What do you actually DO?

"So,do you do anything else besides the Friday night outreach???"

It was a ridiculous question - of course I do! - but it was my older brother James' tongue-in-cheek way of asking what my role entails, and 'what a typical week looks like' as others of you often ask.

I answered his question (I hope!) but it got me to thinking... if, after nearly 3 years of full-time ministry with Life-Gate, my own brother still doesn't know what I do, then perhaps others are still mistified!

I decided to keep a track... I know y'all are too busy to sit down and read a blow-by-blow account of my week, so I decided to just write a summary here, but for my interest in the years to come, starting Monday next week I'm going to write a short account each day (...I'll start next week because I'm actually having a few days off to rest this week, so it definitely isn't a typical week!).

Only some of my responsibilities are routine to a week, the rest changes according to what's happening within the organisation, but here's some of the things I get up to:

• Managing our small team of staff and volunteers; making sure they have work to keep them going, building relationships with them (as the majority - at present - are not Christians) and being a listening ear and offering advice and support as they share with me;
• General admin work; writing letters, responding to correspondence we receive, and making sure our bills are paid etc;
• Grant writing - this is actually a very time consuming exercise, but one that I thoroughly enjoy! Grant writing for me, includes attending seminars and workshops to improve my skills, attending information sessions about particular grants as they arise, designing and running workshops to train and equip others to write grants, finding appropriate grants and then actually writing grant submissions to various Philanthropic groups, Council and Government (State and Federal);
• Networking with local business people, other not-for-profits and social services in order to raise the profile of Life-Gate within the community and establish business sponsorships (I do this either through attending seminars, networking luncheons and events, and also by helping to run Life-Gate hosted events to do the same);
• Fundraising events - be it a Bunnings sausage sizzle, our new annual Trivia Night & Auction, stalls at festivals etc;
• Seeking to engage more local believers as volunteers, especially for the Outreach team (through speaking at churches, networking by attending different services and something I'm still working to get up and running, a stall at Christian conferences and conventions);
• Spending time with and offering counsel to the youth (from our Friday night outreach program) who drop in during the week to talk to me;
• Preparing the "talks" (Gospel message, teaching and life-skills etc) that I give on the Friday night out our youth drop-in centre, ChillZone;
• Wading through all the "gumph" on Facebook to keep track on how all the youth are doing who we're connecting with (in order to know how to pray and what issues to folllow up with in person). Contrary to what you may be thinking, I'm not a fan of FB or reading the local newspaper, for that matter, but I know that both of these are an important source of information (in outreach, networking etc) and have therefore dubbed this part of my job as FOP time ('Finger On the Pulse').

Then there's all the other odd jobs that crop up - like helping Ps. Angel clean out the gutters (this always generates amusement from passerbys when they see us up on the roof of our first floor preimses!); following up and either fixing or finding a specialist to fix our maintenance problems; helping to organise our monthly Board Meetings and helping to write our Annual Report.

I can honestly say there's very little I don't enjoy about my ministry - there are definitely many aspects of my work that are way outside my comfort zone, but it truly is a blessing and a joy to be serving with Life-Gate and to know that I'm exactly where God wants me for now!