Tomorrow I get the privilege of traveling home to visit with my family in Utah for 2 weeks. My girls love this trip because they not only get to see their grandparents but they get time with their aunts, uncle and cousins. My girls have discovered that extended family is a wonderful thing. I am excited to see my family but I am also excited for the change in perspective this trip always gives me.
I have lived more of my adult life in the Bible belt then I have lived in Utah, but I am amazed at how the years I lived in Utah have had a greater impact on my walk with Christ than any of the years in the Bible belt. I attended college in Texas and Oklahoma and then in 2001 I moved to TN where I still live with my amazing family. Now, please hear me when I say that I do love living in the south and know my family will remain in the south. Craig and I eventually want to push further south to South Carolina. However, no matter how long I live in the south there will always be a struggle for me in my Christian walk.
I knew when I left for college that moving south would mean not only more Christian churches but "big" churches and I was so excited. I was tired of attending a small church with limited activities and where everybody truly knew everything about everybody...or so it felt. As I have grown into an adult and now a parent there are things about ministry you find in the west I so desperately miss. I miss the sense of urgency and the creativity that ministry requires. I grew up driving 30+ minutes to get to my church and here I am spoiled to live 7 minutes from my current church and have numerous choices even closer. Here if I wanted my girls could attend a VBS almost every week during the summer because so many are offered and yet in Utah depending where you live there are only a small handful available. Most churches out west would not know what to do with the 300+ children my church had at VBS and they will celebrate the 25+ they may have.
My heart for ministry was born through mission trips through out Utah, Idaho and the Montana Bitter Root Valley. I traveled with a group out of Mississippi and we would help small churches hold VBS and would sometimes have a revival at the same time. Some of these churches were lucky if they could purchase the Sunday School Material they needed, the buildings would have 5 to 6 classrooms for the entire church and they could not find many volunteers because there just were not many. It was through these trips I learned how to truly be the hands and feet of Christ. I learned how to share the love of Jesus with people who really knew nothing about the Bible but came because there was an event in the city park. These were places where some people traveled a distance to get to the 1 or 2 Christian churches in the entire town.
I have learned that in the south it is really easy for me to develop a "Country Club" attitude when it comes to church and ministry. It is easy for me to just expect my church to provide these ministries each week...why well because that is what they are supposed to do. That is why we have all the staff members we have, that is why we have the giant building we have, that is why we have all the resources we have...isn't it?
This summer my Pastor did something that I struggled with at first. He was discontinuing our Sunday night services in the summer for our members to go out in their community and be intentional to minister in their homes on those evenings. The ministry side of my heart loved this, but the selfish side did not like not being able to attend church with Craig at night since he works on shift during the day. As my trip home has approached I have started to wonder if I have begun to develop a "country club" mentality where I am paying too much attention to what my church can do for me, instead of what I can do with my church to further the gospel.
I am looking forward to attending church for 2 weeks in a small Utah church. It won't be big like TN standards and it won't be fancy either but I do know it will be filled with people who desperately want to grow in their walk with Christ and want to minister to the many dying people who are living all around them. It is time for a change of perspective. My prayer is that through this trip the Lord would speak to my heart, hone my focus and most of all reignite a sense of urgency for the gospel that I just don't feel here in TN. I don't want to be comfortable in my walk with the Lord, I want to be driven, challenged and motivated to step out and strive to really make a daily difference for the Lord in all I say and do. I am excited to share with you on this journey and I continue to get off the freeway of live and learn to truly live off the beaten path.
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