Hello!
I can’t believe it’s already been four months! It feels like just yesterday that I was attending my first Sunday as the summer intern here at The Bridge Church. This summer has gone so fast, and now we are approaching September in just a few short weeks. For me that means that my time here at The Bridge has come to end. In a couple weeks I will heading back to Abbotsford to continue my leadership degree and to serve as a resident leader. Before I go though, I would like to give an update of how the summer has gone, kind of like a follow up to my introductory blog post from the beginning of May.
In my last blog post I told you all that I was excited for the new roles I would be serving in throughout the summer. This was indeed a summer of firsts: I preached, led worship, organized, planned, and hosted a worship night and four kids’ ministry events, and worked in the production booth all for the first time. Each of these experiences brought with them their own challenges, lessons to be learned, and self-awareness that I could gain. The worship night is probably the largest project that I took on because of the amount of time and planning that was required to orchestrate that event. But what made that evening possible was really the willingness of our volunteers. They all played integral roles in helping that event run smoothly and I was very grateful for their participation. This is actually something that I continued to learn over and over through the summer, that service is not only an essential part of the Christian life but is also the reason that all our various ministries are able to run.
At the beginning of May I shared that God was teaching me that leadership was supposed to look like servanthood. Over the summer I have had the opportunity to learn from and shadow many individuals in this congregation who embody this idea of service as a display of leadership. I am inspired now as I head into this new season of resident leading and my wheels are turning as to how I might be able to focus on serving the girls I will be leading as a way of blessing them.
The other major point of learning that God has had for me during this internship is the necessity of surrender. It is a pattern for me that I like to be in control of everything, and that I get quite stressed when I feel in over my head. However, with the number of projects and new things that I was involved in this summer, I had to learn to surrender the outcomes and trust that God was in control, or else I would have burned myself out from the stress. What this has looked like is that I walk myself through a few different prayers of surrender that help me reorient to who God is and what his capacity is in comparison to my own. I do these multiple times a day so that I never get too far down that tempting path of taking back control. This point of learning has been significant, I now have a healthy outlet and response to my stress. I know that I will continue reaping the fruits of this lesson for many years to come.
Overall, I am so grateful for the experiences, relationships, and lessons I have gained from this summer. Thank you church for encouraging and supporting me. I know that The Bridge will always be my home. That no matter where I go I will remember the roots that I laid here and the foundation you have given me. I will continue to be praying for you all as I go. May the Lord bless you and keep you, you are all very loved.