Confessions of an Emerging Leader

So I've now been in Austin over two months. Yeesh. And things have definitely begun to be more consistent. I feel like I have steady relationships at this point (in some ways) and am learning what my faith looks like on a day to day basis in a setting that I truly have never been faced with. I've been thinking about this post for a long while now... but am just now beginning to put into words what this experience has been like... this will in many ways be a continual post in order for me to process this new year and new lessons learned (or continually being learned)...

1. Being an Emerging Leader is a privilege and blessing that I could not have imagined.

I'll be honest... some days it doesn't feel like it, but we all know feelings are deceptive so I try not to linger there. There is a level of gratitude I have for getting to be a part of this program that I couldn't express on my blog. When I think about the end vision of what the church is hoping to accomplish through this residency, I am beyond excited and honored to be a part of fleshing that out.

2. Emerging Leaders is NOTHING like the Forge.

To tell people I was in a leadership/discipleship program last year and then tell them what I do now could sound a little redundant. I don't think it could be farther from my daily reality. When I think of the Forge, I think about the intense community and incredible teachers who spoke into our lives and just pushed and prepared us for the world in which I am now living. Doing what I do now, without the foundation of the Forge or the things I learned there, would be a freaking disaster. Multiple times a day I pull from the storehouse of Truth I received there in order to live boldly and courageously in the world I am faced with.

This could be a poor analogy (or fabulously brilliant) but the Forge was more of the boot camp before you go into battle. It prepares you and tells you of what to expect and even forces you to work with others on how you will fight once you're on the front lines. Emerging Leaders is the front lines. At times you are fighting alone, at times you can see your other team members... but at the end of the day you're still in a fierce battle and you wake up the next day to engage again and again and again... there is no running away from the battle. You're there and you've been prepared... so you fight.

3. Live out your design... wait, what?

In the Forge, I got a very clear idea of how God has designed me as a person and got to live that out in the midst of my community there. In Emerging Leaders I am forced to live that out in front of people with all sorts of failures and successes in such a vulnerable way. In the Forge, your failures were welcomed and then afterwards you felt so clearly the love of others that when you fail with people who don't have that level of commitment to you, your only source of security and reaffirmed identity can be found in the Word. It's a sweet place to be. Getting to really delve deeply into the ways God has been molding me and growing me over the past 10 years even, I am able to then see where (though a very small glimmer of it) God is leading me. There are things I am passionate about, such as seeing the Gospel radically transform the world we live in, that I get to be a part of everyday. That is a very broad passion but practicing what that looks like for Kimberly Ginnings specifically is a journey I have loved being on. But I'll save all that for another post.

Goodness, 3 things and look how long this baby is! I'll give one random piece of advice for all the Christmas music junkies out there. Rosie Thomas' Christmas album is magnificent. Go check it out. :)