2 Years Later...

Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash

It's incredibly surreal to think that it's been two years since my plunge into the deep waters of full-time ministry, and dear God, what a rollercoaster ride it's been (and continues to be)! I continue to be deeply humbled by God's providence and your support in whatever shape or form that may be, but most of all in your prayer and presence to me.

A great deal has happened for me personally since I took the full-time plunge in July 2019, and a long story short, it's been an intense/incredible time of growth for me. While the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns threw a lot of my plans in the air, I'm very grateful for the opportunities they opened up for me to grow - and revealed just how much better God's plans were than my own!

This update chronicles my journey's reflections since the last update, and because this can be a long read, please feel free to skip ahead to the following timestamps headers to what you're interested in being updated with!

Growth

Over these past 2 years, the biggest areas of growth for me have been my relationship with God, and me authentically becoming who He made me to be. Youth ministry had virtually been my life from the time I started college in 2004 all the way through my engineering career ending in 2019 (filling up whatever spare time I had), and growing up in a culture where life and especially ministry centred around programmes and doing things (even if they were good things), I'd learnt to tie my relationship with Jesus to external works and not pay much attention to the interior life of growing closer to Him and exploring further who He'd made me to be. This greatly distracted me from the "more important thing" (cf. Martha and Mary in Luke 10:38-42) - loving and being loved by God, and listening to Him in my innermost being. And so, bringing this focus on the exterior into full-time ministry and not having my usual "distractions" of study or a career naturally didn't lead to great things - I got burnt out in late February 2020, just about 8 months into my full-time plunge! And when Covid-19 brought all things (including physical youth ministry) to a halt a few weeks later, I felt I'd virtually lost my meaning and purpose in life, and descended into crisis. This led me to a cycle of more burnout, recovery, and even more burnout as I continued experimenting and groping around in the dark for the meaning of my existence.

It was the grace of God working through conversations I had with spiritual mentors, and the ample time I had to sit with myself that eventually led me to reflect that I hadn't been fully authentic in being me, and my relationship with God was far more superficial than I'd thought - I was spending regular time "in prayer", but not nearly enough "with God". I was also pushing myself to "do ministry" the only way I'd known and grown up with - to throw myself out into the field, running programmes and forming communities, trying to form bonds with the masses and sharing about a relationship with Jesus - when that really wasn't how God had made me to be. Pressing on with this pressure to "perform", coupled with my "empty cup" had led me to a quick burnout. Thus began the search and journey to my interior, which has since brought me to have a relationship with Jesus that's less dependent on the external (on what I do), to be a lot more comfortable being myself, and to let these flow out authentically to those around me. I felt God moving me to deepen my own journey to become who He'd made me to be; that my discipleship and following of Jesus would in His time draw others to discipleship with Him. My journey is still very, very far from being perfect, but I feel like I'm in a much better place than before.

Shifting Gears

In my last update in October 2019, I'd detailed that college/university students was an area that needed my attention, and I set out in that direction when I began full-time ministry. I parked myself at our parish youth centre to meet campus students and those who dropped by, brought students to daily mass, started a men's group at a local university, co-ran Catholic Society meetings at the different campuses, and started a "youth table" within our parish's RCIA programme.

Having burnt out quite quickly after making and carrying out those plans, my journey to a more authentic me brought me to realise that I needed a shift in direction: I'd started off wanting to focus on journeying with students as individuals and avoid being caught up in "programmes", but I ended up getting caught up regardless, in trying to reach further than I was meant to with all the activities. While I certainly had fruitful conversations with some, by and large, this didn't sit well within myself and instead drew me further away, leading me to the burnout cycle described above. As I progressed on my journey to the interior, I felt more and more that God wasn't drawing me to the masses of college/university students who are each at different stages of the journey, but to begin with the few - those around me who were already open and seeking for a deeper encounter with Jesus. A big part of this was acknowledging my vocation (and thus limitations) as a husband, and father of 3 kids: reaching out to the masses would require spending most nights and weekends out with them - the time where I would most be able to nurture my vocation and spend time together with my family.

I grew to become a lot more comfortable with just having regular, personal conversations with people, and letting God move in those meetings. As full-timers within the context of our parish, the 3 of us pastoral workers began to journey even more closely together as the core of the youth ministry, recognising that we ourselves needed to be changed before we could make a change in those around us and beyond. We started exploring our inner struggles and growing together in authenticity through listening to each other and personal formation. As we journeyed together, we also journeyed more closely with other core ministry leaders in authentic discipleship, exploring the foundations of why we were doing what we were doing, using materials like Simon Sinek's Start With Why and Sherry Weddell's Forming Intentional Disciples and Called & Gifted Charism Discernment. We also organised men's and women's retreats which allowed us to journey together with small groups to uncover who God had made us all to be, especially the deep wounds which we'd all incurred in the process of growing up.

New Life

So, where is God taking me with all of this now?

While I feel I'm exactly where God wants me to be at this point in time, I still cannot answer this question with certainty. My goal as laid out when I entered full-time ministry still hasn't changed - I still believe that forming disciples are the way to go. The question is how, and that's what's uncertain at the moment - I'm praying for God to make that a little bit clearer! That being said, by the grace of God, this journey has recently led to an interesting and exciting place! A couple of months back, a fellow pastoral worker shared an inspiration she'd had: she'd been noticing that a lot of the young adults around her had a great hunger to go deeper in encounter with Jesus and to discover more about who He'd made them to be. However, being in the workforce, they didn't have the time, energy or space to explore the same questions of the interior which have plagued us over the past couple of years. Belonging to a church ministry does a bit to help in this regard, but doesn't make much of a lasting impact, being limited to a few hours a week, then it's back to what for most is an "unhealthy" work culture for the remainder of the week. This led her to imagine a company which cultivates an atmosphere of discipleship and encourages those within the company to become who God had made them to be, while at the same time generating revenue that extends the mission of forming disciples to even more others! It was pretty exciting for me to be invited to bring this to reality, as this gave form to what I'd been struggling to do these past 2 years - make journeying with others in discipleship sustainable, but yet in line with the unique set of gifts that God had given us.

How we see this goal being realised is as follows: the company would generate revenue by producing resources for people to grow in the discovery of themselves. This would start off in the form of prayer/meditation resources and products that would help remind them of who they were made to be such as T-shirts, art prints and mugs, eventually branching out into podcasts, blogs, healing workshops, and the like. For each person involved in the production of these resources, the company would provide the tools and prioritise the time, energy and space for them to discover who God made them to be, which includes exercising the unique charisms that God has given them. The revenue generated by the company would go into sustaining and furthering our pastoral work, and to also providing more resources for those under our pastoral care.

Financial Contributions

Before the company can generate such revenue, however, we will still have to depend on monthly financial contributions (for which we are deeply grateful). Apart from our (and our families') sustenance, these financial contributions have allowed us to build a library of the following Audible audiobooks and Kindle books:

• Made for Love: Same-Sex Attractions and the Catholic Church by Fr. Mike Schmitz
• The Activated Disciple: Taking Your Faith to the Next Level by Jeff Cavins
• Broken and Blessed: An Invitation to My Generation by Fr. Josh Johnson
• The Mindful Catholic: Finding God One Moment at a Time by Dr. Gregory Bottaro
• 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
• Lives of the Saints by Hugo Hoever
• Be Devoted by Dr. Bob Schuchts
• Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus by Sherry A. Weddell
• Fruitful Discipleship by Sherry A. Weddell
• Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
• Find Your Why by Simon Sinek
• Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't by Simon Sinek
• The Infinite Game: How Great Businesses Achieve Long-lasting Success by Simon Sinek

...along with a monthly subscription to Covenant Eyes, an accountability internet filter to help us and those under our pastoral care.

These financial contributions have also helped us grow and develop in our own formation to disciple others, with the following resources:

• Called & Gifted Charism Discernment Course and interviews
• A Leader's Spirituality Course
• Spiritual Conversations

Closing Thoughts

It's been a crazy journey of growth these past 2 years that has involved lots of unlearning the things which have been detrimental to me and my relationship with God, and learning again to listen to His voice in the interior and find my identity in Him. I'm currently still very much in the process of self- and God-discovery, but thank God, I feel a lot further on than where I started. This has led me to places I never dreamed I'd go to, and I'm excited to see where God takes me from here! Once again, I'm incredibly grateful for and humbled by your continued support, and I continue to humbly ask for your prayers, especially for us to be more open to God's will.

Till the next update and beyond, God bless us all!