A Holiday Break!

Taking a time out from writing about the drama ministry this post.

Tis' the season to what? Eat too much? Over spend? Be busier than ever? Fret over gifts and time with family and high expectations?

I am taking a break from all of that! I decided it is not worth it. We have a truly blessed reason to love one another and God during this holiday. Truly because He first loved us. He sent His son to show us the ultimate act of love.

I was baptized two weeks ago, really, for the third time. People were a little surprised. But it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever done. See God has been changing my heart. He has been radically pouring His love into me, pursuing me with loving tenacity until I fully received all the love that my heart could take from Him and spilling over. He has been healing me for the past several years and finally I can RECEIVE His love! I am undone, really.

I am my beloved's and He is mine.

I don't just love God, He loves me back, all of me. I can not express how peaceable that is for me.

Bless you!

Tree, dead girl, and demon.

Exposing our children to radical evangelism.

It's hard to believe that our kids were so young when this all started. LJ was 12, Jeremiah 10, Caleb 9, and Bethany 8. Whats even funnier was how we double and triple cast them. Bethany really was all three of those roles the first year tree, dead girl, and demon. I love that Kari didn't mind at all having my kids in the drama.

I wish I could say that Lionel and I knew exactly what we were doing when we put our kids in ministry with passionate and excited young adult believers. When I look back on it I think, genius! Genius God! He certainly did know, even though we were clueless. He knew that my kids hearts would be stirred at very young ages for lost and hurting people. He knew that they would be following the example of college students that were fully committed and yet desperate for Him. He knew that week after week they would get on their faces before the Lord, just like the rest of us pouring their heart out to Him, asking Him to do the work, asking Him to save the lost, asking Him to provide and meet our teams needs and to bring people to the outreach.

And when God did show up, and oh how He did show up, He knew what that would teach them about His faithfulness, about doing His work not our own good ideas, about answered prayer.

Over the years our family has been involved in several outreaches of this magnitude and it has been the testimony of our family that we trust God through each step. But the amazing thing is how that has spilled over into every area of our lives. So our kids want to go on a mission trip? They trust God to provide. They want to play instruments and minister in worship? God provides instruments, guidance, ability, and opportunity. They want there friends to know Christ, they one by one begin to come and God changes them. They want to step forward in obedience with something they have never done before and because of God's past faithfulness they have His confidence to move forward with Him.

One day a few years back Jeremiah had some big things going on that God really came through for him on, He said "I knew God would do it because I prayed and He always answers our prayers!"

Thank you for that Lord.

The other day LJ my oldest son said, "mom you ruined us for being normal teenagers and relating to kids in our high school(public) and the things they care about, you kept us with older people that were already out of those issues, and I am so glad."

Praise you Lord.

I had no idea what God was doing with them. I am glad because Lionel and I can not take the credit for what God has done in us and in our family through serving Him and ministering the gospel.

So go forward, serve Him and follow Him, you may have an idea of what things He can do, but you have no idea of ALL the things He will do.

Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think!

Spiderman Satan scaling the set; PRODUCTION.

Some things are just burned into my memory. This is one of those things I hope to never forget.

We sat around the table, Kari, me, Lionel and a few guys that would make up our crew. I was really excited to get input from the collective genius as well as vision and heart. Kari and I had shared back and forth plenty and it was evident God was aligning our vision, but there was so much more to our team.

Another thing was it just so happened that as gifted as everyone was for their prospective jobs, there wasn’t a lot of theater experience at the table. Which really didn’t seem to bother any of us, well ok maybe me, but only for second; so we began brainstorming.

We had lots of interesting ideas. Grand erect sets and buildings, cool revolving rooms that would be constructed, pyrotechnics was thrown in there as well, an idea that had come from the college pastor via Kari expressing his thoughts and ideas. Then my favorite of all, to hoist Lionel, our Satan, on a rigging (fly) system in order that he might be able to scale the set like Spiderman! Hmm, let that soak in a minute. I just have to say here I remember thinking through each of these ideas sincerely asking myself and God was there something in this and to not let me pass by anything He was saying to me. One look at Kari and a wink from her bright sparkling eyes assured me that even though we loved the extreme nature and excitement of these ideas, we would need to set out on our own to design the look and flow, then hand out tasks as necessary.

But before I move on there are great nuggets here. I love that anything was possible. I love that there was no holding back and we could let our imaginations run wild. I love that God would use a group that had never done theater before and give them the courage to do everything they could dream up. I love that Lionel would have been willing to harness up and FLY! I love that we had the heart and energy of THE CREATOR flowing through us and because of HIM nothing was out of the question.

Keep dreaming Kristen. Ok Lord!

Next Post: Tree, dead girl, and demon. Exposing our children to radical evangelism!

Rehearsals, something like a Richard Simons work out video?!

Well we weren't Sweaten' to the Oldies, but we could have given Denise Austin a run for her money!

I am cracking up this morning as I write this because thinking back at all the different ways we "bonded" as a team that first year, oh my goodness. I don't know that I can paint it now in words, but I will give it a try.

As the director I had to gauge my team and the skill levels, assess where we were at and where we needed to be while at the same time teach the blocking, help with character development and grow ALL of our abilities. I had in my brain the wonderful warm up techniques of working with previous directors, a packet Kari gave me that someone had given to her, pretty much stage basics 101, and my own ideas/eagerness/craziness. However when it came right down to it, that first Saturday morning at Northwest Hills walking in the door greeting all the expectant faces, including the smiling Kari, I had a huge realization...I AM THE DIRECTOR! (Hard swallow.) No, Lord, You be the director. That really was my response, not trying to be spiritual, I had to pass the busk to someone, He was all that was left.

Yes, Kristen, now you are getting.

We started those first few weeks with prayer of course, then worship, then lot's of breathing exercises and then worked into moving around the room for a while and then several games that were very helpful for new actors. I was stalling. It's true, we were having all day practices, I am not kidding about that either and I don't think I blocked more than two scenes that first day. Over an hour of warm ups. I was scared to death. But I didn't want to be. I had it stuck in my mind that we REALLY needed to be warmed up. Kari had this awesome worship music that had great rhythm to it and she loved to dance so after breathing and stretches I asked her if she would help us MOVE more. Twenty or so of us kicking and jumping and turning and swaying and doing our best to keep up with Kari, picture something like a very ill coordinated line dance.(Except our few gifted dancers of course.) To anyone looking in on us I am sure they would have thought they stumbled across a combo aerobics/beginning theater class. Sometimes we had one of our guys lead us in military drills, not kidding about that either. Sometimes we just shouted a bunch; I was really trying to stress the importance of projecting.

All in all, we were bonding. In the Lord, as friends, learning about one another, building trust and sensitivity, it was beautiful. And the bonus was the play was coming along. Woo hoo! And I learned so much from each person on that team. I am crying now because I can see each face and I am so grateful and in awe of how they placed their trust, in the Lord of course, but then in Kari and me. We did not have it all together, there was no good reason why either of us should be the leaders over any of them, but that God had made it so and so, we all gave what we had to give and prayed for God to come through with what we didn’t. And He did. God CAME through for us, HUGE milestone lesson in my life.

Kristen you don’t come through for me, I come through for you. Thank you Lord.

Next Post: Spiderman Satan scaling the set; PRODUCTION!

Service with a Smile

Kari Zyp Patterson: Service with a Smile!

One of the most amazing things God did in my life during this period of time was giving me the gift and honor of serving with Kari.

I didn’t know at the time that she would become my friend, my co-laborer, my defender, my safety net, my encourager and greatest fan, a beautiful extender of grace. I also didn’t realize at the time the magnitude of this production and what that meant in her life.

A full time campus missionary, a bible teacher, disciple-er, and you may not know this but at the time a School of Ministry student as well, she submits to the Lord and the college pastor and agrees to take on the drama. Now the even greater thing to me was it was a complete step of faith as she had not really done formal theater. But God had given the vision to Mark that she would be leading a Spring Drama and she stepped up to the plate.

Over those few months of preparation, Kari and I spent a lot of time together, either in email or practices or meetings at Ronnie Joes (Red Horse). Kari really began to love on me. God showed me through Kari His heart for how we minister with one another and serve in love. With a smile. No mater what came our way, no matter how tired, no matter the pressure or stress, I never felt anything other than love and grace from her.

There is that familiar saying in ministry that sheep bite and they can. But I find it has been much less when they could only mostly respond in love to a leader that was CONSTANTLY washing their feet, so to speak.

It’s really good for me to recall this today as ministry has become more than overwhelming to me. But looking back I can see the hand of God not just in the fruit from the actual out reaches, but His good favor on our relationships as a team. I don’t think we really knew how many total that first year, we were not interested in numbers just grateful for the people. But seeing it from today’s view I can count on one hand over the years the times we have had any real struggles with the people we were serving with and ALL of those times were completely protected by God with hearts and relationships fully recovered. That is a miracle as we have worked with hundreds of different people. Thank you Lord!

As for me, I was healing. And I have to say that this has been the overall experience in serving with most everyone here at Calvary through the drama ministry. We love God by loving each other and together purpose to love our community. Extending to one another the beautiful service of God, with a smile!

I can not finish with out saying THANK YOU to ALL of you that have served along side us over the years! It has been an absolute pleasure.

Next post...Rehearsals, something like a Richard Simons work out video?!

The First Meeting

Question: Why are you the director?

Answer: I don’t really know.

The first meeting was held at the Calvary office. Walking into the room that day I can recall a few distinct things. One: I was happy to be there. Two: I felt very easy about everything. Three: I didn’t have any great expectations and I was ready to do pretty much any task. Meaning even no task at all if Kari so desired.

We sat down and there were maybe a dozen people that ended up pulling chairs around that table, likely more than that because my family and I made up six. Kari began sharing and she passed packets around the table. There was the usual practical information, some dates and places, some unknowns, and lists.

To my surprise and honestly utter shock Kari had already assigned many duties to people. As I scanned the list I thought back to the night I filled out the application. What had I put on there? Oh, I really wanted to remember now. Ok, I did not have a ton of theater experience in comparison to many I had worked with. I don’t think I embellished. I am not a huge fan of rattling my own resume so I think if anything I down played my theater history. I hoped. But my name was on the list a little more than I had been expecting, A LOT MORE. Then I remembered checking pretty much every box in the list and Kari had put me in just about everything I marked. Why did I do that?! My stomach began to flutter.

I tried very hard not to let my face show my uneasiness. To say I was UNEASY, that’s like jumping into a pool and saying you’re a little wet. I exchanged glances with Lionel and he just looked at me and then back at the sheet; which was one of those moments when I really did wish I could read his mind. But he seemed fine.

We made introductions around the table and when I finished mine, I noticed a person across the table was frequently studying me. I half smiled at him when I looked up with no smile returned and then decided to not let myself be distracted. I had other things my mind was wrapping itself around and I needed to hear what Kari was saying. She had a partial script down loaded from the internet that needed work. She would be in contact with the writer to see if we could adapt it. We had short time constraints (of course) so we basically needed to jump in right away. Our next meeting would be auditions. Whew, I was tired just thinking about it. Ok here I am Lord, use me?

After the meeting I sensed we were to linger a bit to talk to Kari. I was right. The person that had been sitting across from me made a beeline to Lionel and I. He looked directly at me and asked, “why are you the director?” I was so knocked over by that question. I think mostly because of the directness and also because I really didn’t know. I didn’t have to answer though because he began touting to me his own resume and firing questions that had to do with drama ministries and teams in the area and did I know or had I worked with them? No. No I did not know, no I had not worked with anything local, I wasn’t even from around here. But I didn’t have to answer because he kept talking. Me and Lionel exchanged glances again. This time I knew we were thinking the same thing, let’s get out of here. Having four kids is the easiest excuse for making a quick exit.

Kari stopped us on the way out, “I’ll email the script to you ok?” She was so sweet and so happily expectant. "Sure,” I replied returning her excitement. “It needs an ending,” she explained. “Ok, I will take a look at that.” And after a few more words exchanged we departed.

And the Lord began to stir me. “Don’t back away from this Kristen, I AM in this.” And He was.

Anonymous Back-row Believers

The beginning is a very good place to start. I want to share about the birth of the drama ministry but in order to fully appreciate my perspective I feel the need to start at the real beginning.

Lionel and I moved to Corvallis in December of 1999. Whoa time flies. We came here a little worn and battered from full time ministry and some difficult times we had faced (those are stories for another time).

Needless to say churches had left a bitter taste in our mouth and towards Christians we felt an even greater disdain. But we were responsible parents and had a strong conviction to raise our kids in church. We set out to find a church where we could hear the word, enjoy the worship and blend in. Actually fade completely into the background.

That is exactly what we could do at Calvary. For about a year we would check our kids in, sit in the back and leave during the last worship song or prayer or anything that alerted us to nearing the end of the service. We were not looking to meet people, had no desire to get "plugged in" and we didn't really want people to know we had been youth pastors, not at all.

God put some people in my path that first year however that did open my heart a little. One was Kellie Dykast who I met my first day of work at OSU Federal Credit Union, she just so happened to be training me. The other was another woman I ended up working with every single day Lynn Christiansen. Both women were very sweet and incredibly easy Christians to be around. It was refreshing and surprising.

Slowly God began to heal us through the amazing bible teaching and by His spirit. We realized that we could not stay in our back row slump and needed more but we were fearful and not ready to reach out to people. The way we saw it we had two choices, fully commit to Calvary and the ministry there wholeheartedly OR leave and find a smaller place we could begin to serve and get our lives again centered around ministering.

One day after praying for a few weeks about this our son Jeremiah, at the wise age of nine said, "dad we were closer to God when we were in the ministry." It was like a hot iron to our soul. Those words burned in us. Because he was right, because we knew it, and because we had not been fooling our children at all.

We decided we would work in a ministry that we could do as a family, that was not a weekly commitment and that we could get out of. I know, we sound like winners right? But that is where our hearts were. SO we joined the Barbecue ministry. It was a good start. Gene and Trish were kind. It was practical service and the kids enjoyed it. It was also only half the year. We were both stunned by one thing in particular Gene said at the first meeting. They did not want anyone to get burned out serving.

Really? Did they mean that? Was this just lip service or was he sincere. We had been so abused as laymen and even more so as staff. We had been at everything and doing all that we could or should. Serving was what serious Christians did, all the time, serve the pastor, serve the body, serve the facility, serve the community, try to serve your family, occasionally have time to serve your marriage.

About four months after the barbecue season ended we read an announcement for the Spring Drama. I think my heart began to beat a little faster when I read that the first time. Something was stirring in me and Lionel too. I was very excited. I got the applications and filled them out for all of us. We talked to the kids and they were excited. We thought it would be so fun if we all had little parts or did something back stage or even helped make sets. We were willing to do anything.

The very next week at church we looked for the girl that was going to lead the ministry. I asked around and someone told me she was cleaning the bathrooms (it makes me smile just thinking of that). We finally found her, Kari Zyp, blond hair, black trash bags in hand. We introduced ourselves and she told us about the meeting then we went on our merry way.

To be continued...

Come what may...

Three simple yet challenging, life changing, extraordinary words to live by.

With the completion of the drama in May it has taken me some time to wrap my mind around all that God has done this year. I say this year because Lionel and I seem to funtion October to October, so yes this month marks another new beginning! So Happy New Year!

This blog was originally set up to help our team with announcements while we were updating the website at hisacts.com but I feel it has been sitting here waiting for stories and life to be shared.

Come what may was the final phrase of our lead character in the Wizard of Uz. Based on the story of Job our character faced hard times, rejection, pain, loss of family and friends, depression, discouragement and the loss of his business and finances as well. In all of that holding fast to the faith he so boldly lived out.

I was constantly stirred by those words when our pastor was preaching through the book of Job last year and I heard them over and over in my head while writing the script. But what I did not do was let them seep into my soul.

I loved the sound of those words put together. I loved the passion in which our pastor would deliver his message and with heartfelt sincerity repeat the words "come what may..." often. I loved closing the drama with the very words that could summarize Jobs relationship with God, yes Lord we will worship you come what may. But I had not even begun to experience the living of those words.

We talk a lot about surrender in our evangelical circles. We sing about it, we acknowledge it as the way to walk daily with the Lord and we try to accomplish it. But recently God has been showing me a new way to surrender that seems to buzz around my much adored phrase.

Oh you mean these words are imprinted on my brain because you are trying to speak to me Lord? Hmm. Ok good. I get it.

Oh you mean even when I am not enjoying what the day holds for me? Come what may. Ok Lord, yeah I get that.

Oh and even when I feel I have the right to something and you are telling me to lay it down, no matter my feelings about it, no matter the consequences, no matter the work involved? Oh, ok Lord, alright, come what may.

Oh and even when you are reminding me that if I am to glory it will be through suffering that I may show others how amazing You are and what You were able to do inspite of hard times? OH, hmm, ok Lord, come what may.

Oh and even though I am faced with the scariest thing I could imagine and I am overwhelmed with so great a sense of loss, desperation and helplessness you want me to look to you and say yes, Lord, I love you, I trust you, I will worship you, COME WHAT MAY!

In His goodness God has told me up front how to respond to all the things He will allow in my path. If we don't have a paycheck for a few months, He is still our provider. If all of our cars break down, He will still get us where we need to go. If our children are hurt or even worse, they really belong to Him anyways. If this world spits back at us every cruel and rotten thing it can, I know exactly what the Lord has asked of me.

Blessed be the name of the Lord! Come what may!