Vocation

Our local paper recently did a piece on Shaun Hover. If you want to read the entire piece, click here. Here is an excerpt of the article.

Hover took a second course of study — on missionary development and leadership training — at YWAM and then designed and led his own outreach trip to Barcelona, Spain. The city attracts young skateboarders from around the world every summer.

“A lot of them are lost and looking for anything ... going from party to party. We got to know so many people,” he said. “I got to sit down with guys for coffee and tell them, ‘This is what I see happening in your life and you know it’s not good.’ I’d let them know God loves them. I’d talk about the good qualities God gave them and they’d share their struggles and open up to me.”

Drifting through life

Josh Graves, teaching minister for Rochester Church of Christ, said young people — especially those living in affluent communities — need to hear that message. He said some young adults today “stretch” their adolescence into their 20s and drift from “pipe dream to pipe dream, living week to week” without using their talents or becoming genuinely engaged in society. “We’ve got a whole generation now that have been living off the hard work of parents and grandparents. There are some Gen-Xers and Milleniums that are engaged, but there is a huge chunk of folks who are just drifting,” Graves said.

Hover spoke to 250 middle school and high school students last weekend at Rochester Church of Christ, incorporating his skateboard into his message.

Calling

I ate dinner last night with two friends: Craig and Mark. Craig works at Duke as the assistant Dean of the Chapel. Mark is a minister for a Baptist Church in VA. Of course, I'm a Church of Christ Minister.

After talking in great detail about college basketball (something we could've discussed all night), the subject turned to calling.

"Did you think you'd ever become a minister," I asked?

"No," responded Craig. "I was working as a broadcast play-by-play voice for North Carolina (he loves to tell the story of playing pick up ball against Marian Jones) before I went to study theology and ministry."

"Me neither," said Mark. "I was a Business major in undergrad, worked in Atlanta before I decided I wanted to study theology and ministry. My family was quite shocked."

I talked about my difficult path of deciding what I wanted to do. First, I wanted to major in English. Then history. Then English. Then theology and ministry. Finally, I ended up getting a degree in history, with minors in the other two before I went off myself to study theology and ministry. I thought I would coach college basketball for the rest of my life (even spent one year at ACU doing just that while working on a masters degree).

Things never turn out how we plan. And that, in my experience, is the great thing about being alive.

Towards the end of the conversation, something hit me. All three of us knew that we were doing exactly what God, for this season of our lives, was calling us to do. Not many people can say that. I consider it humbling that I feel as if I'm doing something that allows me to be the best human God created me to be (most days anyways). There are so many things that I'm not good at, that take the life right out of my spirit. But l love serving God's church. I would not rather be doing anything else.

"Don't ask what the world needs. Instead, ask what makes you come alive. What the world needs is people who've come alive."

"The glory of God is a person come fully alive."