After many hours of talking about it all we decided that no matter where we ended up that we are a square peg for a round hole.
For all the years of experience, all the education and philosophies of ministries we have come to the conclusion that we will never fit perfectly in any church, camp or ministry. We have very high expectations when it comes to doing God's work.
By no means do we think that we are perfect or that every ministry is doing it wrong. What we do see is that many churches and camps have a fundamental biblical flaw of choosing manly ways of ministry instead of Godly ways of ministry and that is the change we desire to bring to the world.
Something that I have discovered about my husband is that has the gift of understanding what children and youth desire most, what they need and how to meet both of those things in practical ways. I have never seen someone create such fast relationships with kids he sees for only a few hours a week or after spending a day with him how attached they become to him. It is truly a God given gift of love and understanding.
The desire we share is to build relationships in order to bring people closer to God. We are not big into traditional programming or extravagant shows to draw people in, we don't care about how many people come through the door. We care about quality services, time spent together building up the church and preparing youth to take their place in leadership and teaching those younger than them and in the future.
This seems to be the hardest thing to bring into practice in ministries because someone said that getting numbers in the door at any cost was the best and only way to measure success. That building relationships, teaching good biblical life-style and raising up the next generation to take over the leadership was secondary to bodies in the chairs and flashy modern programming. This makes us a square peg that seems to never fit into a round hole.
