Well two days ago I was listening to the news on the way home from the church and heard a story about a young man who was upset with his girl friend, the young man's sister was friends with his girl friend and she was in the car with her as she pulled away after an argument. The young man was extremely angry, and he shot at the car as it pulled away trying to shoot his girl friend. A bullet made its way into the car and struck his sister and killed her. After hearing this story I thought to myself “wow, how does that happen? What does a person do when something like this happens?” I went on with my evening without giving it another thought…
Yesterday I went into the church as usual at around 8:30; Friday is an odd day at the church because it’s one that most of the ministers choose to take off. The youth minister had to take the day off for one reason or another, the sports and outreach minister never works on Friday, and neither does the discipleship minister, the executive minister, children’s minister or the preschool minister. So it was myself, the worship minister, and the senior minister in the office. We received a call that afternoon from the father of the girl who had been killed, he needed some money for the funeral and so the secretary had him come in to do some paperwork, and talk with a minister. Well the worship minister left to go give some guitar lessons, the senior minister went to visit a man that was in jail, so it was just me at the church. I was given a crash course in how they normally handled these situations, and then started freaking out. Then about fifteen minutes before the man was suppose to arrive, the discipleship minister showed up! I was saved, well I was supposed to go meet the executive minister for dinner, but they wanted me to stay for the meeting. So I did, it was me, the discipleship minister, the father, the girls step mom, and her little sister. It was heartbreaking! I sat there as we talked to them about the situation, but I was relieved to see how the church handles situations like this, we sat and talked, prayed, counseled, talked, and prayed some more. The minister stressed how, though this was a tough situation, and we would love to help them with the money, we had a process we had to go through, and we were more worried about the families long term needs (spiritual) than their immediate needs. So we arranged some counseling and prayed before they left.
Now this may not sound like that big of a deal, but it was an incredible learning experience for me personally! It was my first experience in real, tough ministry. Now over dinner I discussed it with the executive minister, and we will be helping the family out with the funeral costs…but it was important for me to see the church take care of the primary need, the spiritual wellbeing of the people that came in prior to the material need. This was an amazing experience, in which I learned a ton! Counseling in real life is a whole lot different than with classmates in intro to YM! But I am so glad that I had some training previous to dealing with this situation, the look in the little sisters eyes was heartbreaking…she was broken, but we were able to at least give her, and her family a little bit of hope that will hopefully last longer than a funeral service…
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