These Changes Suck

So today I got some mildly traumatic news. My Boss is moving to Newport, CA in the beginning of November to be the youth director at his old church St. Mary's. The other pastors at the church knew that he was applying and they have apparently been waiting to hear about it for a while, and he heard back. He got it, and he is moving home. Whereas John and I and two college ministries are going to be left behind.

I am trying to be happy for him but the timing is vastly off in my mind. Beyond the fact that the only reason I considered coming to Texas was that I had met Jason at a conference and thought that it would be fun job the first year out of college. There is a lot of time and effort and experience that goes into running a college ministry, and in less than a month a larger portion of that is going to be laid down on John and my plate.

Technically all of Jason's job will not fall to me and John. Jason's boss Tim (who started working here a month before I did) is going to be the speaker at the Well and the Fire. But Tim is also the pastor of Contemporary Worship and young adults. Which doesn't leave a lot of time to hang out and care for college students. College students need more attention than the pastor of three things at a giant church can give.

I had already had a moment with Jason where I talked about there being too many things for me to do. And I had been suggesting ways for me to delegate these tasks, to get the students to take more ownership of the ministry, and Jason was receptive and it was great. But now I understand why he was so receptive. He was excited to go along with it because he knew that it was going to leave his hands soon.

If I am honest, I have felt that Jason's head wasn't in San Antonio for a while and it has all just come together with his shocking announcement. There were apparently several times over the course of this week where I almost accidentally found out that he was leaving, but I was fairly oblivious. People were talking about how they were going to miss him, and one even mentioned him leaving to California but I thought maybe that meant at the end of the year... I wasn't looking for something huge to change.

And now I am floundering a bit, which is unlike me. It is not that I think that my job is going to radically change. I knew I was going to have a lot of responsibility because I was essentially given two rather than one ministry's worth of girls. I knew that I would speak, and was honestly looking forward to speaking at some of the worship services. But I also thought that I was signing up with a specific boss. Someone that I believed in as a leader for college students, someone that knew how to reach out people on the edges. He knew how to be bold in speaking truth without being judging in his delivery. And I know that especially for the guys, he is a lot of what kept them there... and I don't know if Tim and John are going to attract the same crowd.

Transitions in ministry are hard. I saw it at Southminister when Bob was asked to step down as choir director. I saw it at Midway the year I left for college when a pastor left. And I saw it at the Inn when Mike Gaffney left. The Inn came back from it fine, but mostly the others came back from it crippled. In each it was harmful enough to lose people forever. The Inn survived partially because it is so large, and partially because of the manner of exit. But this transition I expect to be rockier. It is mid year, it is sudden, and the Well and the Fire are smaller.

Pray for me because I have no idea what this means.