Hello,

You know something.. I was just talking about it this week.. it has been over two years since I started on the Creative Arts team of the Young Adults group at my church and I just cannot get over how much work it has taken to get where I am. First off as a ministry leader and a someone who is the right hand to one of our many Pastors I just cannot get over where God has taken me in the last two + yrs.

It all started in the Family Centre (the old portion of the church built 30+ years ago) when I came to what was then known as Embassy Student Ministries and began to find a home church a place where I belonged. Within in 1 months I was on the ushering team and within 2 months I was on the projection team (power point/media shout/easy worship) and was rockin’ but that was not enough for me I wanted to serve more. So one night I was listing to the sermons on the website… and I remembered something that God had given me an idea to fullfill back in 1998 and I thought to myself.. well lets see if this church would be up for it.

One night after the service I proposed the idea to our Young Adults Pastor and he directed me to the Worship Leader and well things just took off from there. I had a meeting with him and we began to setup my idea of Live Streaming the services all over the world. With in 6 months we were streaming the services and recording them to file to be put on the website. It took sometime but we finally got a setup that worked. I was overjoyed We had finally moved from a mini-recorded hooked up to the headphone jack to a full computer running windows media and streaming/archiving the services to to a computer.

Now if you know me well I can use anything in technology and make it work. I began my ministry with a Pentium 1 computer with 64 megs of ram running Windows ME and Windows Media Encoder and that is how we started streaming our services. To edit the file was the funniest thing I ever saw.  We first had to take the Windows Media File and convert it to WAV and then the Pastor could edit the file and then convert that file back to MP3 (compressed to RAW to compressed) how funny was that. But on October 27, 2006 my first recorded sermon made the website and we have been recording from the computer ever since.

But that was not the best part. Sometime in 2007 I was approached by the Pastors to become the Worship Pastors assistant. This ment that my gifting were being noticed and that they were going to be used in the manner that God had always ment for me to be used. I was on my way to finding my purpose.

I was still at this point a baby christian and really did not have a lot of knowledge with the things of God.. I did start to know that God was calling me to Pastor and that was all I knew. I did not know that God had other things in store for me. Mom once told me that when I was born they could feel the Holy Spirit on me and they all knew that I would be in the church. I knew in 1998 that I was to work with Technology (hence the Geek 4 God url) but I never knew that they would both ever meet.

I just began to submit my ministry to God and submit to the authority that God had placed over my life. Pastor Matt became my mentor, spiritual father and friend. Pastor Derek and I grew closer as I helped him and Pastor Matt with the creation of CDs, & Books. I started to learn the way the stage was setup and how to turn on the sound board. (trivial but I was a newbie in ministry) This was all starting to come together.

I was already helping Pastor Dennis with the projection on Sundays and was on my way to become the man of God that I was called to be. I guess you could say I was in his kingdom and found my purpose. I was never more happier then I could ever be (all health issues aside). This had to be the best thing for me ever in my life. It was like Pastor Derek said recently When you find your place of purpose you never want to do anything else, you don’t even care if you ever get paid. That was me. I was totally excited. I wanted to do it all.

I was volunteering in the Young Adults on Friday/Tuesday, Youth on Wednesday and Projection on Sundays then it came to a halt for me.  Youth and Young Adult leadership was changing Pastor Doug our head Pastor decided that Pastor Randy of JV was going to run the entire department of Student Ministries and Pastor Matt and Derek would be Young Adults only. Well this just dropped everything for me because Pastor Derek said that we would have to pick one or the other. Immedialty God spoke to me and said “I want you to stay with Pastor Matt” Well that just did it for me. I listened and it was the best move I ever made.

Sticking with Pastor Matt and Derek and listing to God has elevated me to new highs. I am doing sound, recordings and working on starting up our video ministry. nothing could be finer. I have a great group of people to work with and I am training up new people so that I can focus on the audio podcast and video. I have to give a shout out to Matt P., and Tim for all the hard work they are putting in to help make the Creative Arts ministry of embassy | this generation (we changed names in Oct of 07) work to the best it can be.

I am amazed at how my life has grown with Christ and how when we submit to the people that God has placed over us we get elevated as well. When we stuart the little God will be able to bless us with the lot. When I started to submit my ministry over to God things just started to take off and things started to work better. We had less problems and things did not break down as much. All the Glory must go to God and all the Glory is to be given to the people who have taken the time to work with me and get to know me.

If you are ever having trouble finding your place and purpose please listen to the podcast by Pastor Derek Schneider called His Kingdom, Your Purpose at http://www.embassyonline.ca/media.php and maybe it will help you find your place as well.

Be Blessed!