Changing Seasons and Growth

Copyright Bruce A. Morrison

Adjusting to new seasons seems to be a theme for me over the last several months. Adjusting to a new community, a new home, a new church family (that we love, by the way), a new church role, new schools, new hangouts, new friends... Seasons like this can leave you with a feeling of being a little unsettled at times. Have you ever experienced that?

I know that our church is experiencing a similar season of adjusting. New pastor, new worship leader, new school year where we've seen new faces join us while others that we love have graduated and moved into their own new seasons... My sense is that while the core of who we are as a church is solid and secure, God is still preparing us for a new thing.

Life with God is always one of change and growth because living things grow, and if we're alive through the Spirit of God, we should grow as well. Sometimes growth is easily evidenced through externals like the four inches that Maia grew between the beginning of May and the end of August. Sometimes that growth is harder to define and discern, but the ripples of growth are disturbing the surface waters enough to let us know somewhere, deep down, something is happening.

My prayer for us as a church is that in this season of adjusting, that we'll be seeking growth as we seek God. Growing in our own faith, growing in how we do what we do, and growing in who we are as a church are all hopes that I have for us all because living things grow.

Last day in Sioux Falls Schools

It's crazy to think that today is our last day with kids in the Sioux Falls Public School system. With our move to Mitchell coming up late next month this is the first last day of school that has carried this kind of emotion for me. For starters, it's our last year at All City Elementary which is a place that our kids have thrived and where we feel like a part of a community. We've spent time in the classroom, know the staff, know the families and have worked alongside them all in service to the kids that we have grown to love as we've watched them grow. It's an experience we wouldn't have traded for anything and knowing that we would have been moving on to middle school anyway makes it a little bit easier to say goodbye.

Xander is also wrapping up his freshman year at New Tech High School which has been a place that he has enjoyed and will miss a ton. We know that he'll get a great education in Mitchell and that he's the kind of kid that can succeed just about anywhere. It'll still be hard to see him have to say goodbye to this great school, especially knowing that it was our call to make the move. Unfortunately, God doesn't always call when it's convenient and sometimes we're asked to sacrifice in ways that we don't enjoy and that don't seem fair. We just continue to pray that God will bless Xander through relationships, opportunities and experiences in Mitchell that he wouldn't have experienced had we stayed in Sioux Falls.

Thanks, Sioux Falls Schools for taking such great care of our kids, introducing them to great opportunities and for giving us a chance to know so many great people in ways that have left us changed for the better.

A New Chapter- Mitchell Fusion

Making a major, life changing announcement is always a challenge and while social media has a lot to offer by way of dispensing information quickly to a broad audience, there are so many things that can't be captured in 140 characters or less. My hope is that this post will give a clearer picture of our latest, life changing announcement as we transition into a new season of ministry.

At the end of January an opportunity was presented to me to consider taking on a new ministry role a the Lead Pastor of Fusion Church in Mitchell, SD. After several weeks consisting of prayer, fasting and seeking counsel from trusted friends and mentors, we decided to accept the offer and we will be making the move sometime this summer. The Lord continues to make me more and more excited about the opportunity and I can't wait to meet the people of Fusion and to see where God will have us journey together.

While there were many things that factored into the decision, the first thing I want to make absolutely clear is that there was absolutely nothing negative impacting my decision to move to Fusion from Embrace. I have been on staff at Embrace Church in Sioux Falls since August 2010 and have been able to be a part of a growing, thriving, innovative church and served alongside people that I love deeply and will miss terribly. In fact, Adam Weber (my Lead Pastor) has been a huge source of encouragement and one of my biggest cheerleaders in making this move, not because he's glad to see me go, but because he wants to see me grow.

Embrace has provided me a place to engage in different ministry areas (care, prayer, service/outreach, small groups, missions, worship) and to grow in my capacity as a leader and to heal and mature in ways that were incredibly necessary in order for me to be able to pursue an opportunity like this. I'm sure I'll continue to learn from what Adam and Embrace are doing and you can bet that I'll be one of their biggest outside supporters as the church continues to work to reach the next person for Jesus Christ.

So, the next natural question would be that if Embrace has been such a great place to work, why would I choose to leave? If I was being completely honest, I would say that the role of senior pastor is one that has been in the back of my mind for some time. I have had people ask me if I'd ever thought about being a pastor many times over my 18 years in ministry. Sometimes the question would come from people that I had only briefly encountered and sometimes it would come from people that had worked closely with me who had the time and proximity to see things developing in me that I hadn't seen myself.

Over the last few years my role has been as the Care Pastor for Embrace which has allowed me the opportunity to exercise certain areas of pastoral gifting in ways that have confirmed a sense of pastoral calling, but have not necessarily afforded me the opportunity to explore others. I have been incredibly honored to be able to provide counsel to people in crisis, help people to connect in areas of discipleship, walk with people through health scares and to help people during times of loss and grief. These have certainly confirmed my heart for people and are some of the most cherished conversations that have ever been entrusted to me.

While those pastoral roles have been important for this season of ministry at Embrace, I have also had a growing desire to teach and to be more involved in big picture decisions in ministry. Both are areas that I feel I have some gifting in, but both are also areas where Embrace has great people already in place. In fact, Embrace has been gifted with some great leaders that fill these roles in a way that has made it one of the fastest growing churches in America. Because of this, I have put those desires on hold and have sought to learn patience and humility until such a time as God would allow me to step into a role where those gifts would be needed from me. I believe that the opportunity at Fusion is one that God has been preparing me for and that this is the right time and place for me to take on such a role.

Much like our move from Hanfield UMC to Sioux Falls 10 years ago, this is a move that is incredibly bittersweet. We leave a church that we love with people that are among the dearest friends we have ever had in order to pursue something that we believe God is calling us to do. Thankfully, this move will not take us as far away and will actually put us closer to some of our family (Amy's dad, brother, cousin and step-grandmother all live in Mitchell) which should help ease the transition some.

We're excited to start a new chapter on a journey we never expected to be on. God has been so incredibly gracious to allow us to experience the things that we've experienced along the way and our hope is that the lessons we've learned and the things that we have seen would make us more effective in ministering to the needs of the people of Mitchell.

Ways you can be praying:
-Pray for Xander. In many ways, we feel like Xander is giving up the most in this move. He leaves behind friends, a high school that he loves that is unlike anything Mitchell has to offer, and his FTC robotics team that he's been a part of for several years (Mitchell has no FTC team). Pray that he would be able to find meaningful activities and good friends in his remaining three years of high school. I've told him that if God is calling our family to Mitchell that God has something there for all of us, including Xander.
-Pray for Maia. Pray for a good transition from elementary to middle school while also adapting to a new community. Pray for great friends and opportunities to continue to engage in all things artsy in a community that actually has quite a bit to offer her.
-Pray for Fusion. Pray that God would lead and guide this community of believers into a greater understanding of who He is and who He has created Fusion to be for Mitchell and the surrounding area.
-Pray for Brandon Vetter (the founding Pastor of Fusion) and his family as they make the move to Bismarck Legacy in Bismarck, ND. Brandon did a great job in establishing a solid foundation for the future of Fusion and we're excited to see how God will continue to use him in his new season of ministry as well.
-Pray for Embrace. Pray for new leadership in the area of pastoral care and that the right person/persons will emerge to provide for this growing area in the life of Embrace.
-Pray for Amy as she determines where to engage in things in Mitchell. Our thought right now is that she will still be teaching voice at the University of Sioux Falls once a week (it's only an hour's drive), but she will be closing her home studio and assessing how to best use her gifts and talents in our new community.
-Pray for me. Pray I would be faithful, humble and effective in carrying out the call that God has given me and that I would continue to remain teachable so that I can grow to be the leader that Fusion Church needs.

Great Things and an Unexpected Worship Moment

In 18 years either leading or serving in worship ministry, I have had a lot of moments where I have seen God clearly at work. I've seen him at work in churches, in fields, in pole barns, and in living rooms and I've watched him heal past hurts, answer prayers, give encouragement, and breathe new life into hopeless people in ways that leave them forever changed. Even so, with everything I've seen, there are still moments when he does the unexpected and surprises me.

Have you had these kinds of moments? These are moments when He completely captures your attention and puts a living, breathing testimony to his faithfulness in your line of sight and reminds you that these are not just words that we sing, but they are our prayers, hopes, dreams and stories as well as our testimony of who we know God to be because of the ways that he has met us in the depth of our need.

Sunday we introduced the song Great Things (Worth it All) by Elevation Worship. We had already played three services, but at our 605 Service I looked across the stage to see my beautiful bride Amy with one hand on the keyboard and one hand in the air. This is not an uncommon thing as we're both pretty demonstrative in our expression of worship, but this moment is one where God spoke to me so clearly through her worship that I encountered him in completely unexpected ways.

Photo courtesy of Jason Currie-Olson

For those that don't know, Amy was diagnosed with breast cancer nearly two years ago. She caught it early, but it was a fairly aggressive form that necessitated a summer's worth of chemo and surgery. She handled it with strength, grace, humor and a lot of prayer and every check up since has been a reason for us to celebrate. You can read more about her journey on her blog. It's worth the read.

Most days, we wouldn't even think about the cancer if it wasn't for the scars left by a bilateral mastectomy and subsequent reconstruction surgeries. They are scars that are prominent and scars that she finds ugly, but they are also signs of life and reminders of the journey that we've been on.

The moment that I saw Amy worshipping, hand in the air, we were singing:

Thank you for the scars I bear

They declare that You are my healer

How could I have seen Your strength

If You'd never shown me my weakness

Amy personified this lyric for me and I was immediately brought to tears as I was reminded of God's faithful presence with us through her cancer. I was reminded of how he answered prayers for provision through friends, family and strangers when she had to take the summer off from teaching. I was reminded of how he answered prayer for improvement in her platelet levels even though they had dropped throughout the course of her treatment. I was reminded of the countless times that his presence brought encouragement, strength and peace as I pleaded for her healing. God's reminders to me were so strong that I could hardly see through the tears and could hardly sing as my voice broke in thanksgiving.

I'm sure that Amy had been expressing her heart to God all day during that song. I'm not sure why it took me all day to see it. Maybe I was caught up in trying to play the right chords. Maybe I was too focused on the function of leading worship to pay adequate attention to the One I was intending to worship. Maybe it was because I needed to open up my eyes and look for the work that God was doing in our midst. Maybe it was because I needed that moment in that moment so that I could fully take it in and allow it to do the shaping that God intended. No matter the reason, I'm so glad that he surprised me.

I'll leave you with some of our beautiful Embrace Church family singing a simple version of Great Things. Hope it's an encouragement to you.