Sunday, 15 July 2007

• Today I'm announcing that after five years as the youth pastor at CCCNJ, I am leaving.  I've tried to answer all your anticipated questions here:

  Why are you leaving?  For both Mindy and I, we believe that it's time for us to settle down as a family.  Mia is one and a half, and our second daughter should be born in November.  We have been thinking a lot the past year or so about where we want to raise our family, and we would like to do this in the greater Boston area.

  Why do you want to move to Boston?  One of the main reasons why we like Boston is because of the [1] pace of life.  It isn't as face paced and hectic as the greater New York area, but it's also not so rural that it would be unlike what we are used to.  We like the culture, environment, weather (snow included), college atmosphere, and small city/suburb feel, among other things.  Another reason why we are interested in Boston is because not only did I grow up there, but [2] my family (parents, sister, uncle and aunt, grandmother) are still living there.  We can't be close to both Mindy's family here in Parsippany and my family in the Boston area, but for now, we would like to spend some time up there.  We plan to live in a town half way between my parents and the church we will be attending.

  What church will you be at?  I will be the youth minister at the Chinese Gospel Church of Massachusetts.  It isn't my home church (CBCGB), my home church's sister church (CBCGL), or the Chinatown church (BCEC).  It's the "Southborough church," aka CGCM.  The building the church meets in is about forty minutes west from Boston.  There's probably a couple hundred people at the church, and a youth group of about forty.  That's less than half the size of what I'm working with now, which means that I'll be able to actually get to know the students a lot more personally.  And that's another reason why we're going, because [3] we'd like to go to a place where I will be spending more time directly with the youth, and less time on the "big stuff" of a complex, developed ministry: meetings, training adults, administration, paperwork, etc.  Especially as our lives get busier with the kids, the time I have available to do ministry work (maybe 90 hours a week five years ago down to 60 now) is more precious and I'd like to spend more of it in discipling and preaching/teaching.

  What about CCCNJ?  Honestly, sometimes it almost makes me want to cry when I even think about leaving.  I have built so many relationships with people here in New Jersey, and have gotten to understand and work with this ministry so well.  It's hard for me to even count and go through in my mind the number of people that I've been privileged to have crossed lives with.  I am very sad to be leaving, and wish the best for this church community in the future.  I'm sure as this is God's ministry, not mine, that it will continue to be blessed and led by Him.

  So... We do feel that this is where God is calling and leading us in our lives, even though we have a lot of mixed feelings: sadness to be leaving yet excitement about the future.  If you want to get together we can talk more about the details of what's going on.  It's still summer and we'll be around until the end of August.  I'll gladly accept your offer to treat me to bubble tea during the week, Applebee's after Friday night, or lunch on Sunday...
  

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