Living in the Village

I have had this on my mind for some time now and with me speaking in church this coming Sunday, maybe I will be able to refer to some of this while talking about this topic.

People say that it takes a village to raise a child, not just parents. I couldn't find this to be more true. However, the one thing that brings me concern is who that village is.

I lived in a neighborhood for 7 or 8 years where I actually hung out with my neighbors. They would walk over to my house or I walk go to theirs. It was heading into the 5th grade that my family moved to a house about a mile away where we were no longer in a neighborhood of any kind. We were literally a house on a hill all by ourselves with the nearest neighbor literally being a good 500 yards away. I still had friends from my new school and of course there was family, but the neighborhood friends faded from my life pretty quickly after the move.

I believe that kids conform to the village that they spend the most time with. When this expression was originally formed, it was a long time ago when kids had this one thing in common: their village was the place that they lived. There were very few exceptions to this. The kids in the village went to school together, played on sports teams together, went to each others houses together, and went to church together. Many of them would date and end up marrying each other. Villages were tight knit, they looked out for each other because they knew that they could trust each other (they had no other choice). Everyone knew everyone and everything going on in the lives of the people in the village.

The same village scenario is exactly the same today...... except that it is the polar opposite. For a few years in my life, I had friends separated into categories like colors in a crayon box. I had school friends, basketball friends, baseball friends, soccer friends, church friends, family friends, college friends, and sometimes just good ol friends friends. Most of the time, those friend groups never really overlapped. I never really realized this until the rise of Facebook when I thought about how many different ways I knew people and how many of my friends only fit in one category.

We have become a culture of options. There are options for literally everything. We have options on the food we eat, the tv shows we watch, the cars we drive, the technology we use, the schools our kids attend, the teams they play on, the churches we attend and the houses we live in amongst thousands of other things. Options vary from likeability to affordability to competition to potential and eventually all the way back to likeability.

Thanks to social media, smartphones, and the internet, we have every option laid out in front of us at all times. Any kid with a smartphone gets pretty much the same options and because of this, they get to choose which village they spend the most time with. They don't have to hang out in their neighborhood unless they want to and I'll say it again: We all eventually become a product of our village.

I say these things to go back to the village that raised me. The people who affected me the most from my village were people whom I still look forward to going back to Nashville and seeing every chance that I get. They are people who played a major role in forming me into the person I am today (so if you don't like me, it's definitely their fault...). To name a few:

Mike Hayes
Mike Dorris
Tucker Anderson
Molly Hayes
Mark Agee
Jeff Shouse
Alex Sylvis
James Anderson
Todd Lawson
Mac Hughes
Chad Hedgepath
Will Baxter
Henrietta "Metta" Vaughn and miss Julie
Jenny Hayes
Cindy Anderson
Pat Hughes
Keith Welch
Van Barendht
Mark and Nancy Barrett
Roger Chester
Mama Bear Hestle
Real Peloquin
James Lynn
Mark and Sonya Dupay
Tom and Debbie Willett

To almost everyone who reads this, these names mean absolutely nothing to you. I'm leaving a ton of people off but the people listed above have two things in common:
1. I am not related to any of them (My mom would disagree with that statement, but according to her, we are also related to Elvis. I would prefer to be "related" to a hall of fame athlete but I guess I'll settle).
2. They were/are all members of Berry's Chapel Church of Christ where I grew up.

I have realized on several different occasions that BC is the village that helped raise me the most. There have been plenty of other people who have played huge roles earlier in my life, but whenever I came to church, I knew that way more than just my own two parents were looking after me. Some of the people on that list were parents of friends my age in the church, some of them simply decided to take a vested interest in me, most of them were both of those things. The village that raised me was the church. Looking back, I think they played an enormous role in my decision to go into ministry. I got to see why God gave us the church and what the church does for so many of us and after seeing those things, I don't know why I wouldn't want to play a full time role in the church.

I could not have asked for better parents. They worked so hard to raise me and give me the very best life that they could offer, but now that I am a parent myself, I have learned something that I hope every current and future parent understands. Every parent has weaknesses. I know for a fact that I do. I think my parents had some and I think any parent has things that just aren't strongpoints. This doesn't make any of us bad parents. It simply means that we have to rely on the village to fill in the gaps, particularly the village that God has given us.

I learned more about taking action for the things you believe in from Mike Hayes than I did anyone else. I learned what it means to be family to people you aren't actually related to from Henrietta "Metta" Vaughn. I learned that there's no limit to creativity from Cindy Anderson. I learned that church camp never gets old from James Lynn. I think I am surviving being a crash course adult largely in part because of them.

These people truly are family to me. I spent more time with church friends than I did anyone else growing up. They really genuinely care for me. That's why when I come home, after reuniting with my family, I look forward to seeing them more than anyone else. I rarely track friends from high school, I have no idea whats going on with the guys I played basketball with, I only keep up with a small few of the people I went to college with. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy my time with them or that I don't care about them anymore. I wish them all the best. There's just something that cannot be fully explained with words when it comes to my relationship with my church family at BC.

Looking forward, I have two beautiful daughters that I am in co-charge of. I think they have the best mother this world has to offer, which is good cause you can't expect much out of me. However, as hard as we both try, we have areas where we are incomplete as parents. What has been wonderful is the village that has surrounded my new family since moving out to Huntsville when we were still learning how to be a family. We have already started to get Audrey involved with different women in the church that she looks up to. I know that so many people in our village are already playing a huge role in her life as well as Addison's. It's people like Dorothy Houchin, Karen Altom, Eugene Kelly, Matt and Danielle Springfield, Foy and Mitzi Mills, Toni Sikes, Sydney Andrus, Larry and LeeAnn Wells, and all of the Correas, to name a few, that will be a people whom our girls view as family during their time here and that one or both of them look up to and/or enjoy spending time with.

As a full time youth minister, I get to see the cause-and-effect of the village on a weekly basis. Whether it is something in worship, before or after worship, in a class or activity, or even out in the community during the day, I get to see the church in action. God gave us the church, not so that we have a place to show up to on Sunday, punch our Jesus card, and go home on a weekly basis, but so that we can be the church.

I love the youth ministry that I get to be a part of. One of the group's defining characteristics is that almost half of them are in families that do not go to our church and some don't go to church at all. A couple of weeks ago, the rest of our church family got to see how special this is. We honored our graduating senior class a couple of weeks ago on a Sunday night. Seven different seniors were honored and thanked for being a part of our youth ministry. Of those seven seniors, only two of them have families who are members of our church family. The other five seniors began coming to our ministry's activities because of the two who have been raised at the Huntsville church.

It's because of this village in Huntsville that I am confident in the rearing of my soon-to-be-born son, Gatlin, when he makes his grand appearance into this world, which we're expecting to witness in early August. It's because of guys like Nathan Spencer, Gonzalo Correa, Scooter Langley, Kelvin Riddler, Chris Kern, Jacob Chandler, Spencer Ehlert, and Brent Slott that I am confident in his rearing because I know that they are men who can help me be the dad that Gatlin and every other boy in this world need. I pray that maybe people can turn around and view me in that way to some degree one day.

I know that villages like the one I grew up in at Berry's Chapel and the one my family is a part of in Huntsville are by no means set apart from so many other church families. They don't exclusively exist in Huntsville, TX or Franklin, TN. They are all over this country and even this world. These villages raise some of the most amazing people currently living in our world today and my prayer is that this is a cycle that God continues to bless our world with.

One Shining Moment

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go back to Westbury Christian School and speak in chapel. WCS is where I had my very first full time job ever. I was a Campus Minister, Bible Teacher, and Basketball Coach. This job is one that I will always be grateful for for so many different reasons. Obviously, it was nice to have a full time job after going four months out of college with no job offers. I love my family and was very appreciative of my parents for taking me in, but it was pretty difficult to have worked so hard for four years in college and feel like it was all for nothing. I wasn't familiar with Houston at all but I was very excited to try a new place and experience a new life with a new job that I would wake up to every day. I was also excited to be going to a job everyday where I would get to do my two favorite things with students: Bible and Basketball However,  the best reason that I'm thankful for WCS the most is because it is there that I met the most amazing woman I have ever met and her two incredible children. Ashley was entering her second year as a middle school science teacher, Audrey was starting the 3rd grade and Addison was in her final year of Pre-K. I actually knew them for a year before Ashley and I began dating (fun side note: if someone is ever dumb enough to turn this blog into a book, then I just decided on its title: Bible, Babes, and Basketball)

I had the honor of speaking at both middle school and high school chapel and Ashley decided that she would take the day off from work and come with me. When we walked in and started saying to people and walked around the buiding, I was amazed at how so many things had changed so drastically and how so many things had stayed the same. The student body looked older, taller, more like the adults they are becoming that they weren't anywhere close to being when we were still there. Some of the faculty were still there and welcomed us with open arms while others had gone on to other various jobs. My old boss, Greg Glenn had moved to Nashville to become the new head of school at Lipscomb Academy, which happens to be my alma mater. The guidance counselor, Mike White, has since moved up and filled the position. 

I got to see so many students and how so many of them had grown and matured. I got to see Galen Robinson from a ways off. G will be playing for the University of Houston basketball team next year. He's one of the high school players whom I enjoyed coaching and watching play the most and one of the people I wanted so badly to teach. I got to see Armani Crosby and Micah Flowers, two sophomores who were a part of my first junior high basketball team I ever had the honor of coaching. I got to see Laura Nelson who is the only student to attend every spring break mission trip the school has ever done since I helped start it 4 years ago and the younger sister of MJ, one of the most impressive students I ever had. I got to see Rosaline Akwarandu (very likely misspelled) who is evidently a big fan of this blog (I didn't really know anyone besides my family actually reads this thing. I see the number of pageviews but I just assume that my mom looks at it and clicks the refresh button repeatedly to make me feel good about myself as a writer. That only worked the first time, then I found out she was doing that.) and she requested another post (you're welcome). I got to see Jennifer Zalud who runs the copies to everyone in our school and might be one of the more fun people to be around amongst the entire faculty. I got to see Jennifer's son Jon who will be a senior next year and is the real ladies man according to Jennifer. I got to see Trey Austin who is coming off a second straight boys high school state championship as the basketball coach. I got to see Lindsey Loxtercamp who has about 4 different jobs at the school and was always someone I respected and enjoyed being around. I got to see Coach O and Laren McCormack who were the other campus ministers and basically saved the spring break mission trip in so many different ways when I made a billion mistakes getting it started. I could spend the rest of this post giving more shout outs but I think you get the picture at this point. 

It is evident that so many things had to happen in so many different ways in order for these different teachers, faculty, students, and friends to arrive at the point that each of them are in their lives. Something that amazes me more and more are the intricate plans that God has in all of our lives. Things really can happen for a reason when they happen in the right place and time. If Trey Austin hadn't recruited Galen Robinson, I never would have met G. If it wasn't for my relationship with David Akwarandu, I probably never would have gotten to know his younger sister Rosaline. If not for MJ, I doubt Laura Nelson ever goes on any of the mission trips. Without my computer not cooperating with me and forcing me to print a different way from all the other teachers while at WCS, I doubt I would ever need to spend hardly any time in the copy room and never really get to know Jennifer Zalud. Without Coach O and Laren, the mission trip would no longer exist (and probably never would have happened!). 

God lines different people up in my life and the lives of all of us so that we can have so many different impacts on so many different people. Something that Jesus spent so much time doing was telling people that they were to be a fruit bearing kind of people. This only registered with certain people listening to him. Something that he talked to them about was that those who cannot bear fruit will be cut off and thrown into the fire (fire is pretty self explanatory for what that means). For so much of my life, I translated the command of "bearing fruit" in my life for needing to make disciples of Jesus out of those I come in contact with. While this is something I believe to be admirable and important, I also think that I have been partially wrong about this. I recently heard at a youth conference a reference that Jesus made about bearing fruit and what it takes to do so. In John 15:5, Jesus said "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."

David Skidmore, the speaker, highlighted how Jesus said that we didn't have to run all over the world making disciples. We simply had to do what Jesus said and abide in him. This hit home with me in such a huge way. I mentioned at the beginning of this post that WCS is where I met Ashley and the girls. What I didn't completely mention is how we were able to meet in the first place. 

When I was just 16 years old, I went on my first foreign mission trip to Honduras. It was on the way down that I learned that a group from Houston, TX would be joining us. It was on this mission trip that I became good friends with several different people from the Houston group. Three of these men really stood out though. They were Steve Hawley, Greg Glenn, and Preston Hill. We would all go on future trips together and looked forward to seeing each other every chance we got. At the time, Greg was the athletic director and basketball coach at WCS. The summer that I met Preston was the summer that Ashley married her late husband, Michael. I did not even realize it while on these trips, but I had somehow made a decent impression on all three of those guys. It was because of that first trip when I was 16 years old that Steve Hawley remembered me and recommended me to his boss. It was because of that trip that I got a call from Greg Glenn, the head of WCS at the time, 8 years later offering me a job. It was because of that job that I met a tall, beautiful brunette wearing a black top and khaki pants on my second day of work named Ashley, who told me that she was the daughter-in-law of Preston Hill and lost her husband a little over a year and a half ago at the time. It was because of that trip that took place almost 12 years ago that gave me the opportunity to date Ashley and have the approval of her in-laws (Preston and his family)almost immediately. I thought going to Honduras 12 years ago was something that was supposed to change me and make me more humble, giving, thoughtful, and loving. I thought that I was going to make disciples of Christ and while that might have taken place in some ways, I think God might have viewed that as abiding the way he calls us to. People who have done mission work will tell you that you end up being more changed at the end of the mission work than the people who you went to help change, that you always get more out of it than you put in. With a wife, two daughters, and a son on the way (oh yea, it's a boy!)I have absolutely no idea how I could possibly get more out of abiding than I already have, but I won't be putting limits on God, I like to think he lol's when people do that. When Michael passed away, Ashley decided that the best move for her was to take a teaching job so that she could have summers off and spend as much time with the girls as possible while also being able to be close to them during the school year. She got in touch with a friend of hers named Casey Farris who was the middle school principal at WCS. He offered her a teaching job there where she assumed she could suck it up during the school year and be able to focus on Audrey and Addison as much as possible. That's all she wanted God to do for her. I think he might have lol'd there. (I apologize for the excessive use of lol. I think it's dumb too but I figured the WCS students who apparently read this might appreciate it. It won't happen again)

The NCAA men's basketball tournament ended a little over a month ago. One of the traditions that CBS, who broadcasts the tournament, has is when the winning team is crowned champion at the end, they play the song "One Shining Moment" by David Barrett while showing various clips of the entire season of the winning team. As ridiculously cheesy as it is, that is where I stole the title of this post from (don't judge me). The concept of the song is that the team put in so much work before and during the season with the dream and goal of the one shining moment when the team can stand on the pedestal and raise the national championship trophy with pride. I like to look at the message of this song in a different way. Most championship teams will tell you that there was a game or even moment in a game when everything changed and they took on a different attitude and you could feel something different about them. I think that seems to be how God prefers to do his work. Oftentimes we do not know it, but God has these moments where we meet people or say or do something that impacts us and those involved in a tremendous way. The moments may not be shining, oftentimes they are anything but that. However, God has a plan. All we simply have to do is abide.

The family at Easter 2015