 I feel like God's prepared me to gather new faces for new spaces by giving me a heart to see the church become a place where opening on us dialogue can happen. I think a lot of people outside the church have become tired of a culture of division that seems to have even infiltrated the church in general at times as well. The other day I was having breakfast with the young man who when he moved to Dallas about a year and a half ago was struggling with whether or not to go to church anymore. He had left Alabama his home state just kind of disappointed with how simple things like questions or doubts or uncertainty weren't really accepted in the churches he grew up in and so I think being able to welcome in new faces means we've got to be ready for whatever people think, believe, say, feel. Many of them are not going to be where we are so to speak and so we have to be willing to open our arms up and not see us as ministering to them but rather walking alongside with them as we all try to grow closer to Christ in a deeper more meaningful relationship with Jesus. I love how the bishop is always calling us to invite someone that we don't know to meet the God who already knows and loves them and so I was thinking about that and I realized that new faces are those people that I have not yet met but that God is already wooing and willing into a place of welcoming grace and I love to welcome people. I love people and I love the idea that new faces reveal the face of Christ and when we are encountering Christ then we get to welcome and receive Christ in that individual. We're always called to make room for Christ in our hearts and our lives and so how much more will we need to make room for new people when they are revealing Christ to us. Just this morning before I came over here I was thinking how am I going to answer that and so I had to get out of my office to think about it and I went to the Waffle House in town and I was sitting there drinking my coffee thinking about this very question and this man whom I've never met you could tell was kind of a regular of the place walks over to me and says tell me about why you're wearing orange Chuck Taylor's and I said well my my nine-year-old daughter's favorite color is orange and for her birthday she wanted orange Chuck Taylor's and our birthdays the same week so she wanted her daddy to have the same Chuck Taylor's and so I have orange Chuck Taylor's and he said I can tell you're a man of the good book you're a good daddy and then he just sat down and proceeded to just go all over the map from being a surfer in California to being a youth pastor in the 70s to where he is now and his son needing a kidney transplant and I'm just sitting there listening and he says finally at the end you know a man my age it's good to just be listened to and I'm sitting there thinking why am I trying to come up with some sort of catchy cool idea of new faces and new places when this is how you do it it's just getting out of of the places we are and and meeting people we never would have met anywhere else so the Pulitzer Prize winning artist Kendrick Lamar has a song on his most recent album called fear and one of the last lines of that he says wondering if I'm living through fear or through rap I take him to mean in that line that he's really addressing the tension between living through fear or living through a creative authenticity of his art form and that's been on my mind in light of this question because I truly believe that God is awakening me to inhabit the space of creative authenticity and to make that a really central hallmark of my ministry wherever geographical spaces I go out into for me that means being real with regard to the things that are wrong in the world in the church not sweeping evil and injustice under the rug but really addressing them and it means being real about the importance of the church is a place of belonging for people of all ages nations races sexualities and abilities and that idea of creative authenticity also reminds me of what Paul says in Romans 12 where he says let love be genuine because it's that genuine love that I receive freely from God and that I'm able to reflect at least in part that really helps me to to be a creative authentic presence in the ministry I've been I think God's been preparing me my whole life to gather new faces for new spaces just particularly in my self-care journey that I've engaged I was a chaplain at Children's Hospital for clinical pastoral education and the work that you do there to care for yourself so that you can care for others has been a primary means of God working in and through me to meet people where they are I think what's been really formational for me has been getting a chance to be a part of the community at Union Coffee House a part of their worshiping community and seeing what God is up to there but something that's been really theologically formational for them and and therefore for me has been this idea that comes from one of John Wesley sermons called on the omnipresence of God he talks about how God is present in all things and then he asked this question he said what should we make of this awful consideration that God is present in all things should be not labor continuously to acknowledge his presence and I think that's what meeting new faces and being in new spaces is all about is acknowledging that God is already at work there and being willing to say yes God and partner with God in whatever way that means I hope that God continues to empower me and open up opportunities for me to create a space of belonging for the world Howard Thurman wrote that it's a strange freedom to feel a drift in the world of humans without a sense of anchor anywhere I believe that the church can and should be that anchor in the world especially as we all grow together in the holy loving freedom of Christ and for me that means nurturing places in which people can know that they belong to God and belong to one another and to throw Mother Teresa in the mix to she said that if we have no peace it's because we have forgotten that we belong to one another and so in the midst of whatever else I do in my life I hope that I can boldly follow Jesus and to creating and cultivating these spaces of belonging well Paul says something in Philippians about he is daringly courageous to believe that Christ will reveal his greatness within Paul's body and life and I hope to be daringly courageous to believe that Christ will work in and through me in spite of my very worst days that God will accomplish in me more than I can imagine because I am a broken vessel and yet the Holy Spirit will be able to do things that I can I can't even imagine right now but I do know that there are so many people who have spoken into my life and help shape and move me to the place that I am that God has has empowered to do so and I hope that I might be able to impact someone's life to draw them closer to God and to be in relationship with our wonderful loving gracious God why do I feel like I'm called to ministry you know it was the writer Ivan Illich who said how do you how do you change society is it is it violent overthrow or is it gradual change and he said neither it's it's a tell an alternate story and I think that that my my hope is to is to tell an alternate story but really tell it a true story about about Jesus Christ that that sin is real it's affects or catastrophic but that grace abounds and that we can be exemplars I think for me most of my life was was in the John 3 16 for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son but I've come to learn through friends and mentors that that's only the first half of the gospel that the second half of the gospel is first John 3 16 says we know that Christ loved us because he gave his life for us so then we ought to love our brothers and sisters in the same way and so I think for me that call was that that I heard the first half of the gospel and then I've been called to to live the second half of the gospel and as a good friend says once we begin to to live the second half of the gospel a hurting world will come to believe the first half of the gospel I hope that God will work in me and in my ministry in such ways that people will come to know the one who is love intimately that they would know God as love experience that as themselves but experience that in their neighbors and in the world around them and I hope that God will just surprise the heck out of me too and do great things far beyond my wildest expectations to grow in that area of nurturing self-care for other people I hope to to grow particularly in the skill of listening because I think that's a primary way to meet people where they are I think it's a way to overcome a lot of the opposition and polarity that we encounter on a day-to-day basis I hope that through my ministry I hope God could lead me to be a preacher who teaches the Bible in a clear and compelling way and teaches Methodist Wesleyan theology in a clear and compelling way I hope also that God could lead me and inspire me to take important stands when it's needed I think we live in a time and day when the church needs to have a voice and frequently people look to their pastoral leadership to speak up when they see injustice in the world around them that can be hard to do but I think it's important I hope that that God can lead through my ministry in a way just to keep it real I think sometimes there's this culture that sees church as this buttoned up place where we have to smile and pretend that everything is perfect and I hope that I can always establish a culture where we can bring our real selves into church we can tell people when life is not going well when we had a terrible week when we don't feel like smiling when we can bring those kinds of things to God and to our sisters and brothers in the faith as well I hope that God can lead me to be a pastor to foster a church where authenticity and real life is accepted embraced together