Got White Space?

Last year around this time I met with our new Children's Pastor and had the meeting that everyone dreads. This was the meeting where I was asked, "Where would you like to see this ministry five years from now." I left that meeting, not with a grand plan for the next five years of ministry here at Stonebriar, but rather with an idea of how much this ministry needs. There is so much that we could do and I would love to do, I just don't have the capability to do it. Taking my boss' advice, I put a dry erase board up in my office and started plotting out where we are and where we're going. When I stepped back, I saw a lot of white space in the middle.

Knowing that I have no power of my own, I started praying over that white space. Specifically, I started praying for someone to help me with the "Tweeners" Ministry. This is the portion of the SN Ministry for kids ages 13-16. Most people are scared of kids this age in general but add a disability to them, and people tend to take off running. I knew that it would take someone special to fill this void. I would love to do so personally but I knew I couldn't devote the time and energy needed to make the "Tweeners" Ministry one that would draw in the kids and engage the kids in ways a typical youth group can't.

This past May I attended a conference and heard of a new type of curriculum being offered that is based totally on music and repetition. While I had been sulking in the fact that God hadn't brought that one person forward to help with the Tweeners and we still only had a small group of 2-3 kids meeting each Sunday, I realized His plan was in action. I really wanted to try this new curriculum but couldn't imagine introducing it to our SN Classroom with a large number of kids and volunteers. I could, however, introduce it to the Tweeners and use their class as a pilot run. Thank you Lord for keeping this class small. I'll get to experiment with this new curriculum on a smaller scale.

So over the summer I had some fabulous teachers working with the Tweeners. They were engaging them and really faithful. Was God answering that prayer after all? Nope, come time for the September schedule (& the implementation of our new curriculum), I wound up with only one regular teacher to serve twice a month. Being a little discouraged, I thought there would be no way we could implement this new method of teaching with only one semi-regular teacher. To my knees even harder.

Finally, one year after starting to pray over the white space, I had an interview with a potential Ministry Partner. Knowing that she's a single college student, I thought she'd want to serve with the little kids and probably only twice a month. I thought I had her pegged. God had other plans. As we were talking, I found out that she's about to enter graduate school for music therapy. Things started to click in my feeble mind. I asked her if she'd be interested in the new curriculum we were about to roll out. Her face lit up! This was right up her alley. She offered to embrace the new curriculum and come to serve every week with the Tweeners to introduce this form of music therapy. She was so excited God was going to allow her to serve in such a specific way and I was beyond thrilled that God placed serving on her heart.

So, today, one year later. I fill some of the white space on my dry erase board. As I fill this space, I begin to pray for the other white spaces in front of me. Let's see what happens next.