Why I Suck As A Person : Part 4

Ashley and I started attending the church and found that we knew the youth pastor and his wife. Seeing them helped distract us from the guy leading the worship on stage with his extremely loud, rainbow shirt on. I will never forget the first Sunday because of that shirt! Everyone was very friendly and nice.

I became very involved with the youth ministry. Helping out in any way I could. I LOVED IT! I loved everything about it. So when my friend the Youth Pastor was going to be moving on to a new church (more money, bigger budget), I wanted his job. Years before I left paid ministry swearing that I would never go back, only to find out that I needed to stop swearing.

So after a couple of interviews and burritos at Chipotle, I was hired as the new Youth Pastor.

I was so excited about starting this new adventure in ministry. I was still young and very eager to learn. Since the old youth pastor and lead pastor had difficulties communicating, I requested weekly meetings. The first meeting was not exactly what I expected. I was told that I should not have gotten the job and that I was under qualified. Wow. Maybe I was under qualified. But who is qualified? Jesus chose some pretty unqualified people to represent him! Okay, okay. I digress. It just did not seem like the right or needed motivation that was necessary for our first meeting. He did give some advice though. He told me that if he taught the former youth pastor anything, it was this: “Always have some thing to write with.” Wow. Enough said.

We had our weekly meetings every week for at least the first month. Then as if almost orchestrated, our weekly meeting started to dwindle away. The pastor always had something else he had to do. I stressed how important it was for me to meet with him. He agreed but rarely followed through. We did have our yearly performance review meetings though. I learned quickly, knowing exactly what he wanted to hear … NUMBERS = SUCCESS.

It was hard for me not being able to meet with the pastor as often as I wanted to, so I confided in a volunteer. This volunteer would listen to me for hours. He would give me new, creative ideas and help build and critique my own. I loved our freindship. He owned his own business and worked out of the church office because he did TONS of free work for the church. So he was easy to bother and talk to over coffee.

A couple years later, that volunteer joined the pastoral staff full-time at the church. Maybe business was slow; maybe it truly was a calling from God. It isn’t mine to judge. I do know one thing; the church ruined their very best volunteer. Now that he was a “pastor”, our relationship totally changed. Our conversations changed. Everything seemed so fake and newly fabricated. It was like he was a different person.

I started to feel like I was catching a glimpse of Tyler Durden in my own Fight Club movie. It was as if I was starting to fade in and out of a new personality, a new Josh. I began to see the guy behind the curtain and notice the pink elephant in the room.

Things in the church started to become a little … stupid.

To be continued …

Why I Suck As A Person : Part 3

So I went back to training a new man. Married. No one in my platoon really believed it. Hell, neither did I. The first few days back into training felt like months. Weeks felt like years. I was miserable.

I would go to a church service every Sunday because doing so meant I could get out of the barracks. Actually, I went to multiple church services on Sundays. The first service was Protestant then the next was Methodist and lastly, Episcopalian. Sundays quickly became my day away from the stress I was in. I would sneak out of the church services with other guys from my platoon to go use the telephones. I would sneak in as many calls to Ashley as I could. I almost got caught so many times! If I was not able to call Ashley on a Sunday, I would just call her from the showers in the barracks with the cell phone I snuck back into training.

You know you are depressed when you tear up while singing, “Friends are friends forever if the Lord’s the Lord of them…” just like Michael W. Smith. They would sing that song every Sunday at the Protestant church. I gave in, my eyes swelled and I cried like a little girl. I held hands with my “battle buddies” next to me and we all swayed back and forth in unison.

One day we were scheduled for a twenty-five mile road march. No one was looking forward to it. Twenty-five miles with full gear; we would be walking from early morning until late at night. It was horrible! Many people twisted the ankles and everyone had swollen feet afterwards. I have only seen my feet swell up like that twice in my life. Once after the road march and the other time was when I was younger and stepped on a bee barefoot (I am allergic to bees and it looked like I had a blow-up foot). Oh yea, did I tell you I have flat feet? So my feet really hurt. Poor me. My Drill Sergeant sent me to sick call to have my feet looked at by a doctor. After multiple trips to a “foot specialist”, physical therapy and back to the doctor, they gave me an open ended offer to go home. If I wanted to stay I could. If I wanted to leave the army after only five months, it would be okay.

I took it. A Medical Discharge for flat feet. My recruiter would be proud.

Sure I looked like a quitter. I didn’t care what it looked like. I wanted to be home to Ashley. The Army served its purpose is my life. It showed me what I truly held dear. My new life was about to begin back home in Southern California. As I waited for my paperwork to go through so I could go home (three and a half weeks pent up in a room), I realized what I needed to do when I got back home. It was like I had a revelation that struck me hard as I sat on my bunk reading, “What To Do After The Army”. God wanted me back in ministry. He wanted me to go and “Fight the Good Fight”.

When I got home the first thing I had to do was get a job. I worked a couple odd jobs to help pay some bills. I finally landed a sales job selling booze to grocery stores. Nine months into that job I was ready to give birth to my new life in ministry. Ashley and I found a church we believed would fit us well. With the Senior Pastor mooning me within the first month of me knowing him, I knew this was going to be the place for us.

To be continued …