One Last Job Search (Conclusion)

By the time Marilyn and I made the long drive from Tampa to Atlanta in January 2006 for my interview with Peachtree City UMC, an offer from Trinity UMC- Waycross was already on the table.  Our plan was to do the interview, then drive back through Waycross and attend worship so Marilyn could get a feel for the place.  I was excited about meeting the folks at PCUMC, because it was a large church and because I had already developed a good relationship with a couple of staff members through e-mails and instant messages.  In the interview itself it became quite obvious that the parents on the search committee were obsessed with my age rather than my experience. I left feeling very good about the interview and very bad about my chances of being offered the position.  I was right.


We pulled into Trinity UMC just a short time before the start of worship, and we were greeted warmly.  One couple told us that they had moved to Waycross from Miami and that while it was quite a change, they loved it.  We would discover later that there was more to their story than we were hearing at the time.  We enjoyed worshiping with the TUMC family, but we also understood how different this church was from what were accustomed to at this point in our lives.  The service was beyond traditional.  It was quite liturgical; the order of worship was printed in the bulletin and followed to the letter each week, complete with creed and doxology.  The music was very much old school hymns with organ.  There was no contemporary service.  And the preaching was quite dry.  But the people were wonderful, and the youth surrounded us after the service and made us feel quite loved.  In fact, one of the 6th grade girls told us that we had to accept the position, because the other guy they had considered was "just awful!"  Plus she wanted to meet Will...   :)


After much prayer and debate, I took the position as Director of Student Ministries at Trinity UMC- Waycross, with plans to start on February 15th.  This was not going to be easy. I would move up and live in a tiny house (The Skittles House- more on that later) that the church owned until Marilyn and Will moved up in July, after school was out and the lease on our apartment was up.  I would be myself until then.  I would have to learn the ins and outs of a new church, a new city and lots of new families.  I was breaking one of my own personal rules right from the beginning.  I have always asked myself this question: If I didn't work for this church, would I attend it?  I knew going in that in this case the answer was probably no.  But still...there was something about the place that had captured part of my heart, and I was really looking forward to doing youth ministry in a town with one high school and two middle schools.  I would be great to be in a place where the entire community gathered every Friday night for the high school football game at a stadium located not on campus, but in the center of town (Go Gators!).  I was very excited about working with Associate Pastor David White, who was clearly the heart of the church's ministry.  I felt like God was ready to do big things at TUMC, and that He had called me to come join Him there.  Of course, as is always true with God's plans, He knew what the next year had is store for me- but I was clueless.  It was going to be a wild ride that would start with a gigantic hurdle and end with a thud.  But in between there were some amazing stories of ministry.  All of that is still to come...


Because of Jesus,