All up on the kool-aid.

Don’t bury your talents.

I really want to get this out there. From my blogspot:

 

My heart loves weekends like this. Being able to share your gifts not only w/ your group but with other people and groups outside your comfort zone. Isn’t that what God wanted us to do? Share the gifts and talents that God has blessed us with to everyone.

PNYM has been a small parish-based community since July 2002. We are not a known world-wide group, nor do we come in huge numbers. For 8 years we have been serving our community and reached out to different groups and people no matter how old or young.

Being a leader is not just a prestige title. Jesus was a leader and a follower. He followed his Father, and served the sick, the poor, the rich, women, & children. He was a servant leader. What does it mean to be a servant leader? Well, I think PNYM has been a great example of servant leaders. I don’t say this out of bias, but because I have witnessed and experienced it in this community.

I always look forward to the annual Life in the Spirit Seminars, but being able to serve outside of our community has been such a rewarding and humble experience. I remember going to the AFCCPC conference for the first time in 2003. It was something I always look back on and feel a sense of warmth and peace. It was the biggest conference to date. So many groups came together for the purpose of one thing: glorify the Lord as one body in Christ. It didn’t matter what group we represented on our shirts, or what states we came from, or the number of people in our community -we were ONE. As the years passed, it seemed as if most of the groups changed, and it didn’t appear as one community anymore. It turned out to be like a gig for some groups. I have been going to every Regional and National conferences since 2003 and I always go hoping to feel that sense of unity with other communities once again. Don’t get me wrong, I loved every single conference and gained something different from each one, but the atmosphere is different.

Just because we belong to different groups, or may have a title position doesn’t give you the superiority amongst anyone else. Your service to the Lord isn’t just within your community. A leader is also a follower -one who listens, opens up to receive, and learn. I feel like some groups go in to do their thing and leave. Sometimes it ends up just PNYM staying for the entire weekend at these conferences. What if God wanted to give you a message through a song or talk, a testimony from someone else other than the people in your group? What have you been missing? Maybe a certain message from God was hindered because of your pride. Do you not want to listen to other groups because you’re thinking to yourself, “I’m a leader in so and so ministry, so what they have to say doesn’t matter” Sometimes it doesn’t even occur to some people how prideful they can get with their own ministry and instantly shut themselves off from listening to anyone but their own ministry.

Most of the stuff I have learned or the messages I have received have often been from listening. I have spoken before my own group, before other people outside my ministry, to my peers, and the youth. I have shared my testimony to PNYM, and other youth groups because I feel like my story, faith, and gifts from the Lord shouldn’t be limited to just my community. I have received God’s messages from other ministries, conferences, different retreats, and even from people much younger than me. To receive the Lord requires openness to not only your community, but to everyone. 

You’ll be surprised at who God uses to speak to you.  I have received affirmations and messages in unexpected ways. In PNYM, wehave given confirmation retreats to kids in Brooklyn a few times, we have done mission retreats for Native Americans in New Mexico, leadership retreats to kids in Vancouver, and participated in the AFCCPC conferences within the past years. Open yourself up to whatever opportunity God gives. Sometimes it will come out of your comfort zone, but if you are willing to open up and strip yourself off your pride, of your own group, you will be able to see the amazing beauty and blessings from God. It’s out there, with different people and within different ministries. Serving Native Americans in New Mexico must’ve been the most challenging, but to accept that challenge with other people from our ministry, and witness miracles from a culture in which Catholicism is not practiced was beautiful. In serving, we received more than what we expected. 

I love PNYM with all my heart. I have seen many of us go out and serve not only our community but other ministries as well. I guess that is one thing that separates us from other communities, it’s that we are open to serve not only our group but to others. I’m sure we are not the only ministry, but I gain so much happiness in the efforts of everyone in this ministry in their willingness and open hearts to other ministries. Because from what we have learned in serving our community, in being leaders and at the same time followers, is that the Lord gave us these talents, gifts, and even this small ministry to go out and be servant leaders. Our gifts shouldn’t be limited to ourselves, and when we do serve, we should be open to receive the Lord from others without any sort of discrimination.  I get so sad when I see some groups who do their session and leave as soon as their session is done, as if it were a concert. Memories of 2003 conference and how we all served and listened to one another, seeing each other not as different communities but as one body in serving our Lord will forever be in my heart. Maybe in one of the future conferences, God will surprise us. It’s such an amazing conference to gather as one, yet some don’t see the opportunity and blessing of the weekend. It’s a shame, really.

Thank you, PNYM for your openness, your willingness to answer God’s call to serve wherever or to whoever He has called you to. I have learned through these 8 years how to be a servant leader as Jesus was and is. There is not one community that is better, or bigger than the next. Our purpose as leaders, servants, and evangelizers is lost when we hinder our gifts and close our hearts to the blessings of God from our other brothers and sisters outside our ministries and leadership position. We build each other up through Christ and through one another. 

How do you love someone with a closed heart? How do you see with blinds? How do you hear with earplugs?

Lead. Serve. Listen. Follow.

²⁴“Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. ²⁵So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’

²⁶“His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? ²⁷Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

²⁸” ‘Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. ²⁹For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. ³⁰And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Matthew 25:14-30

TC&GB <3