Milestone

my church has a milestone wall. when some goes through a time in their life that they want to document and share with the community they create a milestone to hang on the wall. a couple of weeks ago my friend allison decided that she wanted to have a milestone created for our church. the milestone was to document that we were a community led church for nine months. i must say that allison gave a great speech about the milestone last night and did an excellent job thanking everyone who was a part of the journey.

i'm honored and thankful that i was elected to create the milestone. even though i've decided to be a financial advisor. i alway enjoy the opportunity to use the skills i aquired while getting my degree in graphic arts. working with allison reminded me of when i use to work with clients as a designer. taking their ideas and meshing them with your own to create a piece that the client, in this case allison, is happy with. like a lot of clients allison wasn't sure of what she wanted the milestone to look like, or at least they can't put into words. to solve this problem all i do is create what i think would be awesome and they will quickly tell you what they don't like about it. from there you can narrow down your concepts to a more client friendly version above. for a look at my original concept click here.

onto the milestone.....in october of 2004 our pastor announced that he was going to step down as pastor of our church in order to pursue a career as a counselor. most churches would have gone through the appropriate channels to have substitute pastors fill in until they found a pastor to fill the vacancy, but our church decided to have community members lead our talk times and take on pastoral roles in our church until a new pastor was found. little did we know that God had placed individuals in our church that had a desire to stand and teach from God's word. from november 7, 2004 to august 7, 2005 we went through times of good and bad, some extreme ups and downs. at first things were a bit bumpy. members stepped up and carried the responsibility that was put on them as others decided that their lives didn't have room for anymore responsibility and decided step away from the situation. there was great shift in leadership within the church. about half way through the nine months things started to smooth out and i'm proud to say that we as a community operated very well during our time without a pastor.

everyone was joyful the day of august 7, 2005. the day that danielle became our pastor. danielle was an intern pastor for a year when journey was first founded in june of 1999. only God could have timed events they way the unfolded. danielle had moved to new jersey in 2000 to complete her seminary degree. in 2005 danielle and her husband dan had decided that they wanted to move back to the dfw area to be closer to family and dan started looking for a new job in dallas. shortly after our church announced our pastoral vacancy we found out that danielle was moving back to dallas and that she was interested in the opportunity to be our pastor. after several months of considering different candidates, we as a community decided that danielle would be the one. i, being one of the few that new danielle before she left for jersey, was excited to hear that she was a candidate and was filled with joy when she accepted our offer to make her our pastor.

i have never been a part of a church with a woman pastor. i suspect very few people have. i don't know how many churches are led by women, but i can only guess the percentage is a single digit that is closer to 1 than 10, or 5 for that matter. i'm happy that our church was open to having a female pastor and i know that danielle and her joyous personality will bring many blessings into our lives as she leads us in the direction that God calls her to.