PRIME Reflection. is quickly apparent to me that I place a very high value on being with people. The times that I felt alive

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1 Brian Menzie MI471 Dr. Karen Jones PRIME Reflection Progress in achieving learning goals My first learning goal was to identify my unique gifts, passions and resources so that I can choose healthy habits and add value to the things I am a part of. As I look back on my ministry journal, it is quickly apparent to me that I place a very high value on being with people. The times that I felt alive were full of grabbing lunch with staff and elders, hanging out with students and playing with friends. The moments when I felt especially drained I had allowed office work to bury me and my time. This is a clear benefit to ministry as an extrovert I can bring life to other people. I also realized how much I love learning. I told everyone who would listen about the things I was learning from 3DM, and I have spent a lot of time in prayer over how to put these new things into practice. On the other hand, when I was not reading or learning somehow, I felt like I was stagnating and would lack zeal for my work. This translates to me also loving to teach. I think of effective teaching in the mindset of training. My goal is to train or disciple the people I am teaching so that they can do the things that I do (or should do) as I work to imitate Christ. I took the Five Fold Giftings profile that draws from the gifts that the Spirit gives to the Church as outlined in Ephesians 4 (Apostle, Teacher, Evangelist, Pastor, and Prophet). I scored the highest in Apostle and Teacher (they tied) and second highest in Evangelist. I knew that I like to be on the front edge of good things and I love to teach, but I did not expect Evangelist. My church growing up valued evangelism in theology but not in practice. I soon realized that even though I did not have a lot of evangelistic practice, I do love telling everyone about my favorite brands, songs, and experiences. I am still learning to press in to this newfound gifting. One way I am growing in this is in my second learning goal of growing in the Trinity. I had no idea how much God would reveal to me the power of his

2 Menzie 2 Holy Spirit while being at Grace Gathering. I will explain more in a later reflection. Finally, I wanted to grow in involving Shandi and loving those around me better. I am thankful to say that we have been surrounded with families and leaders who place a high value on family on mission and actively live it out. Shandi is becoming more and more involved in our youth ministry all the time, and our prayers together are growing as well. She also is on the North Site leadership team that meets once every other week. Ways in which I have changed my perceptions of ministry, my self-confidence in leadership ability, or my ministry calling My perception of my calling has stayed the same, but my perception of ministry has changed fairly significantly. I have always felt that God has been equipping me to lead people forward into new territory. He has many times provided me with experiences so that I could use them to benefit those around me. This internship has confirmed that in me, as many of the pastors say that they wish they had begun on this journey that I am on when they were 22 instead of their late thirties. With that, I have had to seriously think about the ways that I have understood ministry. When I was younger, I knew a lot of my friends who had completely unprofessional youth ministries, so I tried to learn and experience as much as possible so that kids who I might influence would not encounter the same issues. Today, I am changing my understanding of professional ministry. Taking your job seriously, caring for administrative details, making wise leadership decisions and making efforts to be organized are all very much important aspects of ministry. But when I look at the New Testament believers, I see the Holy Spirit speaking to people and the leaders equipping ordinary people to respond to his callings. The role of the pastor should not be to do all of the ministry, all of the pastoring, all of the biblical interpretation or even all of the planning while everyone else pays him (or her, but only in some churches). That role of the lay Christian then becomes the job of consuming the service they pay the pastor for. This is not biblical, and while I think many pastors agree, functionally nothing changes. How can I train, equip and

3 Menzie 3 resource ordinary people to hear from God and obey him? At Grace, this means that over the past six years or so some things are less excellent because more people are involved. I am on a journey with this because I have been trained to place a high value on excellence in areas like top quality programs, advanced systems, organized meetings and business-like corporate culture. Grace Gathering places a much higher value on excellence as more and more people living and leading like Jesus did. I believe in this methodology, but it forces me to rethink the way I would normally do things, balancing what I must keep and what I have to see differently. Reflections on how my classroom experience prepared me for my internship Throughout my PRIME, I have found myself many times being thankful for the classes I took at Huntington. An obvious one that comes to mind is Teaching. Although most of my short talks at small youth ministry events have been single point talks over the SCORRE method, I am often processing how the entire evening can contribute to the message. I think through the HOOK, BOOK, LOOK and TOOK constantly. My public speaking class helps too, at it reminds me to add it all the different elements of an engaging speech (definitions, stories, explanations, repetition, etc.). One of my favorite classes to reflect on has been Evangelism. I am finding that so much of what we learned in that class matches the way we talk about evangelism in 3DM language. I love relational evangelism, and Paul Maconochie (the national leader of 3DM who has an office at our church) even talks about the Celtic Christians like Luke did. Sometimes I think about the different styles of leadership that I learned in RuthAnn s class and compare them to the leaders I see at Grace. I am always processing Systematic Theology as I mature in my faith and seek to embody what I believe about God. I even told Dr. Eilers that I made an extra handout with large-print font so that a legally blind student could read it, and that is something I may not have thought to do if it were not for our discussion on disability theology within the image of God. I also have been able to really appreciate Grace s balanced approach to theological debates valuing both divine sovereignty and human responsibility, emphasizing the power of the Spirit without

4 Menzie 4 defaulting to wild charisma and more). The list could go on a while for that class. Of course examples from Youth Ministry and Relationships in Ministry were thought about quite often. I remember actually looking back at my notes from Youth Ministry and Discipling when praying over and planning out mission and vision for our North Site student ministry a few months ago. As I was comparing a student ministry to a missional community, I realized that Erikson s life stage crises were very affirming of how I perceived the differences between high school and middle school students (Lifespan). I am sure I could come up with other examples, but my favorite part about all this is that all of it is very true. I definitely think back to my internships nearly every day, but I know that I can use my classroom content in daily ministry way more than my friend who went to Anderson for youth ministry. For that I am very appreciative. A summary of what I have learned through PRIME It is extremely difficult to summarize everything I have learned over the past seven months. God has seriously done a work in me. I thought that I learned a lot over the past four years at Huntington, but being at Grace has helped continue if not accelerate the growing process. I have grown in my response to the Spirit; I have learned about the benefits and difficulties of bivocational ministry; I have discovered new ways to involve Shandi as a family on mission. My philosophy of ministry is expanding all the time. I guess one way to sum up all that I have learned is the importance of flexibility and always growing in your walk with the Lord. I have seen countless examples even in the past few months of our leadership team going out of their comfort zone to grow in their obedience to where God is calling them to. They are not just commanding the charge forward. They are at the front lines, encountering blessings for faithfulness and increased attack from the enemy. By their example I have seen what it looks like to be confident in your ability while always trying to grow and die to self.

5 Menzie 5 Advice I would give future PRIME students Three things come quickly to mind for future PRIME students. First, do not forget that you are also a student while on PRIME. You are not yet a graduated adult in a full time job. Therefore, spread out the assignments, and use them to grow as you apply them to your ministry. When I did this well at the beginning of PRIME, I was blessed; when I failed at this for much of the rest of PRIME, I realized that I was missing out. Plus, creating these habits now will help you in the future so that you are always learning while in ministry. Second, I would recommend getting together online with the other PRIME students. This is not something that we did, but I can only imagine it would be immensely helpful. You could even meet once a month over Skype for an hour. This would allow for time to share what you are doing and how you are growing, encouraging each other s faith. It should also serve as a time to pray with and for one another. You would also be able to receive accountability for maintaining pace on your PRIME assignments. Lastly (and this one is my favorite), figure out how to live in community as much as possible. This is how God designed the Church to function, and human beings are made to be in relationship. Whether they know it or not, they want community. The problem is that most people do not know how. You, as a person who has likely lived in Christian community for the past three or four years have to show them what it looks like. Refer to Acts 2:42-27 and reflect on your on-campus experiences. I have been shown to see Christian community as eating together, playing together, praying together, sharing resources and sharing mission. There are high bar and low bar examples of each of these aspects, but do not hesitate to pursue these things. You will be living more like the Church should, and you will miss campus slightly less.

6 Menzie 6 An evaluation of my effort and performance and a recommended grade for my achievement in this course When I consider my performance in light of the course objectives, I feel that I met all of them as expected by those who developed them. I developed my practical skills in ministry every day. I communicated with parents and began a rhythm to grab lunch with every male staff pastor and elder at least twice a year. (We do not have any women pastors or elders, but that is not the wish of all the elders. I spent plenty of time with all the women in administration at the office, as well as those who lead missional communities.) I received a church credit card and managed my receipts. I taught, planned events, and even learned the long process of developing a student ministry from scratch (due to the fact that the north site started meeting just last fall). I learned how to pray with people I met in the city and many times went out of my comfort zone to pray with people for healing. I also networked both with my home network from Church of God (Anderson) as well as the 3DM network. I was blessed enough to not just receive investment from just one vocational minister but at least five different pastors taught me, challenged me and prayed for me on a regular or semi-regular basis. In daily prayer, in my huddles (small groups for leaders in the church, including lay leaders), in my biweekly journaling and in my PRIME assignments I was always evaluating myself on what was working and what needed to improve. I am highly critical of myself so this was not hard. As expounded on above, my understanding of my calling and motivation for ministry has grown and evolved. Even though I was so often in a new situation than what I had seen in other internships, I have developed a sense of personal and professional confidence from a very positive internship experience. Most importantly beyond any of that, I have grown in my dependence and obedience to God. For all of these reasons (and with a completely unbiased opinion, of course), I would give myself an A. I am not perfect and nor was my internship, but it was very, very good.