Photo Update!

So I heard from the grandparents and others that they wanted to see pictures of our family's transition.  To appease the family here are some photos and some shameless bragging on our girls.

Since we live on a cul-de-sac the girls have a great place to ride bikes.  They've even make friends with some neighbors and have some buddies to ride with.  

There are some great parks in the area.

"K" found some teeny tiny frogs.  And of course made some friends!

"M^" has become the mighty tooth-puller.  T"" lost another one!!!  At this rate we'll have quite the jack-o-latern for Halloween.

Fun times in the back yard.

When there are this many girls in the house the kitchen floor becomes a nail salon on Saturday mornings!

"T" is becoming more confident on her bike.  Hopefully we'll be able to take the training wheels off soon.

The older sisters are so great to help "T" read!

Being in the south now there have had to be many conversations about tough issues.  My girls are learning a lot about current events.

We've found an awesome Ethiopian restaurant in the area!  "T" LOVES her doro wat!  The amazing waitress even brought a small plate of it just for her!

We found another amazing park to explore!

We travel to the beach with other people from our congregation.  It was a family retreat filled with relationship building, faith, and fun!

It was the first time at the ocean for all five of the girls.

"K" and "S" found an awesome shell and creature.  No worries, the Burkes are purely catch and release.  We had fun seeing the sea life and then set them free back into the water.

Had to have some sandcastle construction too!

We are all transitioning well.  So many people ask if we are enjoying the heat.  I'm not sure we're enjoying it.  However, we'll definitely be okay with the weather here in January!  

It is quite the adventure for us all!  Thanks for following along!

Ministry Transitions: A Peek Inside My Brain, Part 1

Transition can be hard.  It can also be exhilarating, exhausting, confusing, life-giving and time consuming.  Right now, me being in transition with ministry means that I have a huge learning curve to overcome.  New congregation.  New faces.  New names (which hopefully I will learn sooner than later!)  New vision.  New mission.  New lingo.  New expectations. 

So, what do I do when I need to think it out?  Write.  Because, let’s be honest Kevin should only be forced to converse about and shoulder part of what my brain needs to express.

Please feel free to engage in conversation with me about any or all of this.  Leave comments.  Follow the blog.  Message me.  Engage.

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So, I’m reading this book.  Very thought provoking book on discipling culture. 

This strikes me . . .

“Here’s the thing that can be difficult to wrap our minds around:  If you make disciples, you always get the church.  But if you make a church, you rarely get disciples.”

Breen, M., & Cockram, S. (2011). Building a discipling culture (2nd ed., p. 11). USA: Kairos.

This speaks to me on several levels.  The first way . . . as a parent.  What am I teaching my children?  Am I teaching them to follow Jesus?  Or am I teaching them to go to church?  Going to church is not a bad thing.  It’s a very good thing.  However, it’s not the only thing.  So many families fall into the trap of taking their kids/sending their kids to church to be brought up in the faith.  Yet, they miss the point that home is the “church” too.  Children “catch” their faith from those around them modeling faith day to day.  Faith isn’t something that you can just teach people.  The whole process of making disciples starts in the home with the people closest to us each and every day. 

Secondly this speaks to me as disciple of Christ.  The word “you” stands out to me in a big way.  When we talk about people making disciples, we’re not talking about only pastors.  Don’t get me wrong, pastor are awesome.  However, they are not the only ones called to make disciples.  Disciples make other disciples.  It’s the way it works.  Each of us that are following Jesus are called to help others follow Jesus as well.  It’s that simple (yet at the same time, that difficult!)

Finally, I also have to look at it from the lens of a ministry professional.  How many times do we as church members seek to build the church?  Build our little slice of the Body of Christ in brick and mortar, in programs and events, in assumed community, in the new and shiny.  The root of ministry isn’t to build the church.  It’s to make disciples. 

Jesus tells us in Matthew 28:19-20 . . .

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.  And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."  (NRSV)

The disciples make up the church.  We have to make disciples before disciples can come together as the Body of Christ, the church.

So, there are my thoughts.  What are yours?

4 Weeks of Transition

The Burke family has now been down south for about a month now.  So far it has been a wonderful transition and everyone is doing well.  However, there are several things that moving to a new setting has caused us to remember. Some life lessons based on our experiences so far . . .

Moving and unpacking is a process.  Hopefully not a lifelong process.
We purposefully are leaving certain items in storage and certain boxes packed.  However, it was never my intention leave this many boxes packed.  There are still half a dozen boxes in the living room.  A few in the bedroom.  Some more stacked in the dining room.  It has become a process of . . . "What do we need?"  "Where is it?"  Thankfully it was a fairly organized packing system.  In thinking and preparing for this move I wanted to be highly organized.  I feel as though I was fairly successful.  It is just so difficult to reorganize and drastically downsize all at the same time.

It's hard to feel settled when you know the house you're in isn't a permanent location.
Part of the dilemma of unpacking is complicated by the intention of only renting a house for one year before buying.  By the time we feel settled we'll hopefully be moving to another house in the area.  It's living in limbo.  One foot in a rent house and the other in a box.  At the same time we desperately need to establish roots, routines and a sense of home for our girls.

All sunscreen is not created equal.
The sunscreen that was adequate up north is not adequate down south.  We learned that lesson in a very hard way at the beach this last week.  We used the same sunscreen that provided good protection up north.  Five out of seven of us left the beach with tremendous sunburns.  I'll let you guess which five were suffering!

Much of the difficulty of any transition is exacerbated by the fact that Kevin and I are introverts.
This may surprise some people.  Then, there are others that have known this all along.  We love being around people.  We really do, I promise!  It's just that it takes an enormous amount of our energy to do so.  This is especially true and even more intense when we're around so many people that are new to us.  We're currently looking for a balance between reaching out to develop those relationships and honing in on our family and personal time.  So, if I'm looking a little weary don't worry.  It is probably due to some super fantastic awesome relationship building with the people around me!

Community is incredibly important.
Even though I'm feed and rejuvenated by quality alone time, community is the anchor for me in the world.  Community and "Familying" takes time and you must be intentional about forming it.  (For more about Familying check out a previous post.  http://ajourneybutnotalone.blogspot.com/2014/10/familying-is-relational-process-that.html)  This is nothing that can be forced or rushed.  It must develop through intentional time, conversations, care for one another and trust.  Being here, we're starting over with developing a local community and doing Familying with them.  We still have our established groups of Familying.  We love them just as much as we always have.  It just looks different with them now that we're in another geographic location.  Starting again with the people around us leads me to greatly grieve the Famlying Community we had surrounding us up north.  It also repeats the cycle of grief for the Familying Community we miss so much in our hometown.  It's drawing up all the mixed emotions of loss of community and excitement of forming new community.  In the midst of it all, these communities, new and old, are extremely important to us.

Those are just a few of the lessons we've been reminded of so far.  It has been quite the adventure for the first month.  We'll see what new things await us in the coming weeks.  I'm sure there is much to learn, experience and develop.