back from assessment

My trip to Skycroft was a good one. It was exhausting and complicated but good. In the end I didn't receive funding. This was not unexpected. Basically they told me that I was very gifted for a 24 year old coming out of seminary, but that I needed more life experience and church experience before I could be considered a good church planter candidate.

And that is ok with me. My gifting fits better with a pastoral role, so they tell me, and that is the situation I will be entering into in June. The church planters assessment judges how well you would do with dropping into a city, casting a vision for a church, gathering people together and passing that vision off to them. I don't know if I really want to do that anyway. I have always worked in teams my entire life. I don't want to try to start a church alone. And the hard work of planting the church at Horizon has already been done by Dave and Clay. My job is not to plant as much as to help develop the church and vision toward health and growth. It seems to me this fits better with my gifting and personality at the moment anyway.

But in the end, I learned some about myself, my past experiences with God and my desires. The past few days have helped to remind me what my strengths and weaknesses are. They have also affirmed various personality traits and gifts within me. Plus, being told that I wouldn't make a great church planter helps to motivate me to be excellent at what I will do at Horizon.

Father, help me to finish well here at school and continue to prepare me for the exciting journey ahead.