The Lessons I've Learned

 As she prepares for her next chapter, Rev. Brittany reflects on the lessons she has learned during her time at FUMCLR. From the importance of relationships and community to moments of growth, challenge, and grace, she shares how God has shaped her ministry and faith through the people and experiences of this church family. 

Transcript

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This entire work, my entire ministry here has been an incredible privilege. And I say that to all of you. It has been a wonderful privilege to be your pastor, but I say that especially to our youngest disciples, our kids and our teenagers. The kids and the youth of First Giannis Methodist Church of Downtown Little Rock have changed my life, truly. My understanding of myself, my calling, and God has been transformed because of y'all. This morning, this morning I want to share just a few of those lessons, a few of those transformations with all of you, five of them to be exact, if that's okay. And so my first lesson, the first lesson I've learned here at First United Methodist Church is that no one's call is ever set in stone. As most of you know, my ministry at First United Methodist Church did not start with kids. I was actually called here to be the pastor of neighboring, which was a role with our adults to help them learn and fellowship and have outreach so they could be good neighbors to help make Little Rock a place where all God's children can thrive. This was a part-time position, it was perfect. I just welcomed my third baby, which is now a sweet little seven-year-old over there. Hey, sweetie. He's not into this, that's cool. And the position was really, really fun. The staff was great, the work was really rewarding. I started small groups, I led studies, I created space where people could simply come and get to know each other. However, as we were coming out of COVID, we had a vacancy in the role of uh children's minister, which I was happy to help fill for a time until our leadership could find someone more permanent. And the problem was the more I did the job, the less I wanted them to find that permanent person. The more I did the job, the louder God's voice got that I was meant to have the children as my congregation. I couldn't ignore the joy I felt when I was immersed in the creativity and energy and challenge of ministry with kids. And I can remember my phone call to David when I told him that I believed that I was meant to do this work. I was absolutely terrified. I was worried David wouldn't let me do this work because I didn't have the right education for it. I had very little experience of pastoring kids, and I already had a job at this church. But here's the thing about David he's an incredibly supportive friend and supervisor who allows those around him to take big risks without the fear of retribution or blame. Anytime I come to David with an idea or a challenge or a major shift, he offers his insight and then gives permission. And that's what he did after I made that phone call. He asked me some thoughtful questions and then he agreed to take my proposal to SPRC, and then that SPRC allowed to have my interview, and then a couple weeks later, my job title changed to pastor to kids and their families. A job title that I will forever be so proud to have had. Thank you, David. Thank you, David, for hearing me and trusting me, not just as my senior pastor, but as my friend. The gift you gave me, and that, yes, is one of the greatest of my life. The second lesson I have learned is that numbers don't always tell the truth. It took less than a year for me to ask David if I could also be the youth pastor here. It was, it just made sense for me at the time. We were without a youth pastor, and if I was gonna disciple and teach and love these kids as children, I didn't want to hand them off to somebody else when they got to be teenagers. I wanted to do the whole thing. I wanted to be their pastor until they graduated, and luckily David said yes again. It did not take me long to figure out that youth ministry is a lot different than children's ministry. I already knew these teens. I loved these teens, but they were busy. School and soccer and baseball and volleyball and clubs and ACTs and learning to drive and volunteer hours and friends, their lives were full, and church was just part of the fullness. To be honest, it became easy for me to believe that I had failed when we had to postpone a youth night or cancel a retreat. But here's what I learned. Every year, when it came time for these youth to put their faith into action, they were down. Whether it was shopping for angel tree gifts or waking up super early to serve breakfast at Quaw Paw Quarter or giving up an entire week of their summer for Ozark Mission Project, these students showed up. I mean, just last week we took a group of 10 youth to OMP for six days. Six days of hard work in the heat and actually in the rain, all of it. Alongside other churches, we completed 43 projects. But more than these projects, I watched these students engage their faith in beautiful ways, serving out of a deep love of God and their neighbor. The same teens who calendars could not always make room for a devotional on Sunday night, gave up an entire week of their very, very precious summer to serve. And I realized that all along I had probably been measuring the wrong thing. Faithfulness was never about who filled the seats, it was about who shows up when it counts. The third lesson I learned is that God's light will shine, sometimes because of me, but usually despite me. Faithfulness does not always wait until kids can go to mission camp to show up. Sometimes it shows up in small hands on a quiet Sunday morning. A little over a year ago, I'd gathered all the kids in children's church on a Sunday morning. And we have the same pattern, friends, in children's church every week. Children's church is that time, really just during the sermon where we take kids out so they can have some age-appropriate lesson. Do y'all like children's church? Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. And so we go to children's church, and every time we go in, what do we do first when we get in there? We light our candle, we do sing a song, but we light our candles first, right? We light our candles, we put them on the candle rack. There's a specific candle rack, and you go sit on a rug, and what do you sit on on the rug? A circle, right? So we have a big rug with lots of circles. We do that every single time. So candle, rack, sit down, and then we do sing our song. And so that Sunday was like every other Sunday. We lit our candles, we put them on the rack, we sat on our circle, and we sang a song. And that week the song was This Little Light of Mine. I love this little light of mine because we get to make up our own words. Um, we make up all the different places we want God's light to shine. And it God's light has shown a lot of places around the world through the eyes of these children. Yes. And so we were singing this little light of mine when one of the little girls got up and she walked over to the candles. And I said, Oh no, sweetie, we already lit our candles. We need to go sit down on our circle. And then she uh began to take every candle off of the rack. And I was like, no, sweetie, sweetie, the candles belong on the rack. And then she began to carry the candles away, and I was like, sweetie, no, like, no, this is not what we're doing right now. Please put the candles back, sit down. I'm doing all of this while I'm trying to lead the kids in this little lot of mine. Okay? And then she walks over to each individual child and she hands them one of the small battery-lit vote of lights. And she hands one to each child, and then she hands one to me. And she turns to me and she smiles and she says, Now God's light is shining. We can sing. Every step she took, I tried to stop, my friends. And yet she was determined to allow God's light to shine, despite my efforts. So she patiently ignored my redirection until God's light shone bright enough that even I was left in awe. The fourth lesson I have learned in this church is that the church is as much yours as it is mine. The kids have a sweet worship area down in the children's arena, but we've done our best to make each of our major worship spaces uh welcoming to our kids. And in this space it's been really easy, right? You walk in and you can see this whole area that is just meant for young people, and a whole area over there that's meant for babies. A kid can walk in here and know they are welcomed and seen in this space. But to be honest, the sanctuary's been a little bit harder. We can't take out pews in the sanctuary to put up a cute little kids' area. We've done our best. We've created a little uh worship station in the back where they can make their own worship pack, but it's a little bit hard in that space to make sure that they feel seen and welcome. We've done a lot of communicating around why kids are needed in the worship space, even when they're loud, even when they're wiggly. But to be honest, I wasn't always sure we were achieving this goal of creating a worship space where kids truly belonged. That is until one day when John Gill came up to me after worship. John was a beloved member of this congregation who passed away recently. A man who reminded me so deeply of my own grandfather, whose name was also John, that I often wanted to call him Big John, which was my name for my own grandfather. So John comes up to me and he says, Now, Brittany, you know what my favorite part of the worship service is? And to be honest, friends, it could have been a lot of things. It could have been a lot of things. He could have had a very intellectual answer that his favorite part of the worship service was the really compelling sermons. Or he might be teasing me, which was always a possibility, that his favorite part was when the kids left for children's time. Or it might have been authentic, that his favorite part was music, something he cared deeply about. And I honestly did not have enough energy to guess. I didn't even guess what Mr. John wanted to say. I said, Why don't you just tell me, John, what's your favorite part of the service? And he looked at me and he said, My favorite part of the worship service is right after the offering, when all those kids come running back in. I asked him why. And he said that watching them run back in reminds him who this church truly belongs to. In that moment, I knew we had achieved it. I knew John had seen the vision we had cast, and I knew he was right. That the kids loved this place and that they belonged in this place as much as anybody else. The final lesson I have learned is that our call to care for the kids and the youth is the best and holiest responsibility we have. If John gave me eyes to see that our church belongs to our children, it was a four-year-old who taught me what exactly we were being entrusted with. This one happened actually just a few weeks ago. Some of you were probably there. I was trying to teach a Sunday school lesson. You can see a theme here, attempting to do things. I was trying to teach a Sunday school lesson when one of our pre-K kids came up and he just stood right here next to me. At first, I tried to kind of shoe him back to his seat. Uh uh then I invited him just to go sit back down very kindly, but finally I just accepted it. He wasn't talking, he was just standing there, and that was the least of my worries, to be honest. And so I continued to teach the lesson. It was a good lesson, I will say. I was teaching him about the early church and how they shared everything. I was changing lives, I think. Finally, I stopped to take a breath. And I stopped, I stopped to take a breath, and I felt this gentle tap on my arm, and a tiny voice said, Will you hold my God for me? Huh? I said, What? And he said it even clearer. Will you hold my God for me? And when I looked down, I saw a little hand holding a tiny Jesus. And so I said, Of course I'll hold your God for you. Of course I will. And I carefully placed that tiny Jesus in my pocket. And to be honest, it felt a little bit heavier than a little piece of rubber should. As if I could feel the weight of what that child truly asked me. The trust he put in me, the faith he had in me when he asked me to hold his God for just a few precious moments. And friends, isn't that our sacred calling as grown-ups in the lives of these young people? To hold their God until they are big enough and strong enough to carry God around with them on their own. This has been my task. This has been my task. Every Sunday, these young people are asking all of us to hold their God, to care for their faith, to nurture their faith, to celebrate, to learn alongside them. This is the holy responsibility we have all been handed. Friends, thank you again for allowing me to share these lessons and stories with you. And as I prepare to go, I just want to leave you with a few questions. Will you help these kids hear the surprising call of God? Will you help these young people celebrate their faithfulness in whatever form it appears? Will you help them shine the light of God? Will you continue to make the church their home? Will you hold God for these young people? Thanks for allowing me to walk this holy journey with you over these past years. It has been the great privilege of my life, friends. Thank you.