MomminginMinistry

  "Dear Sub. Thank you for taking my class today..." I have now read these words at the top of a list of sub plans 71 times. I still consider this my side-hustle, not my career. I'm not a teacher, I'm a pastor who fills in the gaps in my schedule and finances with a few days of subbing a week. But I'm also no longer inexperienced at it. I have come a little ways since that day over a year ago when I showed up to teach "elementary music" and instead got thrown into my first teaching gig in a class full of 2nd graders and minimal sub plans. I've now been everywhere from preschool to high school. I've sat in a high school emotional disability class (edge-of-my-seat exciting), an elementary gifted and talented class (where they taught me more than I taught them), and a class for English language learners (where I pretended to know way more Spanish than I actually do). Here's some things I've learned about myself and this whole sub gig: 1. I c...

Maybe I should have matched a more serious picture to this post? It's fine right?  I expected certain questions when we joined a house church network within the Church of the Nazarene. I was ready to graciously engage, reassure, and set some common worries to rest. I was ready for what I thought could be the questions. "Isn't that just like small groups? So why can't you just do normal church plus small groups?"  Yes and no. We still do all the things...communion, singing, a sermon...but in a smaller setting, and with discussion questions and some lasagna or tacos. "What do you do about....(fill in the blank with something we've come to find necessary in modern church)?" We're finding our own version and discovering what is and isn't essential. But that's a whole other blog. "Were you mad about something at your last church?" Nope. And I think that's a terrible reason to start a home church. Or any church. Because you'll...

Does anyone else get in this terrible funk, when, they've been going a million miles an hour for weeks (and mostly managing it like a boss, thank you very much) and then you stop for a second and the adrenaline suddenly drops out from under you? It's like the worst. I simultaneously care about nothing and yet way too much of everything. I'm grumpy, and it feels like I'm moving in quick sand. For three or four days. Please say it isn't just me. It's not the first time this has happened and I'm sure it won't be the last. Physical or mental...I'm not sure.  There was this one week this month in which I subbed almost every day, which was never really the plan, Moses had two dress rehearsals that lasted until 8 at night, five performances of Beauty and the Beast, and we attended and participated in a family wedding. Last week, if I add up both what I count as "church-work" and "side-hustle subbing work" I worked 7 days. I know. We'...