The Deep Dark Drawers

Several months ago, as we were preparing for our move, we had to spend some time looking in places that we had not looked for a long time to make sure we had cleaned and gathered all our belongings. As part of that process, I went into a deep cleaning mode in the kitchen. Specifically, I spent a long time in the fridge to get it all cleaned out. The fridge is going to be my metaphor for my heart. As I was cleaning and pulling out all the shelves to wipe out all the grime from under them, I came to the back of a drawer where, to my utter surprise, there was a bag of vegetables that had been in there for well over a year. Out of curiosity I opened the bag and what flew out at my face and nose was the most disgusting thing I’ve experienced in a long time. First, I was hit with the smell – the most putrid, awful, soul piercing smell that I can ever remember. I was then hit, literally in the face, by a swarm of flies saturated with the rotten fruit. Then I saw it. For the first few seconds of my discovery, I was kind of overwhelmed by the other senses of smell and touch that I had not yet actually seen what the bag was showing me. I am generally not a squeamish person, and I would not consider myself to have a “weak stomach.” This was all about to change. I had just beheld with my eyes the most disgusting thing that I had probably ever seen. Inside this bag was a mix of what used to be edible vegetables. They were half liquid now, all covered with the most interesting kinds of mold I’ve ever seen. The worst part, however, was that now mixed in with the rotting food, was more maggots than I had ever seen or even knew existed on this planet. Then it happened. The bag broke and the entire contents spilled out onto the floor. Well that was it, my stomach could take no more. Thankfully I was right next to a trash can which served my stomach well. But the saga was far from over. See I now had the same problem, the rotten food and maggots were still there. But now they were spread out all over my floor and needed cleaning up.

I have been following God’s call on my life to be a pastor for 23 years now. That journey has been long and arduous. God has continued to reveal the areas that I am glaringly without him. A year ago, when it became increasingly apparent that God was going to be finally bringing my dreams of pastoral ministry to reality, I began seriously looking inward and exploring parts of myself that I had not looked at for years. I took this new responsibility very seriously and spent lots of time asking God to keep showing me all the deep parts of my heart that needed to be confessed and dealt with. 

Laying out your heart before God and finally giving all that up to him was the first step. What followed were some of the hardest times of my life internally. As I lay myself on the altar of introspection and fault recognition, God’s knife of cutting it out began to go to work. Some things were just surface and took no real “pain” to fix. Unfortunately, that is not true for all of it. Just like I opened that drawer and looked in for the first time in years. God was doing the same thing in my heart. And it was painful. I was confronted with the maggots and rotten food of my own sin that had been sitting away in a deep dark corner.

I think all of us have gotten good at “confessing our sins” and easily pointing out the times this week we did not read our Bible or gossiped about someone. But what we have not done well at is opening the drawers where we shoved things away years ago. I’m not even talking about what we would consider a “pet sin” or something that we know is wrong but we keep doing and keep confessing it over and over. I’m getting deeper than that. I’m talking about things that you might not even be engaging in currently or for a very very long time. Things that maybe are so far in the past that when you have your confession time, they aren’t even in your mind because you shoved them away in a drawer.

I love the picture of the rotten fruit because it perfectly paints what happens to us. You see God is a righteous, true, and just God. He is the one and only true standard to live by, and He is the one we need to be right before. At some point that drawer is going to be opened again. One day you are going to have to open that drawer where you shoved that sin away so long ago. You are going to have to clean it up. Don’t let that rotten sin sit in the drawer for years and years while the maggots grow. You see you can decorate the outside of the fridge with art and pictures of a perfect life. You can even spend time weekly cleaning out the old food so that when others come over and open it up it looks all pretty.

What do I mean by that? Well, it’s simple. We play the part of true Christian and play the “vulnerable” card by sharing some of our shortcomings in our small groups at church or with our close friends. We feel like we are doing our good deeds by confessing the things that are sitting in our fridge for too long, but not really digging deep into the forgotten drawers. We have learned to walk the walk but I believe it’s time to take the next step.

As God has continued to work on me and reveal the deep dark drawers, I have become more and more aware just how easy it is to forget where you place those sins. For me the hardest part was realizing that taking that sin out of the dark drawer was not relinquishing my standing with Christ, but was the completion of His work for me. I have had this flawed mentality that if I take it out of the drawer then I have to be the one to “fix it.” But the reality that I kept ignoring is that Christ already fixed it over 2000 years ago when he shed his life’s blood for my sins. By my taking that sin out and cleaning out the drawers, I am completing my daily restoration by taking into full account what He did for me.

This is definitely a journey and a difficult process as you face old sins and scars, but it is not in vain. This is a beautiful picture of Christ’s love for us as He has already covered that sin and presented us as beautiful before the father. As I begin to go through the drawers and kill the maggots and clean up the residue and add in some air freshener, I am so deeply moved by the Spirit and His comfort of me. It’s a difficult and painful process to lay yourself open but there is no better opportunity for me to be filled with the Spirit than when I am depleted of my sin. Now there is more room for Jesus in my life by cleaning out the drawers.

Jesus help me to continue the process of cleaning out the deep dark drawers. Give me more understanding of where those places are and fill those voids with your gospel and grace. Thank you for your transforming power that finished the work on the cross and continues to restore this broken vessel to yourself.

The Blind to See?

Many times through my journey as a Christian I have heard the analogy about my salvation that I was a blind man who could see. Many times I heard people say that when you get saved its like someone turns the lights on. And while I understand the premise of this picture, I think we are greatly missing something. 

Look at Isaiah 64:7-8 “There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities. But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.“

Notice that there are 3 very distinct things that we cannot do, followed by what God is actively doing. First, we read that we cannot call on His name. as we were so dead and unable to move or do anything spiritually, we absolutely cannot even open our mouths to speak and call unto him. Furthermore, we were so dead that even if we could call, we would not know who to call out to or what to say.

The second thing we cannot do is to rouse ourselves. As someone who is dead, I could not lift myself up. I needed life breathed into me so that I might move. I, being dead, was stuck in the eternal state of immobility and silence.

Lastly, not only could I not call, and not rouse myself, but I cannot take hold. Even if I was able to rise up myself and call out, I still would not be able to take hold of Christ. Each one of these 3 things could be written about extensively. My few sentences here do not do anywhere near the justice that it deserves. The part I want to focus on is the next part about what God actively is doing or not doing. 

This is where the blind man picture comes into play. If we stop after these 3 things we cannot do, then this is what the blind man analogy would be. I was blind but now I see. I was dead but now I rise and walk. I was mute but now I and speak. BUT!!! Although I have sight now, only to be mortified to find out that there is no such thing as light. See the blind man analogy is incomplete because “you have hidden your face from us.” The seeing is only one part. Once we can see, there must be something to behold. Imagine being blind your whole life then you miraculously gain your sight one day. Then you are devastated to realize that there really is nothing to see. Light does not exist therefore your ability to see is completely meaningless. Just because we can see does not grant us the salvation and ability to see Jesus. He must also reveal Himself to us. What does this all mean?

Here is the point. Jesus is the author of every single part of my salvation. He completed it all. He gave me life, raised me up. He gave me a voice to speak and the understanding to not just speak and utter random sounds, he gave me words. Then he didn’t let me be the one to have to grab onto him, he took hold of me. And finally, in all of that, he still was the one who was holding the final card, the vision of himself. See not only have I been given sight, but I have the most beautiful thing to behold. I was not given sight only to be put on a planet where light does not exist therefore making the vision pointless. I was given sight and then the vision of my glorious Savior to go along with that. 

I am praising Jesus for the miraculous working of my salvation in and around every single little detail. So no, my salvation is not the light being turned on and a blind man seeing. It is everything that happens after. It’s a sight that I so badly want others to behold as well. So my prayer is that I would continue to be the face of Christ in the dark world. I may not be able to turn the light on for someone, and I definitely cannot be the one who reveals Christ’s face – only He can make that happen. I can, however, show what Christ has done for me. I can speak and live in a way that shows everyone around who Jesus is to me.

God is ahead of the curve… always.

Well moving day is coming, we pick up our Uhaul truck tomorrow afternoon, and begin packing up. We will be leaving our house Thursday afternoon/evening. As I stare at a living room full of furniture and boxes, I have so many thoughts running through my head. I think back at the 3.5 years of ministry that we have engaged in, and part of me feels sadness that it is coming to an end. Then I look around at the ministry that we have been a part of and my heart is even more sad to see the status of the Children’s Village. A couple months ago I was struggling with God moving us from here at this time. This whole journey has been such a leap of faith. When we set out to pursue this position at ARCC, we did so trying to find where God was leading us, and not because we were trying to leave our current place of ministry. That is an important distinction to make. We made a decision to pursue leaving upon God’s leading. Then once we stepped out, God has clearly shown us over and over and over, how he was ahead of us the whole time. I do not exaggerate when I tell you that it was literally within hours of me beginning the process with ARCC that God began showing us why our time here at CCCV was needing to come to a close. Now since that time, there have been so many countless things that have occurred and decisions being made and people put into positions that we see exactly what God was doing with us this whole time.

So as I sit here with a sad soul, I reflect on all the lives we have touched and the transformation that has taken place in me, and I do so with the utmost respect for God’s process. I could not be more thankful for the 3.5 years that my family and I have spent here at CCCV. I also could not be more thankful that God saw the future ahead of us and, as always, was ahead of the curve. Without God’s prompting, I would not have begun my process of searching for the fulfillment of His calling on my life at this time. Without His prompting, we would be sitting here today staring into the abyss of uncertainty that would be surrounding our world we have known for 3.5 years.

I have worked hard my whole life to not speak ill of people and ministries that are trying to further God’s work. This does not mean, however, that we ignore issues and act like perfection exists. I walked away from the IFB world 10 years ago, but have made a point to learn from what I experienced, and not speak down about them. I also am not shy about learning where I believe they were wrong and using that as a guide in my own life. I feel similar about CCCV. As we leave here, I want to be careful so as to not hurt a ministry, but learn from the inferior way in which that ministry is being conducted. I pray nothing but success over this place and I hope that God will change all leadership to people who can manage the CCCV to that success. The need for parenting at risk youth in a spiritual environment has never been greater. The work that CCCV is attempting to do is powerful and meaningful. I pray God’s blessing over much needed structure and personnel changes that will see the CCCV be once again the thriving, spiritual community of families who are serving children and making Christ known.

As we embark on this next incredible part of our journey, I cannot be more excited about what God has in store for my family. Its hard to believe that in just a few days we will be calling Ellijay, GA our new home. Wow! That just sounds so amazing to hear and write. God has already knit my heart to the people of ARCC and we are beyond thrilled to jump in and serve Jesus for the work of the kingdom.

As you read this, please remember that God is always ahead of the curves in you life. He sees around the bend. Just be mindful to listen to him when He speaks and leads. 

Becoming a Holistic Christian

As the prospect of my becoming a pastor became more and more real over the last several months, I started to look for some things I could begin doing to simply better myself. First was spiritually, there were several things I put in place in my life to keep up spiritual guards. But this post I want to speak to some of the extra-spiritual things and show how they influenced my life in a spiritual way. I believe to be a holistic Christian we need to focus on the mind, body, and spirit. I’m going to speak today about the mind and body portion.

I always loved sports and played team sports in HS. I attended a tiny Christian school which meant we never won because we barely had enough to make the teams lol. I was decent at the sports and I loved playing. I am pretty athletic and while I never would be the best player at anything, I was able to be a fairly decent player at most things I did. After college, I was looking for something else to do, athletically, and I was introduced to mountain biking by a good friend. This quickly led to me finding out about a local triathlon happening in downtown Greenville, so I signed up and fell in love with the sport. This was 7 years ago, and I have been pretty committed ever since. I realized quickly that my keeping up my exercise and keeping my body healthy was integral to the betterment of my holistic Christianity. The last year has been a struggle with staying fit in the midst of pretty insane things going on at the cottage and the lack of races to prepare for during the pandemic. I knew what being fully fit and healthy meant to me though, so I got back on the horse so to speak and have been making great strides to get back into shape which for me means “Ironman shape.”

The next thing I knew I needed to focus on was my mind. Having spent years dealing with youth and some adults who have struggled with mental illness, I knew what a blessing it was to have a “normal” functioning brain. I wanted to do everything I could to keep it that way so I began looking for some outlets to keep my mind healthy. 

First I wanted to start writing and journaling on some kind of regular basis but I had no idea where to really start. Then I found the Mindjournal. It is a journaling diary that was designed by a guy, specifically for guys to get them into the process of writing. It takes you through 30 guided exercises each one with a “check in” page to just get you started. I quickly began gobbling up the exercises and started to really dive into my inner self and explore. Yeah, I know that’s pretty scary lol.

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The Mindjournal and a sneak peak into what the inside looks like

The next thing I knew I needed to do better was some kind of daily planner. I didn’t want the standard kind of schedule planner. I wanted something more, but I couldn’t find it. Then I came across the perfect one – the Monk Manual. And no, first off it is not telling you how to be a monk. The name comes from the creator when he learned how monks are very productive through not just organizing and “doing” but through “being” first and then “doing.” I won’t get into the details of the planner – you can read all about it on your own – but it has truly been life changing. Each month, week, and year, you plan out ahead, then reflect at the end of each one. You focus on relationships with others as well as your relationship with God. There is also a place to track daily habits and significant events and priorities. The MM (Monk Manual) also provides a free life and yearly assessment that you work on by yourself and see where you are and where you want to get to. I’m telling you I cannot emphasize enough how impactful these 2 resources have been to me over the last few months. I know they will only continue to improve who I am as a follower of Christ and as a husband, father, and pastor.

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From left to right: Month View, Week View, Day View

These 2 things, along with my rejuvenated approach to my fitness, have made a massive impact on my holistic Christian person. I am grateful to the Lord for bringing these resources across my path, and I can highly recommend both of these 2 things. I do want to emphasize that if you decide to give the MM a try, you need to throw yourself into the whole thing. It is a whole lifestyle that is rooted in a being first approach to your life. So if you want to do it, I highly suggest taking the few hours at the beginning and going through the “you are here” assessment. The MM monthly, weekly, and daily planner is phenomenal but what makes it that are the tools surrounding it that the MM team have put in place.

Below I am adding links to the Mindjournal and the Monk Manual, as well as the “You Are Here Assessment.” The assessment can be found for free on the MM website as well. Please check out these great resources.

Check Out The Mindjournal

Check Out The Monk Manual

You Are Here GuideDownload

Shepherding, discipleship and how I changed to get here

I began my life as sort of an odd introvert. I spent the first 20 years or so being completely content by myself and not really interacting much with others. Now let me also say that I really enjoyed people and I thoroughly appreciated good conversation, but that was learned from 2 amazing young men. As a teenager entering HS I ended up with 2 amazing friends who were already in college. These 2 young men, Corey and Jeremy, were integral to shaping me into who I am today. I do not know why these 2 college kids decided to befriend and take in a dorky, odd little 8th grader (at the time when our friendship first began) but that truly speaks to the depth of their character. Over the next 6 years I became fast, lifelong friends with these guys. As a teenager, my time with them opened my eyes to the whole world through Biblical lenses. I also learned how to interact and speak to adults.

I have 2 amazing parents who put so much time and effort into my upbringing, but part of that effort was making sure their family was in a church with people of like mind who would be able to come alongside them to help raise their kids. The time with Corey and Jeremy was the start of my learning what it meant to truly love people and have a mindset that was loving people first because of the passion derived from following Christ. This was all a foundation, but I still had a long way to go on this journey.

I believe that God was preparing me for my upcoming role since birth by putting me into the perfect parental situation. As I have gotten older, I have become fascinated the more I learn about my parents, their personalities, thought processing, and how that comes out in me. My mom is very people first, outgoing and all-inclusive to any and all she meets, that is her personality. Her thought processing is not always one of pure logic and reasoning, she thinks with more emotion and feeling. My dad is really the complete opposite on both those fronts. He has an engineer’s brain which thinks extremely logical, methodical, and in mostly black and white. He is a people first person, but always from behind the scenes. He is the most selfless person I have ever met and would move mountains to do for others, and not ever have them know or give him any recognition. My dad, though, doesn’t always get the emotional aspect of people, and he is just about a complete introvert by every sense of the word. I got the best of both worlds from them. I have the thought processing, and world view from my dad. I think almost identically to my dad, however that is all through the lens of the personality of my mom. That makes a huge difference because while I think in an almost exclusively logical way, it is through the glasses of emotional connections to people. I have the personality of my mom. I make connections and emotional bonds with people just like she does. But I do this all with the logical brain which allows me to be really good at quickly reading people and situations.

So here I am a 20 something year old kid getting married, graduating college, and starting a family. I have all these pieces of things in myself but have not yet learned how to put them together. I was still learning myself and who I really was. the last piece of that puzzle for me was Diana. When we got married, my personality was still verry much introverted and to myself.  I got quickly drained by being around people. It wasn’t that people annoyed me or I did not like them. I simply did not view it as important to my life to make connections and build relationships.

Over the next few years several things happened to me that would bring all this together. First, I watched Diana go out of her way time and time again to make friends, get to know others, and genuinely invest in the lives of others with no thought of return for herself. And because, as her husband, I was always around with her, I could not help but see her shine so brightly in these situations. Secondly, I did the hard thing, for me, and started to branch out a little bit, go out of my comfort zone, and begin to make connections and build relationships. The third thing that happened is that I spent a massive amount of time learning from every interaction I had with people, and storing that in my mind bank so to speak. This was all part of a huge skill that I developed over a few years – the art of conversation. I could write many posts about that one subject, but it is a skill that I have worked on a substantial amount and take some pride in how God has helped me build that ability. The last major thing that happened to sort of complete my transformation was our move to Thornwell for our first job as houseparents. What was significant about that was that we lived and worked with this big group of people. We saw them every day and were in constant communication with them. We literally lived in this community that was just us. This allowed me to see the depth of relationships that are possible with people you truly connect with. Before, as I was beginning this transformation, I was putting in effort but never really saw how deep you could really connect with others. Its amazing how quickly those deep bonds are formed when you do this ministry. 

Over the last several years I have grown to truly love the work that is building relationships. It’s not easy and you don’t do it because you get something out of it. I do it now, not because it is a chore but because I love it and I’m passionate about it. I am getting ready to take on a leadership role where I will be ministering in a position that I have been in preparation for my whole life. I truly believe that God had me born to Ray and Debbie, influenced by Corey and Jeremy, and finished up with Diana bringing it all together, for the purpose of being fit to lead in shepherding and discipleship at the Autumn Ridge Community Church. It is a role I truly feel completely and specifically called into, but it’s a role that God had to mold and fashion me to be ready for.

Take advantage of every opportunity you can to learn, grow and stretch yourself. God has incredible things planned for us, but sometimes He requires us to morph and change along the way. We are called to be constantly conforming into His image. Remember that you may be the only face of Christ that someone may see, what does His face look like to them?

Pastoral calling and how we ended up where we are

Hey everyone, it sure has been fun to get back to writing a little bit and sharing some of my story. Over the last few weeks I have shared with people about our move as we pursue local church pastoral ministry. Many people did not know that it was a longtime calling for me, but rather saw it as a really great fit for me and where I am in life. While, yes, it is a great fit for where I am in life, it fits because God directly called me and has been equipping me for this task over the last 23 years. Without exception, everyone I have told about my move to ARCC and leading out in the areas of shepherding and discipleship has said something to the effect of “wow Seth, that is the absolute perfect role for you.” What these people do not see are the 23 years of struggle and learning that God has put me through. 

Let me do a quick interjection of my initial call to ministry. When I was in 3rd grade, as a 9 year old little boy, I knew God called me into full-time local church ministry as a pastor. I understand this is a very young age and you may question the validity of this calling. I can tell you though, from that day forward I never had a doubt in my mind what I wanted to do with my life. This calling was continually verified in my own mind, as well as verified my external sources through middle school and high school. 

I made this the day I came home from school when I knew God called me into pastoral church ministry

So yes, right now as I prepare to enter this role, it is the perfect role for me and really fits the gifts that God has given me. But a few years ago that would not have been the case. God has been teaching me and training me my whole life to prepare me for what I’m about to do. About 5 years ago I was going through a really tough time personally. We had left our children’s home in SC and were living with my parents in Stone Mountain. We spent that 3 year period of our lives serving in lay roles in the church that Diana grew up in -Killian Hill Baptist Church. In hindsight this was a crucial time for our family as we grew spiritually and as a family. But in my mind I had left my place of fulltime ministry and was now living with my parents with my family to do a “life reset.” I struggled mightily with the idea that I knew I was still called to fulltime ministry, but was still waiting for that to happen.

Then I had one of the most meaningful phone calls that I have ever had. I was talking to a good friend of mine named Travis. I was weeping and pouring my heart to him talking about how I just wanted to serve the Lord as a pastor and questioning why that was not happening yet. Then he said words that only true friends speak. He told me that if I wasn’t in Church ministry then there were 2 reasons why. #1 you are not in church ministry because the church is not ready for you. Whatever Church God has for you, God has not made them ready yet. And #2 was that if you are not in church ministry, it’s because not just is the church not ready for you, but you are not ready for the church. He went on to tell me that God had a reason for keeping me out of church ministry for the time being because I needed to grow and make sure I was ready myself when the church was ready for me. These words were hard to hear because I didn’t want to view myself as a project but rather as a finished tool that anyone would be lucky to have. This conversation changed my outlook though. As it was hard to hear initially, it led me to taking a much more focused approach to my own spiritual walk and progress. Looking back, its pretty wild to think that when he spoke those words to me and said that the church was not ready for me, ARCC genuinely was not ready because the church did not even exist yet! I am so thankful for Travis’ words that day and how a true friend speaks what God is telling them to. 

The last few years I have made it my priority that when the church was ready for me, I would be ready for the church. God has grown my life in tremendous ways as we have followed His leading on this journey. There were several times where I saw some doors opening and I started through them, only to find out that God was going to close that door. After a few times of that happening, I began to wonder if maybe I misheard God all those years ago. When, after multiple attempts failed, you begin to question everything you have known to be true, God sometimes needs to reassure you that He is really still in control. When we moved into our new role at Chriatian City, we did so with this intention – we decided that while we knew our ultimate calling was still pastoral, church ministry, He was going to have to open that door for us when His time was right.

That is exactly what He did. For 3 years we served faithfully and waited for His leading. We decided that we would not try to pursue anything but just sit tight until He said move. Then 6 months ago we heard that clearly from Him, He just said it was time to go. Honestly I wasn’t quite ready at the time and He had to kind of push me a little bit via Diana and her being in tune with Him as well. So when a good friend of mine sent me a job posting for a church in Ellijay, I was now ready to see it. That led to a 3-4 month process of going through all the steps of verification with ARCC.

So that’s a little bit about how we ended up in our current state. As of this post we are finishing up our last shift on duty as houseparents to our amazing girls. We are sad to leave them physically, but have also established relationships with them that will last beyond us being their houseparents. We will be heading up to our new house and new place of ministry at the end of this month. My heart is so full as I sit back and look at the last 23 years since my calling. I am so incredibly blessed to have walked this journey with Christ by my side, as well as with Diana for the last 10 years. Praise be to God who has given me unspeakable gifts!

Our Journey to Christian City

This post is dedicated to the life and service of Phill Kouns.

For the last 3.5 years, we have been serving as houseparents at the Christian City Children’s Village, or CCCV, or CV (children’s village) even better lol. So how did we end up in this unique place? That is a story that I will attempt to concisely tell in this post. We were first made aware of the CV a little over 8 years ago.

Diana and I had been working as residential and senior counselors at a therapeutic group home in TN. How we ended up there is also a great story but for now lets just start there. After working in that home for about a year, (newly married and graduated from Bible college) we both were eagerly awaiting where God was going to take us to do what we considered “real ministry.” I pursued some pastoral positions and even some Christian School teaching positions, but God kept shutting the door over and over. One day Diana said to me “ya know honey, we both feel God’s call of fulltime ministry and we both now have pretty good experience working with children, especially ‘at-risk’ youth, maybe there is such a thing as Christian Children’s homes.” Little did we know the world we were about to step into.

So our search began, and we quickly found out that there were so many of these places. We began sending our resumes out and were getting really excited about this one place called Christian City. Now remember at the time we were 23 years old, barely married 1.5 years with an 8 month old daughter. So we got in touch with the office at the CV and set up a time to come down for an interview. We met one of the most amazing men I have ever known – Phill Kouns. He was the Director of the CV at the time. We immediately could tell his deep love for not just the children but the staff and houseparents as well. We talked for several hours as well as spent some time at one of the houses with some of the houseparents. We left that day feeling overwhelmed by the incredible opportunity and super excited about what looked like a really good fit for us. Phill got in touch with us in the coming days and told us he wanted to hire us right there but they just didn’t have any cottages open, but he said he would keep in touch over the next few weeks and months and we would be his first call as soon as there was an opening. He kept his word too, every couple weeks he would call and just check in with us see how we were doing and update us on any coming changes.

A few months came and went, and we were starting to get a little antsy about our next steps. In the mean time while we were waiting for CV, we had applied to a few other children’s homes as well. One of those was Thornwell Home for Children in Clinton, SC. Long story short we ended up getting hired and that was our first experience as houseparents. The weekend we moved in to Thornwell in SC, I got a Call from Phill (the director at the CV) and he told me that after all these months, he finally had his opening and he wanted to hire us. We both kind of laughed at God’s timing and wished each other blessings in our respective ministries. At that time I never expected to speak to him again. After 2.5 years at Thornwell in SC, God once again clearly led us away from that place of service.

The next 3 years we spend living in Stone Mt, GA where we both served in the local church that Diana had grown up in and where both of our parents were also attending as well. While this was a sweet time to be with our families, we also knew deep down that God was still leading us into full-time Church ministry. There were a few open doors there that I pursued but God clearly closed them once again. I was open to doing just about any ministry except houseparenting again.

Well… you know how that goes lol. Diana found a job posting randomly one day for CCCV and immediately called me and said “Seth look!!! We need to apply, and even better, Phill is still there and would probably hire us!” I pretty quickly shut that down and more or less said, I will never do that again. Thankfully Diana didn’t listen, because she came home that night and told me that she had already sent in our resumes and we had a call scheduled with Phill the next day! Needless to say, I was not super excited about that. So I took a notepad and wrote an entire paper of reasons why we did not need to go to CV and be houseparents again. The next night came and we had our call with Phill. Over the next hour Phill (unknowingly) knocked off every single reason on my big list! At the end of the conversation he said “well we were ready to hire someone else but God clearly brought you guys here to serve, so if you want the job, its yours. Pray over it and let me know tomorrow afternoon what you want to do. There it was, we had 12 hours to made this big decision, but honestly for us it was not really a decision at all. I got off the phone and told Diana “well, I guess we’re moving to Christian City.”

We moved to the CCCV in October of 2017. Our time here has been filled with tremendous highs and deep lows. As stated in the previous post, the friendships we have solidified here will last for a lifetime. I pray that we have been a force for Christ in the lives of all the youth that we have served as well. We have faced serious spiritual warfare as satan attempted to unseat any good that we would do. At times it has been almost unbearable, especially as you see your kids suffering and making tremendous sacrifices. While there have been some serious struggles to our lives as houseparents, I have to look back at these years as a time of great learning. I would not be fit for the role at ARCC without these years and times of hardships.

The friends we keep

I ended the last post with a reference to what I see as one of the best aspects of our years of houseparenting – the friendships you make. As we get ready to end our 6 + years of houseparenting, the one thing that I keep thinking about is the unique environment that forges friendships to last through the ages. I could not be more excited for the next chapter in our lives, but I would be lying if I wasn’t honest about the sadness I feel when I reflect on these friendships. Right now it feels as if it is highly unlikely that I will ever experience the depth of relationships as I have with my fellow houseparents.

I am going to attempt to explain the way you forge friendships with your fellow houseparents. Think about your closest friend(s) you have. How long have you known them? What is it that makes you friends? Have you connected on some emotional or spiritual level, have you been there for each other in time of need, have you “walked through fire together”? These things and many more are what create long, deep friendships. Now think about how long it took you to reach that level with those people. For many, those type of deep relationships are forged over many years. Well as houseparents, those relationships are forged over sometimes as little as a few months.

The reason that we are able to forge these deep, fast friendships is because when you enter into this realm, you go through some deep waters with these people. Think about those friendships from the last paragraph, now imagine that you live with those people in a small, tight-knit community where you are literally there for each other for every possible need that should arise. Anytime someone has an issue or a problem, you call on each other, there is no one else. When they are the only support have your community, you have to find ways to make it work by helping each other out. The closest thing I can compare this to is a military unit deployed on the front lines. I want to be extremely cautious and respectful here because I am not saying that we experienced the same things that you would on the front lines of war. I do however draw some similar comparisons with how your hearts get knit together with your fellow servants. A soldier who comes home from deployment will struggle to talk about his experiences with anyone back home. But the moment he meets up with someone from his unit that he was on the front lines with, they immediately have a special bond, and an unspoken connection. This is the same type of thing that happens with houseparents. It is completely impossible to understand the life we live if you have never been a houseparent, like completely impossible. Just like its impossible for me to imagine what it’s like to be a soldier, having never been one. Then you take that one step further, it is also impossible for someone to understand your position if they have not been on the front lines with you in your specific children’s home you work at. I have been so blessed to have made some incredible friends over the years, and form that group there are a handful of people that God has purely knit my heart together with. One family, we had the honor of working with at both the children’s homes we served at!

What follows is a powerful example of the way some of these deep bonds are formed. Our children’s home hired a new couple and we kind of immediately clicked. It’s really easy to tell when new houseparents have “it” or not, and they clearly had “it.” They were so ready and willing to learn and make a difference in the lives of these youth, but their first few months were marked with struggle after struggle. It started with a sibling group of boys which are difficult to describe the insanity of behaviors every hour of every day. They handled themselves with incredible poise and with the utmost integrity. This tumultuous time led to me spending a significant portion of time at their house to assist them in any way I could. This reached its climax one morning when I received a call screaming for me to get to their house immediately, and a text simply reading “get here now he has a knife!” The scene which I came upon as I entered the house was on I will never forget for the rest of my life. A teen boy lay on his back in the middle of a pool of so much blood that I have only seen on movies. His arm almost severed from his body, and blood pouring from his multiple stab and slice wounds. The next 30 minutes were crucial for this young mans life. After the initial assessment and aiding the other house dad who was applying his extensive knowledge of combat first aid, I proceeded to wait outside our gated community for the first responders. Then upon arrival they refused to enter until the police had showed up and secured the scene. Meanwhile, I am getting desperate calls form the house dad as the young man was quickly fading and succumbing to his injuries. After almost 10 minutes of pleading I finally convinced the EMT’s to come save this boy’s life, while back at the house, the house dad is literally keeping him alive via first aid and CPR.

See those are the kind of instances that galvanize a friendship. When you are spending the next few days cleaning masses of blood from a house and comforting and counseling all the children in that home who saw the gruesome incident take place; that builds a friendship like no other. And while this is a pretty extreme example, it is one of hundreds of stories of similar (although not as drastic) nature that we endured with our fellow houseparents. Those bonds that are wrought between humans who endure these kinds of cirmunstances together cannot be faked or forced.

As I look back at my time of houseparenting, I do so with great joy of the deep relationships that I have forged, but with a bit of sadness that in my heart of hearts, It feels like that type of friendship will be few and far between for the rest of my life. I do, however, look forward to the new opportunities in front of me. Part of my new position will be leading our church’s missional communities, in which I will strive to create environments where people who are part of these communities can have the same opportunities to create this deep and fast friendships with others in their missional community.

Some life updates – last 3.5 years

Hey Everyone, its been a while since I’ve been here to post anything. I want to take a few posts to give some updates on my life. The first place I will start is telling a little bit about the position of ministry that my family and I have been a part of for the last 3.5 years. Then I’m going to take a few posts and talk a little about my life story, where we are headed, some of the struggles we faced while in our positions of ministry over the years, and what God has taught my through this process.

So for the last 3.5 years, my family and I have served as houseparents at the Christian City Children’s Village. There is a longer story as to how we ended up there but thats for a later post. For now let’s just dive into what it is that we do. Over the 6+ years that we have been houseparenting, I have often struggled to give a brief but through description of what we do, because you end up wearing many different hats in this ministry. The best way that I have described it, is essentially we are glorified parents of a group of at risk kids. We basically serve in the same capacity that any parents would just on sort of an elevated scale. The population of youth we have served has changed some over the years. We started out mostly serving youth who were in the foster care system. This meant that we had quite a bit of interaction with the case managers and all that goes into that. In the last 2 years, we have shifted away from youth in the foster care system and have focused on youth in a private placement setting. This means that we are partnering with families who are struggling in many different ways i.e. financially, emotionally, physically, or behaviorally, etc… This allows us to step in to intervene with families before they end up in a situation in which the state has to get involved and remove the children. This has provided an incredible opportunity to minister not just to the youth, but their families as well.

So what do we really do? Well we are attempting to break the chains of generational poverty, by educating and equipping our youth with all the tools necessary to make great life choices. We do this my providing a loving, caring home with Christ as the central anchor. We look at each child’s educational needs and partner with specific schools to best meet those needs. We also work with each youth and their physical, behavioral, and emotional needs to create unique plans for each one to have the best opportunity to make successful choices. At the end of the day we cannot force any of our youth to make good choices or to better themselves. What we can do though is to provide more options for them that they did not have before. Most of our youth come from environments where poor education and poor family life choices were the norm. Most of our youth had never seen any other options. They simply saw what was in front of them and went towards it. But we come along and simply just try to change the scenery in front of them.

I have specifically stated that my family and I have ministered here because it truly is a whole family commitment/ministry/sacrifice. See my wife and I chose to come here and minister. My children did not, and yet most of the time they are the ones who sacrifice the most. While there have been some definite struggles, and we are moving on from this ministry at the best time for our family, I would not have changed this experience for anything. My kids have spend the majority of their lives with a house full of siblings who don’t look like them and most of the time don’t act like them (not in a bad behavior sort of way). My children have spent years getting to learn other cultures and communities. My children see people who look different than they do and don’t think twice, they just see people. I am so thankful that my children have been able to see their parents put their money where their mouth is and being the hands and feet of Jesus on a real, tangible level.

While houseparenting has given us an incredible opportunity to pour into the lives of our youth and we have taken advantage of every opportunity we could to give our youth every opportunity to succeed, we have found supreme joy in another aspect of houseparenting – the friendships forged with the other houseparents. I’ll leave it there and come back to that topic next.

Some Thoughts

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. – Matthew 14:13

This verse has been of such encouragement to me and here’s why. This is immediately after Jesus found out that John the Baptist had been murdered. He was broken, hurt, and humanly speaking just needed to be alone to process this horrible news. But if you read the very next verse, you see the crowds follow him. Being in a boat, He easily could have literally left them all in the dust, so He could continue to be alone. But He didn’t do that, He first made time for Himself and made sure He was in the right headspace, then He selflessly began to heal and minister to them – which led to the feeding of the 5,000, which led to the incredible moment with Him and Peter where he waked on water.

How many times do we look to just go away by ourselves when things are hard? Maybe, as hard as it can be, we need to give into the needs of those around us when we really just want to sulk and be alone. I hope this encourages you as well.