Winter Update Letter!

Grace and peace to you and yours!

I pray that you are receiving this letter at a time of joy and comfort this holiday season. I am writing because it is that time again. What a blessing it is to be able to share life with all of you in a variety of ways. So many things have happened since this summer, I hardly know where to start.

My summer internship at Central Ave. UMC turned out to be a fantastic experience. It has served as an opportunity to learn more about myself and God’s will for my life, as well as a springboard for future opportunities. It was designed to facilitate an exploration of calling and I discovered a calling in multi-site church development. I hope to pursue a vocation in this field of ministry but only time will tell. As a result of this discovery, I decided to drop my religion major to a minor and take additional classes of interest. So far I’ve taken a class on Entrepreneurship and a class on Personal Selling.

In addition to it being a great experience, I was able to walk away from the internship with tangible skills. One in particular is the ability to tell my story as more than a testimony, as a sermon. Since this summer, I have traveled to a couple of churches to preach and I enjoy every minute of it. Through relationships I’ve made this summer, I have been able to speak in other contexts as well, such as a Young Life leaders retreat.

Since the start of the school year, I have also been attempting to build my professional network. I’ve had the opportunity to meet with leaders in multi-site churches and church consulting from Ohio and Tennessee. The meetings are always interesting and educational. I have made some great connections! As I continue to work on models and processes to assist churches with multi-site development, I know the information gathered through these connections and the connections themselves are priceless.

Unfortunately, due to the amount of time and energy I have given to these endeavors, I’ve had to shuffle around my campus activities. I am no longer an active member of the golf team, as of the end of fall season. I will continue to support the team in the spring, however, I will not practice every day or compete. My other campus activities have continued. I lead two small groups, one as a Bible study and one as a life group. I am the Event Coordinator for the Collegiate Entrepreneur’s Organization. I sit on the Student Advisory Board for the Communication Department of the Arts and Sciences College. Last but not least, I sing in People of Worship which is an outreach ministry through the chapel.

My last new development is…a job! Beginning on January 5th, I will work for the West Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church as a conference consultant specializing in youth work. The contract runs through June and only demands 15 hours of time a week. It’s a step in the right direction!

At this point in my life, so many things change so quickly. For more frequent updates and thoughts, follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/TAShanks, on Facebook at facebook.com/tiffanie.shanks or on my blog at tiffanieinministry.blogspot.com. I’m not sure what life will look like after graduation in May but I know that God is in control. When the time is right I’ll know the plan. Until then I’m enjoying the ride!

In Christ,

Philipians 1:3
Tiffanie ♥

Merry Christmas!

When I think about Christmas I think about three things…faith, hope and love. Imagine that? I don’t think of them in that order though. See, I first think about hope. I think about what great hope the followers of Jesus in the 1st century could have in the fact that God had chosen to come down as the Son of Man to be our salvation. He came down to bring us out! But, where do we get our hope? “Faith is the substance of all things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.” Our hope comes from our faith that Jesus is the Son of God, sent by God to be crucified, dead and buried, and to rise again. But that doesn’t happen until Easter. Nowadays its only a few months between Christmas and Easter. In the 1st century there were 33 years between Christmas and Easter. 33 years of faith. 33 years of believing in things that they hadn’t seen happen yet. So, faith in what? Faith in knowing that God has sent His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Why, would God do something like that? “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” Because He loves us THAT much.

So, when I think about Christmas, why do I think about faith, hope, and love? Because that’s all we really get until Easter! We get faith that Jesus is God’s only Son, hope in God's promise to his nation, and the love of God's sacrifice.

True Affirmation

A few weeks ago, I drove to Columbus to have coffee with David Cofer, CEO of Cofer Consulting Solutions LLC. I made the trip because I wanted to get his feedback on my idea to start a consulting firm that specializes in multi-site development and change management for the local parish. After I described the idea to him, his first comment was, “Why don’t you set it up within the church instead of forming an outside agency?” When he said this my heart melted because I had thought about the possibility of building the practice within the church on my drive down. 

During the drive back to Ada, I began to think about the blessing that God provided for my calling through that meeting. What God taught me was a lesson on affirmation of calling. My thoughts took me back to before I completely understood God’s calling for my life.

Before my summer internship at Central Ave. UMC, I had recognized my passion for multi-site development in the local parish. I remember believing, in my heart of hearts, that God wanted me to understand what it was like to be a leader in the local parish and that’s why He gave me the internship. When I shared this with the people around me they began to tell me that I was jumping to conclusions. For whatever reason everyone around me was convinced that I was (or am) supposed to be a pastor and that this summer’s internship was going to prove this to me. And, every time I tried to tell them what God was telling me they would turn it around and convince me that I was telling God what I wanted instead of listening. Their justification for all of this? God uses those around us to reveal our calling to us.  In this context, this statement just seemed to rub me the wrong way. During my drive back to school, God revealed to me why.

You see, there is a difference between creating and affirming a calling. All of the people in my life who tried to tell me that I was wrong about God’s calling for my life were attempting to create a calling. It’s one thing to plant the seed, to mention that being a pastor is real option as a calling. However, trying to dissuade me from what I believe about my calling is an attempt to create a calling for my life. On the other hand, when God places something on my heart or a thought in my mind about something, and without any mention of it someone tells me exactly what I was thinking, that’s affirmation. This is what happened during my meeting with David Cofer. God affirmed my calling.

In essence, we just have to remember, that in order for a call to be affirmed it must first be discerned. Otherwise, it is simply being created. Unless, they are just planting a seed.

Psalm 119:125*

In Christ,

Reflections on Internship

Good afternoon all!

I'm sorry for neglecting the blog for a while now. As I was recovering from illness, the internship was coming to an end and my senior year at Ohio Northern was getting started, the blog fell on my list of priorities. The internship concluded with a number of changes in my life and my future.

I have decided that at this point in my life God is not calling me into ordained ministry. It is not something that I will never again consider, but at this point it will not be the next step that I take.

I'm truly feeling a call into multi-site development and change management within the local parish. Multi-site pursuits are attractive right now partially because of the cost reductions and resource utility that results. However, many times the church makes common mistakes during the organizational change process that result in excess spending instead of savings. One of the reasons and possibly the most common reason multi-site ventures fail or stumble is the lack of effective cultural change within the organization. It is something that can easily be overlooked. However, cultural change must be the first step in creating efficient and effective change that can be maintained. The posts that follow will elaborate on this issue and evidence of God's calling in my life.

Upon returning to school, I immediately dropped my religion major to a minor and picked up a minor in entrepreneurship. This is simply in an effort to better prepare myself for what God has in store for my life. The previously declared religion major is not completely necessary if I decide to go to seminary (which is probably not going to happen right away). The addition of the entrepreneurship minor provides me with the opportunity to gain some business knowledge and work on a business plan for the West Ohio Conference of the UM Church in pursuing multi-site development.

As usual I have a number of different things going on at once. I really want to host a lecture series on student to professional development through my involvement with Lambda Pi Eta (the communication honorary). I'm also actively working on a case-study research paper on multi-site development. I'm leading a small group, playing golf, sitting on the Student Advisory Board and working at Lima Senior High School.

As I continue my pursuit of God's will for my life, I humbly ask all of you for prayer. Pray that I will leverage and prioritize my life properly, that I will continue to receive guidance and remain in constant discernment. If there is anything that God leads you to do for or say to me, please, please listen. Thank you and as always...

In Christ,