A Million Dreams

 

When you embark on a road trip or journey to anywhere, you’re likely to keep a map handy so that you know where you’ve been, where you’re at on any point along the way, and where you’re going. As this year comes to a close, I think of the ministry journey I’ve been on up to this point. I think about where I’ve been and how I’ve grown through the ups and downs of days gone by. I take note of where I’m at right now—physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. As I prepare for a new year and a new season of life, I have so many big dreams ahead, and I’m looking forward to soaking up the moments as they come and go.

 

My first launch into NextGen Ministry was on this day in Seattle where I became not just the Youth Pastor, but the Children’s Pastor as well!

 

The map for this specific journey begins years ago in Seattle when I was serving as a volunteer youth pastor, helping a local church to build their youth ministry. I knew as I began to develop the youth ministry that I wanted the ORANGE STRATEGY to be the foundational piece. I had seen it done well and I had grown in ministry experiencing it personally. As the youth ministry continued growing and thriving, I was asked to step into the role of Children’s Pastor and join the staff part-time. Having never done Children’s Ministry at that point, all I knew was that I needed to build it with the same strategy and in a way that I could help these younger kids become more easily integrated into youth ministry. Three years into making that ministry and watching it grow and thrive, I decided that I wanted to pick my passion for leading and mentoring young adults back up. I had previously worked in Young Adults Ministry in Austin at my home church (GT AUSTIN) leading small groups and participating in media design + community connections. Since my Kid Min and Youth Min teams were embracing the strategy and values of those ministries at that church, I decided to start leading small groups geared toward Young Adults and continued building relationships with those in that community. I loved it, and I wanted to do more with it.

Graph originally featured on thenextgenblog.com

It was at an Orange Conference in the middle of those years that I met Kenny Conley, the NextGen Specialist for Orange, through a mutual friend. He asked what I did at the church, and I explained that I was the volunteer Youth Pastor, the part-time Children’s Pastor, and I also led a Young Adults group. “Oh, so you’re a NextGen Pastor,” he said. “Sure, I guess.” was my response. As he explained more in-depth what it meant to be a NextGen Pastor, I realized that YES, that’s exactly what I am! I’m sure you’re wondering what that means as well, so let me share something from Jim Murphy (whom I think says it best), a NextGen Pastor in Minnesota: 

“Most NextGen Pastors oversee multiple staff and multiple age groups, some of which can include college and young adults. He/she can be a primary communicator in one or more age groups but still supports all areas of ministry equally. The NextGen Pastor is strategically minded, administratively skilled, aggressive with recruiting and team development, has a pastoral heart, and values relational ministry with an emphasis on the relationships between kids/students and their small groups and small group leaders.”

There are 6 roles of a NextGen Pastor:

• CHAMPION EVERY AGE GROUP
• ALIGN LEADERS
• GUAGE EFFECTIVENESS
• ASSIST IN MINISTRY
• EXPAND LEARNING
• PARTNER WITH PARENTS

Our Eikon Youth Small Group Leaders are amazing! I love this team so so much! [Photo by Payton Morey]

Through the years, I’ve seen God use people, roles, and community connections to build me up to become this type of a leader. From the moment I had that conversation with Kenny at Orange, I began to think, research, and pray about the trajectory of the journey I was on. Was this the right direction to move in? I shared my thoughts and dreams with some of my trusted friends and knew that this was, in fact, the direction I needed to move in. As I empowered more of my ministry teams in Seattle to lead so that I could do what only I can do, I began to build myself into a NextGen Pastor. While I wasn’t allowed to continue moving into that role at my previous church, I didn’t lose hope or sight of the purpose-driven dream in front of me. As I mentioned before, an opportunity arose for me to pursue this route by making a move from Seattle, WA to Kyle, TX. My role started here as Youth Pastor at Eikon, with the promise of eventually growing into a NextGen Pastor role. Fast forward a year of serving on staff as Youth Pastor at Eikon and I’ve successfully rebuilt Eikon Youth to a healthy, thriving and community-driven ministry with an INCREDIBLE team of leaders championing the phases, students and families they lead.

 

Hanging out with friends at one of our Eikon Young Adults Small Groups

 

In March of this year, I was invited into a discussion on helping to develop and build a healthy, sustainable Young Adults Ministry at Eikon. I sat with our Lead Pastor, Executive Pastor, an elder, and one of our previous Young Adults leaders through a series of meetings to help define how this ministry would operate and tie into the central values and mission of the church. After we wrapped up that series of meetings I was asked to take over leadership of our Young Adults Ministry. It has been such a great experience bridging the gap and providing opportunities for spiritual growth, missional living, and multi-generational mentorship for the young adults in our community!

 

Adults, young adults and students all playing their part to help lead this growing generation!

 

About four months ago, I was pulled into an even better meeting. It was a meeting with our Lead Pastor, and he told me that he was ready for me to step into the role of NextGen Pastor at Eikon! In this role, I provide oversight and leadership for all of our family ministries from birth through young adulthood. It’s a total dream come true! Not only is it amazing to be empowered to do what I feel most passionate about, but it’s refreshing to know that I have the full support and encouragement of my teammates and leaders to move full steam ahead. I have their trust, their love, their confidence, and it’s all I could ever ask for. It’s a great challenge—but oh how I  do love a challenge—to oversee all of these ministries on such a larger scale, but the more I’m able to develop and lead the teams guiding us forward the more I see the fingerprints of God all over this. The announcement was made onstage a couple of weeks ago that I am taking on this role and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to chase this dream and empower the people entrusted to my care as we invest our best in the next generation!

 

Grateful for this journey and this team that help me become a better human being and Christ follower. These folks are 100% pure gold! [Eikon Staff] 

THANK YOU to every single person who has supported me, prayed for me, and offered me wisdom and encouragement along the way. I’m ready for what’s to come and I am excited to help connect this growing generation to onramps for stronger faith and community development. Please continue to lift me up in prayer/positive thoughts and check in as the journey continues—I know I’ll need it!

I Spend Too Much Time In My Room

There is something so special about a blank canvas set in front of a creative person. Since I first joined the team at Eikon Church, I’ve been able to create some beautiful spaces and let my creative flag fly. When my Pastor presented me with the opportunity to design classroom environments for our eKids, a sense of joy and anticipation overcame me—what a fun canvas to work with and a great end in mind to work toward! I sat down with the Children’s Pastor and asked her what she had in mind for these spaces. She gave me some basic parameters and then said the magic words, “Really it doesn’t matter to me, you can just make them look the way you want them to look.” Boom! I’m on it!

As I thought about the kids that would be discovering faith and community in these classrooms, I knew I wanted to create distinctive environments that would play to their heightened sense of imagination and wonder. We had decided to use a scheme that matched the colors I had previously designed on the entry doors to each class . . . So now all I had to do was find the scenes to match the schemes. Part of the planning process involved the understanding that the current ages represented in the rooms would change over time. Currently, our eKids classrooms serve kids from 2 years old to 5th grade. However, we are in the process of building out a new eKids wing on the other side of the church dedicated just to our Elementary-aged kids. Once that project is complete, all of these current classrooms will be dedicated to our Early Childhood kiddos. (We also have a Nursery connected to our lobby that I needed to design out.)

I started with a blank canvas . . . kind of. I took pictures of each of the rooms and proceeded to design the spaces quickly with Photoshop layers on top of the original images. Once all the designs were submitted and approved, our Children’s Pastor organized a team of volunteers from our church to come in and transform the classrooms one coat of paint and one sheet of foam at a time. For three months we all worked hard to complete a project we could all be proud of. As a designer, I still ooh and ahh at the beautiful way my art has come to life in these classrooms. Here are some snapshots and stories from along the journey:

DESIGNING THE NURSERY

I took these original photos after the base baby blue coat was painted.

Let’s start at the end, shall we? This was actually the last room that we completed and oh was it a process. Each of the rooms started with a taupe base and I knew I wanted to go with a brighter but softer color for the nursery. Since the other rooms were already claimed by the colors red, purple, yellow and green, I went with a shade of blue . . . baby blue, that is. I originally thought of going with clouds and stars, but I just felt like I should add more pops of color. I wanted it to look like a fun confetti party so I mapped out a pom pom swag to paint on the walls.

My first design involved white painted swags with circles of color added like confetti

Since we had spent so much time on the other rooms, we were kind of painted out by the time we got to the nursery. Instead of painting more, my Pastor suggested going with white wood slats adhered to the wall and pom poms of some sort connected to them instead. So he purchased the wood, and I worked with my Intern to create some pom poms made of yarn—and it was a total disaster. We spent 3 hours working on winding yarn onto cardboard spools to make the pom poms, and they ended up being a bust because the yarn wasn’t tight enough and the tie wasn’t holding in the center. All in all, we got one done after hours of work—ain’t nobody got time for that, especially when we needed about 30 total! We landed on the option of buying tissue paper pom poms and unfolding those to use instead.

The pom pom saga

Then came the process of adhering the wood slats. It was suggested that I use Liquid Nails to attach them, so after tying and stapling the pom poms onto the wood slats, I lined the backs with Liquid Nails and held them to the wall for a bit to set. As I continued sticking them to the wall, the ones I’d already put up started falling. So I did what any other clueless person would do . . . I Googled “How long does liquid nails take to dry on wood?” It turns out you need to hold it for at least 10 minutes before it starts to cure. (Ugh!) So we did that, and they still kept falling. So I found another solution—I went to one of our staff members who is a hardware guru, and I presented my dilemma to him. I suggested just screwing them into the wall, but he had a much better idea. He suggested I use his Brad Gun to hold the wood in place long enough for the Liquid Nails to dry. That way I wouldn’t waste the Liquid Nails I already purchased, and I wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of trying to screw each board individually. His solution worked wonders, and I’m so glad I asked him for help!

Decorate the nursery, they said. Use Liquid Nails to hang the wood, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. 😫

The Brad Gun worked wonders and cut our work time significantly. FINALLY we had a finished project that made my heart so happy! Here is what the room looks like now that all is said and done!

 

DESIGNING THE 2s & 3s CLASSROOM

My original idea for this classroom involved painted brick and bright foam gears so that I could play on the red scheme of the paint chosen for the room. I had previously worked on a similar set using foam board insulation on the Maker Fun Factory VBS set at my church in Seattle, so I knew how cool it could look.

However, once a few more eyes were on the designs I started with, we decided it would be better to go with simpler objects that preschoolers might connect with more. I went with fun foam flowers instead and played on the brick red shade to be the background of a large garden wall.

Our volunteer crew worked so hard to bring those designs to life and now our 2s and 3s get to learn and play in a great big garden of fun!

 

DESIGNING THE 4s & 5s CLASSROOM

This classroom took me the longest to design because although green is one of the more comfortable colors to design for, I just wasn’t sure what I wanted the kids to be surrounded by in this space. One of the earlier suggestions was to focus on geometric shapes, so I started with squares and got bored before landing on pinwheels instead. Though it got a lot of good feedback, I still wasn’t personally sold on it. So I kept going back to the drawing board and coming up with other options. Circles? Stars? Stripes?

I took a step back and after downing about my 50th cup of coffee, I asked myself, “What do preschoolers love to do for fun and how does it make them feel?” That question led me to see things from a different angle. I thought, “If there’s one thing preschoolers have a lot of, it’s feelings.” I joked around as I designed their space that I was going to create a Forest of Feelings.

I played around with the idea of making mountaintops cut from reflective silver and even bought the materials, but in the end, we went with white snowcaps instead. I mean, I guess I did stick with geometric shapes . . . I just kicked them up a notch. The bonus fun to this room is that every time I walk into it, I’m reminded of the tall trees that I miss from the Pacific Northwest. Now I have a little bit of ‘there’ here with me!

 

DESIGNING THE 1st-5th GRADE/ELEMENTARY LARGE GROUP ROOM

Our largest room in the original eKids wing is used for both our Elementary Large Group setting where all kids 1st-5th Grade gather together for praise & worship and the weekly Bible Story. After those elements of the service are done, the 1st-3rd Graders stay in that classroom, and the 4th-5th Graders go to a different room for their Small Group activities. Right away, I knew I wanted this classroom to have the look and feel of Monsters, Inc. I had seen a similar version somewhere on Pinterest, but decided to switch up the color scheme and style a bit.

I added skewed foam squares and rectangles to resemble the doors used in the movie and went with skewed lines to mount them on.

Our lead pastor gladly jumped in to help paint the classrooms

The tricky part was tying in the projector screen on the main wall. This is the space they use to watch their praise & worship and Bible Story videos. I decided to give it a bold skewed border to make it stand out. In my first draft of the design, I put two other elements on the stage wall. They were going to be chalkboards painted with shapes around them to represent the scripture verses and bottom lines that they focus on each week, but as we got to work on that wall, I realized it would look too cluttered. They neither added to or subtracted from the design on the whole, so I just scrapped them in the end. 

DESIGNING THE 1st – 3rd GRADE CLASSROOM

(Feel free to put on some sunglasses if you need to.)

This classroom was actually kind of tough to design an environment for this one. The room is yellow—bright yellow. You can see the bright yellow peeking through the connected ceiling panels in the main hallway. That’s the kind of bright it is. I wanted to try to subdue the brightness by bringing in some bolder yet still complimentary colors. My original idea involved a honeycomb design, which both kept a geometrical shape theme and a creative environment.

However, after submitting the designs, I was brought back to reality and told (in love), “That looks amazing! It would be so cool to do that, but there’s just no way that we could make it look that good without paying thousands of dollars for actual artists to come and paint it.” They aren’t wrong, and I wasn’t super bummed, I was just left racking my brain to figure out what else I could make it look like.

After even more coffee-fueled thinking and listening to Disney songs, I tried a different idea. I decided to go Under The Sea. I thought it might be cool to contrast the bright yellow with a strong blue and make a chevron design that could resemble waves. I still have yet to get the netting to drape from the ceiling and the push lights to attach to the wall, but I think it’s a vast improvement!

 

FINISHING TOUCHES . . . 

Another church inspired one of the other finishing touches I put on all the rooms. I visited LifeAustin Church when I attended the Orange Tour with our Family Ministry Directors a couple of months back and noticed a handy system they were using. Each of their early childhood classrooms had numbered racks with a whiteboard that had corresponding numbers listed on them. These were designed to keep diaper bags, artwork, etc. organized according to each guest in the room. Leaders would write the name of a kid on a certain number and hang their belongings on the corresponding rack number. I knew that was something that we were currently struggling with so it was a no-brainer to add that sweet system to our classrooms as well. I even designed the numbers to match the classroom themes to pull in some extra fun!

It felt so good to see all of these rooms complete and ready for the new year! It was such a fun experience to help create these unique spaces for our eKids to grow and learn in. Even more exciting is that I get to do it for our new eKids wing as well! Our Pastor met a while back with another designer for preliminary ideas on how to design out the new eKids Elementary wing. This designer that he spoke with had previously worked on designing spaces for The Walt Disney Company. My boss showed him my designs for the current spaces to see what would be good for the expansion and the designer told him that my designs were amazing and that he should stick with having me dream up and design out the new spaces! (That totally melted my heart in the best way!) 

I’m looking forward to the new few days where I’ll get to take the photos of the newly built space and design out the environments to turn in to our main painting crew. This new year ahead already holds so much promise and excitement. Onward and upward!

Future eKids Spaces are ready for a fresh paint facelift!