack of value placed in a ministry like that? And if no one believes in it, am I just wasting my time when I could be making a difference elsewhere?

And then Hong Kong happened. Here's another conference to go to. Another networking opportunity. Another go at seeing whether this money miracle will happen.

Well, what ended up happening, I did not see coming at all. This overwhelming sense of call to "返来" or "return" that I had promised in an earlier post that I would write about.

You see, at this conference in Hong Kong, there was an overwhelming number of Chinese brothers and sisters in Christ. From a very young age, I had been fascinated with the underground church in China, and my first real sense of call to ministry had, in fact, been to go to China. Ten years had past since then, and somewhere in that ten years I had forgotten about that nudging.

Then at this conference in Hong Kong, I found myself offering to translate for the overwhelming number of Chinese brothers and sisters. Because I had registered for the conference as a representative of the church in New Zealand, most of them were surprised that I was bilingual. In conversations with several of them afterwards, I found myself having to explain that my grandparents migrated to Singapore from China, and that I was actually a "华侨" or "overseas Chinese". I forgot that to the Chinese, even if I had never lived in China, the very nature that I was a 华侨 meant that China would still be home, or at least, the Motherland. Kind of like when my immediate family took a trip back to my grandpa's village in China. All the relatives there greeted us with the over-excited, "你们返来了!" (you have finally come home!)

In those moments of conversations with these brothers and sisters, I had several of them ask if I would "return" to China to work with their youth. They were impressed with my bilingualism and my understanding of spiritual things, and reminded me again that China needed people like me.

"返来" "Return"

There was that word again. I wondered what God was thinking listening in to all these conversations. God sure seemed to have a sense of humour about these things, and frankly I was getting quite annoyed.

I found myself explaining that there were Chinese all around the world that needed the faith we shared as well, and that those were the people I would work better with. Frankly, I have no idea where those words came from, but suddenly I found myself in the shower in my residence hall my freshman year of college again. It was ten years ago, but I recall having a chuckle at how all that weekend, I had been serving as a "translator" between a friend from Hong Kong and another one from Korea. Never mind that I didn't speak Korean--I had been exposed to enough bad English in my life that I was translating from one dialect of bad English to another. In that moment, I began to wonder if God would be ridiculous enough to call me back to Asia after I had finally settled down from crying about moving halfway across the world to the US.

Ten years later, at that conference back in Asia, the words spilling out of my mouth suddenly shed light on all the nonsense in that shower room. I would find myself "return"-ing-ish to Asia-ish, just not in the conventional way. Well, if everything else leading up to that moment in my life was anything to go by, "conventional" doesn't usually work out for me, so really, I had no reason to be surprised.


Still, I was undecided. There were overseas Chinese all around the world. Why did it have to be Auckland? Sure, there was job stability there, but there was no money to go with the job. 20% is still a grim figure, and I would be returning to Auckland with less than a month to find another place to live (my current flatmate is wonderful, but we've reached a point where it's no longer fair for her to keep offering me free accommodation).


Then those youth camps. Those blasted youth camps.

Since the first of the year, I've been at back-to-back youth camps. I generally love youth camps because I love camps in general, but even more so, I love being around the ridiculousness of teenagers. Except this time, my role was a bit different. Along with just hanging out with the teenagers, I also got to spend significant time with some of the youth leaders--young adults whom I had just spent a whole year getting to know. The more we talked, the more they shared their hopes and dreams, the more I began to have that sense that my journey with them wasn't over. It couldn't be.

But then what? There still is that grim reality of 20% (I hate numbers, but it keeps haunting me). And then the first nudging I felt about The Bridge returned.

It was January 2013 and I had taken 48 hours to go away to Wellington. The afternoon before I was to return to Auckland, I passed by a house. It was an ordinary house, and there was no reason for it to have stood out, but it did. I had already decided before the trip that I would be done with my assignment with WCF, and kind of figured at least part of the 48 hours away would be spent praying about next steps. Still, there was no reason for me to have stood in front of that ordinary house for so long, but I came home from that trip and asked my prayer circle to begin praying about a house.

Well, it's been two years since that trip. I'm still not sure what that house is about, but I have a stronger feeling than ever that it's going to happen, even if I have no idea how.

Over the weekend at that last camp I was a part of, we were challenged over and over again to make "Bold Crossings". Frankly, I had not given a second thought to the theme because I was there only to be a support person for the camp, and had even been pretty insistent on the first two days that I wasn't going to let it get to me. I was exhausted and ready for the busyness to be over so I could go away by myself to think and pray and sort things out.

Then that night, Clint talked about making the "Bold Crossing" to surrender. In our leaders' meetings prior, we were reminded that these messages could stir up some things amongst the youth that we should be prepared to deal with. I found myself thinking in my head, I've had enough experience with these youth events that I know what to expect. How different would this night be from all the others?

But that night, as Clint made the call to surrender, I found myself drifting to the back of the room, and from my corner, I found two of my people who had been going through some really challenging junk with their hands raised in the air. In that moment, there was no holding back the tears. I still had no idea what I was supposed to be doing in Auckland, but at that moment I knew God was doing something, and I wanted in. I wanted to stay.


So in conclusion, well... I have no conclusion. Except... I guess I'm staying in Aotearoa. It is good to return home.

Aotearoa Diaries: Emerging Leaders

My most recent TV addiction has been The Voice Australia. If you don't know anything about The Voice, it's essentially kind of like American Idol, except with a twist in that celebrity coaches listen to singers in blind auditions (they sit in chairs with their backs toward the singers) and decide if they hear a voice they want to work with. I enjoy it because 1) there's a lot of good singers, and 2) for a change, these are coaches who offer encouragement rather than tear people down.

In one episode, Kylie Minogue, who is the homecoming star in this season, talked about how when she was an artiste starting out on her career, she didn't have anyone to hold her hand on the journey to offer guidance and encouragement. Now that she's back in Australia for the TV show, she wanted to be that support for a new artiste waiting to be discovered, and to walk that journey with her.

I guess I found myself resonating with her words because in a lot of ways, a chunk of my new season of ministry is doing just that. Yes, I am starting a ministry for university students. But as I have been working on narrowing down the focus of what this ministry will look like, I began to realise that my biggest passion is in helping students connect with, and stay connected to intentional faith communities. The thing about student ministries is that while we may hope to be a part of their lives forever (and letting go will be a big struggle for me, let's be honest), the reality is that for most, we only get them so intimately for a very limited time. But if we are able to help them connect with communities that really get into the stuff where life meets faith, hopefully it will become such a natural part of their lives that no matter where they head off to after uni, finding spiritual communities to be plugged in to will remain a priority.

Which presents the other reality: I have to find out where these intentional faith communities are, or if they even exist. What I began to realise is that while there aren't many in existence, there are several within local churches with a passion for starting healthy young adult ministries that integrates with, rather than exist as a separate entity from the rest of the congregation (important issue that we'll address on a different day) And so, how can we, as The Bridge, help them get started?

Which leads me to an exciting part of this journey: helping to identify emerging leaders within the young adult circles amongst Auckland churches who have that passion and desire to create an age-appropriate ministry for their peers. At the recent Emerge retreat sponsored by the Wesleyan Methodist Church of New Zealand, several of these leaders had approached me to discuss this issue when they found out about what I was doing. Just the other week, I had coffee with a few leaders from a church just outside the city to discuss these same issues (and some anonymous kind soul in the cafe even shouted us scones!). And I've met with several key leaders in student-led Christian organisations in one of the city campuses to talk about these same things.

I will admit that in many ways, I was envious of these younger leaders because they had people who identified their leadership abilities and have taken an interest in developing them from a much younger age. For me personally, by the time I had my first conversation with leadership development sage, Arthur Kelly, I was already past the target age of the "emerging leaders" demographic. I remember his words clearly: "I don't know why you weren't a part of this group, but you should have been." By then, I was already jaded by unhealthy ministry practices, and unsure of who to turn to help me process all that I had seen and felt when my picture-perfect image of church and ministry life completely shattered.

Thank God for Arthur Kelly, MaryAnn Hawkins and Paul Dreger who stepped in before I had the time to consider leaving the church or ministry life.

So while I am envious, I am also thankful for the opportunity to play a small role in walking the journey with some of these younger leaders. As my mother (who shudders at the thought of being in any kind of ministry leadership role) would say, "The church can only survive if there are young people in the church."

So yes, I may still be relatively young, but I am not going to be around forever, so it's always time to think of the future.

And no, I'm not kidding when I say I truly love what I do and the fantastic people I get to hang out with, and even more so that I get to call it my job.

Aotearoa Diaries: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

If you've followed this blog for a while, you'd probably know that once in a while, I gush and reminisce about that wonderful season of my life called "seminary".

Oh, don't get me wrong. Life was anything but a bed of roses during that season. But I learnt a lot from that season mostly because I had an incredible group of people to journey with.


See, when I was first starting seminary, I had made a deal with my parents that we would do whatever we could to get me through school without having to take out a loan. Which meant I needed to work. A lot.

Thankfully, through some strange connections (mostly just being at the right place at the right time), I managed to get a ministry job that understood I would be going back to school after my first year of working there full-time, and they allowed me the flexibility of working part-time during the school year. The full-time hours during the summer was supposed to pay for school, but there would be nights that I would be crunching numbers and it still wouldn't add up to being enough. And then the next day at work, I would be quietly fretting about the financial situation, and Ryan Chapman, this gentleman who works down the hallway from me would randomly come up to my desk quietly with a $20 note in hand. "Seminary textbooks are expensive, and I know this isn't a lot. But I hope it helps pay for at least part of a textbook."

And I would sit there with tears streaming down my face. Maybe it wasn't a lot, but the symbolic gesture (that happened on about two or three different occasions, and always the day after I'm fretting about money again -- maybe it wasn't so random after all) was the reminder I needed that God had promised to provide. True to form, I finished seminary without any debt.


Why am I bringing this up now?

Well, I just got another $20 note in the mail from a dear friend in the States. It was accompanied with a beautiful note:

Maybe it doesn't seem like a big deal, but lately the money thing has been a big issue all over again. Money hasn't been coming in for my salary because I am too far away from my main financial supporters to really fundraise. I had been writing letters and trying to come up with creative ways to raise the money all while trying to juggle figuring out this new season of ministry at the same time. Truth be told, I was starting to wonder if the reality that no money was coming in meant I was crazy (let's be honest, I'm gaining a reputation for doing the crazy) for even thinking this ministry made any sense. Because if it did, why did it seem like nobody else was buying into it except me?

And then a few weeks ago, I had reached the point where my savings was depleted and thanks to a bit of car trouble, was left with about $20 to my name. While I don't usually talk about my money situation, it somehow came up in my conversation with Emily. When she found out, she contacted one of her major supporting churches that she knew had emergency funds set aside for situations like these.


I should have known that Emily was cut from the same mold of theological and spiritual formation that so changed my worldview.

You see, back in our seminary days, we journeyed with a group of friends who truly taught us how to live in community. There was little that wasn't shared between us. We had pitch-in dinners about once a week or so to make sure everyone was fed. Because I was one of the few who had a steady income that was more than minimum wage, I pitched my share to pay for the more costly ingredients for the meal. Amity often fed us from her garden and sometimes when they had a surplus, the canned tomatoes or soups would get shared all around. And Tim changed my oil for free so I didn't have to pay for labour to get it done at a shop.

Perhaps because we all knew that most of us weren't going in to ministry for the fame or fortune, we felt a sense of responsibility to take care of each other in whatever way we could. After all, we all understood the reality that everything we have belongs to the kingdom anyway.


Well, going back to that $20 note...

About two weeks ago, I had scheduled a lunch meeting with a student. I knew that there was money coming from Emily's supporting church, but because of the international transfers and stuff, I hadn't received it yet. So I drove into the city to meet the student with the $20 I had left and the bit of spare change I set aside for parking (city parking costs $3/hour for the first two hours, then $6/hour for every hour after -- Auckland is expensive). I had a bit of trouble finding the cafe where I was supposed to meet the student and was running a few minutes late. I knew he only had a short lunch break, so I was getting a bit flustered when I finally found him. Before I fully comprehended what I was doing, I had offered to shout him lunch.

Right as the words came out of my mouth, I found myself thinking, "Are you out of your mind?? This is your last $20 for a little while. Sure, your fridge is stocked and your gas tank is full at the moment, but who knows how long it will take before the money finally gets through."

But then I remembered the words one of my former youth leaders from my church in Singapore used to say when he took us out for lunch after worship team practise and would shout our drinks.

"Consider this an investment into the next generation."

Ok. Alright. Besides, it was too late to take the words back now.

Thankfully, that last $20 was just enough to pay for both our lunches. As we wrapped up the meeting, the student thanked me for lunch and said, "Honestly, I was only planning to get a drink when we met because I didn't really have the money for a meal." But this is your lunch break, right? "Yeah, but I don't always eat lunch."

Well, everything we have belongs in the Kingdom anyway. I was glad my last $20 paid for both our lunches.


Which was why when I opened the card from Emily and found another $20 note in it, I had to fight back the tears. You see, Emily is fundraising herself. She lives in the basement of the pastors' home on Pine Ridge reservation (together with all the workcampers that come in for workcamp season) while raising funds for her home and the community building to be built on the reservation. And yet, not only did she take the time to send the beautiful card, but she also gave that $20 note that was to be my reminder that God had promised to provide. And Emily has reminded me time and again that as long as we are being faithful to our call to being missionaries, it is ok to rely on the financial gifts from others. In fact, she wrote this beautiful piece on fundraising.


And so tonight, I just would like to say a big thank you to the beautiful people who have given the gifts that allow me to keep on giving.
To the good people at Germantown First Church of God, thank you.
To the good people who have offered me a place to stay while we wait for funds to trickle in, thank you.
To the good people at the national Church of God in New Zealand who purchased the vehicle for the ministry, thank you.
To the good people with gifts big and small over the last three years, thank you.
To the good people with your $20 notes, thank you.

You are beautiful, beautiful people.
Thank you. With all my heart.

Arohanui

Aotearoa Diaries: "Ministry Planting"

These days, when people ask me what it is I do, I don't really know what to say.

I'm a pastor... Sort of. Not in the traditional clergy-collar with a parish sense, but I do the vocational ministry and pastoral care thing.

I'm a church-planter... But not really. I'm not exactly planting a church, but I am starting a ministry, just not a traditional church. Brett says it belongs in the "Fresh Expressions" category. Ok...


Let me backtrack a little bit.

About a year ago, several things came into play that drastically shook my belief that I was called to ministry. Never mind that years of good ol' AUSOT teaching and my own slightly feminist mother had convinced me otherwise. All it took was the outcome of a church-planting personality test that said I didn't have the right personality to be a key person to lead or plant a ministry, and everything crumbled.

The trouble was, I kept pushing forward pretending that personality test didn't sting.
The trouble was, I kept pushing forward trying to prove them wrong.
The trouble was this ugly fuzz ball that in grief counselling terms, we call "compounding grief" (not dealing with one aspect of grief and allowing it to snowball into something much bigger).

The trouble was all the signs still said it wasn't time for me to quit ministry, even though I came so close to throwing in the towel so many times (after all, if even the personality tests said I didn't have what it takes, why do I even bother?) and my mental health was at stake.
The trouble was, in pretending it didn't sting, I ended up screwing up more.

And so I forced myself to think like my friends with the right personalities for church planting would.
I forced myself to come up with business plans, programmes and solutions -- not so much to generate numbers or results, but to at least be able to pull off the pretence that there are things happening.

And you know what happened?
Nothing.

Nothing great, but also nothing terrible.
Just... Nothing.

And then it suddenly occurred to me I was hurting because of that personality test.
And then it suddenly occurred to me I needed to make peace with that personality test.
And then it suddenly occurred to me I needed to stop trying to prove the personality test wrong.

Because while I may not have the right personality traits to pass that church-planting personality test, the truth is, I never believed in having all the right answers anyway (that's a story for another time).
Because while I may not have the right answers to pass that personality test, I have this strange, twisted, whimsical life story that is real and relevant to the ones I'm called to pastor in this season.
Because while I may have proved the personality test right in not gaining any results, I quickly learnt that there is no tried-and-true template for what this ministry plant is going to look like anyway.

Because ultimately, my core value in ministry (and thank you to Kara, Janice, and several others who have been constantly reminding me of this) has always been about relationships.

And that's what makes me good at what I do.
And that's what makes me called to ministry--believing in relationships and the power of agape love to carry us all through life.

So honestly, I don't really have a clue what this student ministry is going to look like because nothing has gone as I thought it would.
But I have some pretty incredible students teaching me a lot about life. And even if we never achieve any of the lofty goals I had envisioned, I really would be at peace knowing I get to walk with some incredible people on their journey with life meets faith.


So personality tests and your results, and that fuzz ball of compounding grief, you can pack your sorry little bags and say goodbye. We're done here.

Because whatever title you choose to call this thing I'm doing, so be it.

Because I am called to ministry.
And I am choosing to remain in ministry.

Game on.

Aotearoa Diaries: When I'm 64

Lately, reality has been starting to sink in that I'm heading towards the end of my twenties (granted there's still about twenty-ish months). One of the things that has hit together with that reality check is the thought that I don't want to get to my thirties and regret not having done things that later in life I can look back and say, "Back when I was young and stupid..."

Oh, don't get me wrong. I've done lots of young and stupid things, but nothing significantly memorable. And I don't mean that I've hit quarter-/mid-life crisis and want to go get a motorbike license or dye my hair purple. But I do sort of mean that I do want to go get a motorbike license and dye my hair purple. After all, Hashtag YOLO, right? (#YOLO - You Only Live Once)

I guess what I mean is... From time to time, I've looked around and wondered what other twenty-somethings are doing, particularly considering that in my last two jobs that spanned most of the last decade, I mostly worked with people who were in completely different life-stages from me. I'm too introverted for the clubbing scene, and care too little about becoming famous to over-achieve at any accolades that the world would care about, and it seemed those were the only things I hear other twenty-somethings do.

Then this past weekend I caught a glimpse of something different.

This past weekend was spent with a number of other young leaders in ministry in the Wesleyan Methodist Church of New Zealand. I learnt that in your twenties, you also...
... live with the #YOLO mantra
... take too many selfies
... begin stepping up more fully into responsibilities
... find things you're passionate about and pursue them in spite of obstacles and those trying to convince you you won't succeed
... laugh a lot
... don't take life too seriously
... can take God seriously without having a middle-aged outlook on life

I guess, perhaps, coming out of my season of burnout and depression, it has been a tremendously refreshing weekend finding out it's ok to want to live a life where I can one day look back and say, "back when I was young and stupid..."
That it's ok to "waste time" taking too many photos and creating memories with people you may only cross paths with about once a year.
That it's ok to want to live a carefree life that doesn't involve kids, a life-partner, or the search for one.

And maybe all I can say at the end of my twenties is that I was young and stupid to realise too late that there were ways to be young and stupid without also being irresponsible to my vocation. But at least, I have about twenty-ish months to make up for that. That's not too late, I reckon.

Aotearoa Diaries: Cultural Identity

We've officially hit a lull with the ministry of The Bridge.

It is almost the end of May, and we're not quite where I thought we would be by now. Instead of already moving and settling into the ministry house and getting things up and running, I am currently house-sitting for one of the couples who attend one of the Wesleyan Methodist churches. They return at the end of June, and have family coming in July. Which means I have approximately five weeks to figure out where I'm moving to next, since we still don't have a master-plan for the finances for the ministry house. I've been in New Zealand for less than three years and have already lived in eight different homes. What's another one gonna hurt, right?

During one of our brainstorming conversations, Kara suggested I got in touch with the folks at TSCF (Tertiary Students Christian Fellowship). And so this afternoon, I met with Andy, the Auckland Regional Team Leader.

Our conversation went something like that:

Andy: Thanks for making the time and getting in touch. So, tell me about The Bridge.
Me: Well, we're still in the very beginning stages, but we're hoping to establish sort of a hub and resource center type of a community house for students. We're not particular about what church they eventually connect with, but we simply hope they will eventually become connected with a church community.
Andy: Now, where are you from?

Me: [awkward pause]

Andy: I guess I mean, where all do you claim to be from?
Me: Well, that's kind of a loaded question...

After I explained my all-over-the-place-ness, he didn't even flinch and just went on with the conversation. It hit me all over again that my "all-over-the-place-ness" isn't unique in Auckland. To quote Andy, "Almost every person in Auckland can trace back to having chosen to move here from some place else; it's just a matter of how many generations have been here before them."

Perhaps that's why I've been struggling with trying to find a way to frame the ministry of The Bridge. Yes, our focus is on international students in Auckland, but what does the term "international student" even mean? Andy shared an example of one of the student councils he worked with that had student representatives from the "Kiwi" and the "International" community. The "Kiwi" representative was born in Nepal, but is of European descent, whose parents were missionaries. The "International" representative was a fourth generation Kiwi-Chinese who was born in New Zealand. What do we make of that?

Back when I was an international student in the States, being "international" was much easier to define. I simply wasn't born and raised in the US, and I was treated differently. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't treated inferiorly, I was just treated *differently* with the understanding my worldview is most likely different from the majority. Here in Auckland, everyone's worldview differs on varying degrees, and one can never make assumptions of what cultural roots another may identify with.

At the university age, these dynamics come out to play a lot more. Standing on the fringe of adulthood, one makes decisions, whether consciously or not, about the cultural roots they may claim. For some cultural groups, not attending Sunday worship with others from their "motherland" meant that one was disowning their cultural heritage--even if they had simply gone to a different congregation with their Kiwi mates from uni. What happens when one of the young adults from one of these cultural groups are sensing that God was calling them to minister to others who were as culturally mixed-up as they were and didn't have the same sense of obligation to the culture of the motherland? Will the church be there to rally around these young adults who often come from a highly community-oriented home-culture to a more individualistic society?

Just some very beginning thoughts on some of the dynamics at play as we continue ministering in this multi-cultural community that is Auckland...

Aotearoa Diaries: Day #1 on Te Atatu Peninsula

Most stories begin with "Once upon a time," but I'm not convinced that there is a point in time when stories begin.

Like for instance, I struggle with writing the beginning of my Aotearoa story.

Did it begin the day I arrived here? Because I remember that day...

It was 10 September 2011, the day after the opening ceremonies of the rugby world cup that Aotearoa was hosting. I had booked my flight less than a week before I flew (that's another story for another time), so it looked suspicious to the immigration officer. Add that to the fact that under occupation I had listed "religious worker" (that's when I learnt "pastor" goes down a lot better with immigration)...

It was a great welcome to Aotearoa, even with the extended immigration process I had to go through because of how suspicious my papers looked. Having gone through immigration in a few other places (that shall remain unnamed *ahem*), I was prepared to be interrogated like a criminal until I could prove myself innocent. Instead, the immigration officer apologised that he had to ask additional questions only because it was part of the process.

Talk about culture shock. I was starting to fall in love with Aotearoa.

On the other side of immigration, Chad Davenport, Doug, Danette and Allison Beisley, and Steve Ringelspaugh were there with leis in hand to welcome my arrival. They would quickly grow to become family in the months to come.

But my most vivid memory was of my arrival at Stefan and Kathrin Marks' home. I had never met them in person, and had only had a very brief conversation with Kathrin via Skype for my interview (through which the only thing I established was that 1) she hated me, then 2) wait, she's German, so she's just very direct, then 3) she's just doing her job in the interview). But they welcomed me into their home and almost immediately became big brother and sister to me.

I remember going out for a walk later that day where Stefan introduced me to all the various birds and greenery we spotted along the boardwalk close to their place. You know how they say every country has a distinct smell? I don't know if it's true for everyone, but Aotearoa's lush greenery has definitely become its distinct smell for me.

Not too far down that boardwalk, I caught a view of the city skyline and the body of water that separated us. It took my breath away in that even though I was still finding it hard to believe I had made it to Aotearoa, I was home.

We rounded up that evening having a meal together with the Beisleys and Felicity. Now, this is why I have a problem with knowing where my Aotearoa story truly begins, because it all started with the Beisleys back in 2008. But that's another story for another time...

Aotearoa Diaries: An Introduction

I don't by any means consider myself a great writer, but I believe there is something sacred and precious about stories.

When I was last in Singapore a little over a month ago, I had the opportunity to invite the good people of the congregation I grew up in into the story I've been creating on this little corner south of the equator called the Land of the Long White Cloud, Aotearoa New Zealand. One of the "aunties" who watched me grow up in that church said to me afterwards, "It's so nice to hear about what you're doing in New Zealand. I guess we all knew you were there, but we didn't really know what you were doing."

Which made me re-evaluate what I had been doing with storytelling. My excuse for the lack of stories had been that my first two years in Aotearoa had been "dark and twisted" (to borrow the words of Meredith Grey). The reality was more that I had given my storyboard away to everyone else to fill while I sat in the corner and sulked like I was completely helpless. And perhaps the longer I dwelt in that corner, the more helpless I felt even though the easier thing would have been to reclaim my storyboard and fill it with my own stories.

So this new series, Aotearoa Diaries, is intended to be just that: the reclamation of my storyboard, and the invitation into the story I'm creating here in the Land of the Long White Cloud. I'm not sure where these stories will go, or how much of the last two years I will write about, but I need to write these stories again. If not for anyone else, but for myself, to believe again in the sacredness and preciousness of story.