Reflections on being ordained

It is odd. I think I should feel more, but I don't. I guess it is because having my calling recognized, didn't change me or who I am or what I do. It just affirmed it.

First of all, I'm so glad I chose to celebrate 30 years in ministry. It is a milestone and it is worth celebrating. It has been bittersweet: I'm so glad I celebrated 30 years and so sorry I didn't celebrate 20 or 25 years of ministry or 14 years of Pizza@Lunch or 20 years as a chaplain with juvenile delinquents – why didn't I celebrate all that? I don't want to miss another chance of celebrating anything that God is letting me a part of Him doing!

Second of all, Linda and Jim Petter and their worship team from Real Life Ministries were wonderful! They must have brought 10 people with them. I felt so blessed by their encouragement and support! Thank you so much for being such a wonderful part of my day! Pastor Mike Hogg's prayer for me after their first song moved me to tears.

The reception afterwards was wonderful as well. Vicki Frame and her daughter, Heather did a wonderful job. The place looked beautiful. I think the Cross in the City staff saw great potential in that room after what Vicki did to it.

My husband, Dean was thrilled and I think my parents think I have finally done something with myself!

Dean is having a great time, introducing me as his wife, the Reverend Dottie Cooper Hinesley.

The thing that has struck me over and over again is that I can see how being ordained – having my calling recognized and celebrated would have meant the world to me in my 20's and 30's. In my 50's, it tends to feel like it was an oversight, something I should have taken care of several years ago.

I guess, I'm glad I've finally taken care of this!

Thank you for celebrating my calling and 30 years of ministry with me!

Baptized . . . in the Jordan River

Today, I was baptized in the Jordan River.

Israel was amazing! It was amazing to be in this river, where who knows how many followers of Jesus have been baptized or re-baptized.

The Shunning – Pearland Style

I have been thinking about the ostracism and exclusion that I have been going thru and I have realized it is really a shunning.

From what I understand, a shunning is primarily an Amish practice. When children come of age and don't join the church or someone breaks the rules of the church, they are "shunned" – no one is to have any contact with them. If you are shunned and speak to someone, they don't respond or even act like you have spoken. The books I have read indicate it is just like you are not there. That's what this feels like to me.

If you know me, if you work with me, then you know I am all about working together. For years, I have tried to encouraged unity and community in Pearland. I organized a youth ministry alliance and tried to encouraged youth pastors and youth ministry professionals to get to know each other, build relationships and hopefully, develop a vision that included working together. I participated in anything that even had the hint of a coming together, including the former Pearland Ministerial Alliance, any youth ministry function that was community wide and of course, my beloved Baccalaureate. And of course, my support of on campus Christian Clubs, with snacks, speakers and curriculum. And if you like you can go even further back, to the on campus lunch time program I organized and operated for years, inviting in various youth pastors and pastors, encouraging students to connect with a local church.

After I handed over the leadership of the Pearland Youth Ministry Alliance in March 2010, it became the Pearland Student Pastors Alliance and was only open to church youth pastors, not ministry professionals. This was my first shunning experience.

The second was that the PSPA took over Baccalaureate, See you at the Pole and the club ministry I was doing. There were no conversations, it was just done. There were some hold outs – some sponsors who still wanted me to be involved with their club.

This is from Wikipedia:

Shunning can be broken down into behaviours and practices that seek to accomplish either or both of two primary goals.

1. To modify the behaviour of a member. This approach seeks to influence, encourage, or coerce normative behaviours from members, and may seek to dissuade, provide disincentives for, or to compel avoidance of certain behaviours. Shunning may include disassociating from a member by other members of the community who are in good standing. It may include more antagonistic psychological behaviours (described below). This approach may be seen as either corrective or punitive (or both) by the group membership or leadership, and may also be intended as a deterrent.
   
2. To remove or limit the influence of a member (or former member) over other members in a community. This approach may seek to isolate, to discredit, or otherwise dis-empower such a member, often in the context of actions or positions advocated by that member. For groups with defined membership criteria, especially based on key behaviours or ideological precepts, this approach may be seen as limiting damage to the community or its leadership. This is often paired with some form of excommunication.
   

Since I am all about working together and community, it has been like they have taken my life's blood. My entire purpose, my either life's work has been taken from me. The project I put my heart and soul into, I can have no part of. It is truly a sad chapter in my life.

“Lucky” to be Called

I had to write a bio for my ordination tomorrow. I've been thinking a lot about my "calling" – the way God works in our lives and directs us. I thought you might enjoy it!

Dottie (Dorothy) Jean Dills (Cooper Hinesley) was born to Ralph and Radine Dills on January 3, 1958.

I have 2 sisters, Beth Romine and Lisa Neighbors.

I am married to Dean Hinesley and together we have 3 daughters: Jessa, Allie and Taylor.

I am being ordained at the urging and support of my husband and parents.

My earliest memory of "being called" was when I was about 8 years old. A missionary came to our church and I went with my mother to the evening service. In the early to mid 1960's, missionaries came and set a table of their goods – shrunken heads, tribal loin clothes, spears and the witch doctor's "former" evil potion. I was looking with amazement at the variety of things and the missionary spoke to me. I don't remember exactly what he said, but I know I hid my face in my mother's skirt and I cried. My memory of what he said is: Maybe, if you are very lucky, God will call you to be a missionary too. (I think I cried because I was terrified of leaving my parents for some terrible country where they shrunk heads.)

A seed was planted in my life that day. And I do feel "Lucky", that God in His Grace chose to call me.

As I grew, I reflect on that seed and I wondered if God would call me. As a child, the only great women I saw that were "called" were either church soloist or single female missionaries. From what I could tell there were no single male missionaries. I prayed that I would be able to sing. Just sing for Jesus! I thought I could handle that kind of call.

In fifth grade, I tried out for choir and I didn't make it, smashing all visions of Singing for Jesus. I wasn't sure about the missionary bit, leaving my mommy and daddy going to a shrinking heads foreign country thing.

Around that time, I had an incident. I was about 10 or 12 and I was running outside of our church with all the other kids and I ran full force into an awning support pole. I think it knocked me to the ground and I got up and ran in circles for a moment. At some point, in my young mind, this became my "near death experience" and I knew God had spared me for a reason. Perhaps, it was my pre-teen need for drama. It's funny, I never really talked about it, but it is a point that stuck in my mind.

After a short period of rebellion in high school, I became this dedicated Christian, want to reach my world for Christ, but don't have a clue how to do it. Some suggested that I pray for my class mates, so I did. Thru the student directory and thru the yearbook, I would pray for classmates by name. I would call my entire class and invite them to Campus Life meetings. I would turn in announcements and have them announce the Campus Life meetings.

I even created a brawl. I went to Clear Creek HS and our district rival was Clear Lake HS. Campus Life would kick off the school year with a burger bash and a snow brawl. I announced that there would be a Lake/Creek snowball fight.

We had never had so many kids out for burger bash before. I don't think the Campus Life director ever knew I did that. He was a little amazed at all the kids asking when the Lake/Creek snowball fight was going to be.

Because I had an amazing, life changing encounter with Jesus Christ at 16, I'm passionate about students and helping them live out their desire to be salt and light on their campus. I spent my high school years trying to make a difference, but not really having a clue how to do it.

Now, I have dedicated my life to helping students make a difference, hoping that they will have that same life altering encounter that I had with Jesus so many years ago.

I’m a networking disaster . . . but I still believe in networking!

I really am. I have stories you wouldn't believe.

I just read this great post by Rawd B. Jones. It is wonderful and I agree with all he wrote. He wrote The state of the Network address. FYI: He has written another great article – Networking sucks! Then I started thinking – why do I believe so whole heartedly in networking and what would I write about it.

I agree with Rawd, but my experiences have been totally different. And my experiences have been outstandingly bad.

First of all, I'm not a youth pastor. It's taken me a while to say this because my experiences so parallel a youth pastors. I've been a chaplain with juvenile delinquents. Very youth pastorish in kinda a locked up, no parents, no lock ins, no camp outs, events kind of way. I've run an on campus lunch time outreach ministry – very youth pastorish in that kinda weekly contact, weekly program sorta way.

Second of all, I'm a fiftyish very cool woman. Not exactly your classic youth pastor stereo type.

And lastly, I have been living and working in the same community for over 20 years. Not exactly, your typically longevity for your average youth pastor. (The average youth pastor last 14 months.)

Since I get to pick what I am, since no one else knows – I call myself a youth ministry specialist. I specialize in "Community Youth Ministry" and Youth Ministry in Schools and Juvenile institutions. An unusual specialty for your typical youth pastor.

But still, I am passionate about students and youth pastors and working together. I am convinced that if the student pastors have relationships with each other, it makes a community better for students. So, in this belief, I have coordinated a Youth Ministry Alliance for about 20 years.

My start in Networking: I started out with an evening meeting that included both full time and bi vocational youth pastors. I then went to a lunch time meeting that was primarily for full time youth pastors. I heard about networking at joint youth ministry conference in Atlanta in 1996. I thought that was a great idea. I've slept since then, but it wasn't a group of youth pastors that decided to do this. It was me. I got permission from the previous Pearland Youth Ministry Alliance to restart and use the name. All of them were out of youth ministry at that time, so there had been a group but they had all moved on. I understand that David Gentiles had been either instrumental in starting that group or keeping it going.

Anyways, back to the beginning. I restarted the PYMA. I was also participating in the Pearland Ministerial Alliance and would regularly announce the upcoming PYMA meetings at their meetings. Kind of an FYI thing.

The start was rough. I would call and fax every church in town. I usually called in the evenings because I found out it was just easier to leave it on the answering machine than it was to spell ALLIANCE for the secretary or to have her tell me that they didn't have any youth so no one wanted to come. I had one wonderful youth pastor that committed to be there every month so I never had to eat alone. So, it would be me and Doug Brown and someone else. And the next month, it would be me and Doug Brown and a different someone else. Finally, there must have been enough, that we planned a skate night at the local skating rink with a local Christian Radio personality. I will tell you that I remember enough to know that we needed 100 students to break even and we had maybe 103! We made $15!

My network is growing! The next PYMA meeting, there were 10 or 12 people at the table and I was running late, probably scrapping my jaw off the floor. I couldn't believe it!

If this sounds wonderful, brace yourself. Remember how I announced the PYMA meetings at the PMA meeting? Well, the Ministerial Alliance now decided that I had asked permission to start the PYMA, so that they were in charge of it. The PMA had no notes or minutes, so this was all "what do you remember, Bob?" When I protested that the PYMA need to be a separate group and that each Youth Pastor needed to be accountable to their own pastor, I was seen as hostile.

Maybe it was that $15 we made at the skate night . . .

Who is in charge here? Wait, it gets worst! Every participating youth pastor was told by their pastor that they could not participate in the PYMA, unless we were under the PMA. We went under the PMA. Within months, every youth pastor left town and before he or she left, came to me and said: "I did what I was told. I really think it would be better if the PYMA was independent of the PMA." Make sure you are getting this. They left town. They moved on. I was left with a network that was accountable to the senior pastor's group.

Each youth pastor group after this struggled with this. It looked like this: Churches A thru F were at the PMA table and Churches A, G, H, I, J and K were regulars at the PYMA table. I was the link that accounted for and defended the decisions of the PYMA table. Church B's pastor was most vocal about how it had to be this way: The PYMA rarely saw his youth pastor and PMA rarely saw him.

After several years of this insanity, the then PMA president said something about how he needed to put a minister in charge of the PYMA. Something inside of me broke. I thought you can't get a minister to serve as secretary, treasurer or vice president of the PMA and you are going to get one to come to and be in charge of the PYMA meetings? No words were spoken, I just stopped holding PYMA meetings. No one else did it either. I regularly called meetings in March or so to plan for See you at the Pole – usually a Saw you at the Pole.

Restarting the network. After a while – a year or 2, I started up the PYMA again. I made sure I didn't announce it at the PMA meetings. It was rough going. The startup always was rough. I remember what it was like to restart as a day time lunch meeting and I prayed for a Doug Brown to come and commit, so I didn't have to eat lunch alone.

I really wanted this to happen, so I started bring in local ministries and organizations to tell about their group at the meeting. This assured that I would not be there alone! I convinced churches to host meetings and provide lunch, so at least their youth pastor would be there. (Sometimes, lunch showed up, but the youth pastor didn't.) I kept going, being faithful at what I felt like God was leading me to do.

Growing again. Finally, a local putt-putt golf place hosted the meeting in 2009. We had 8 people, including the owner's youth pastor. There was finally a group that was starting to connect with each other. I was so excited! Churches were hosting meetings and a small steady group of small church youth pastors and directors were starting to come out.

Don't get too excited. It goes downhill quickly. One youth pastor went back to work full time, so he could no longer attend the lunch time meetings. Another youth pastor's senior pastor wouldn't let him come or would schedule staff retreats for that time. Another got too busy.

Finally, I got confronted by a group of angry youth pastors at a Baccalaureate lunch. They are angry because I arranged a meeting place and time and invited them to the meeting! They are angry because I invited them to help plan and organize a Saw you at the Pole event and when they didn't help, I did it and invited them to the event. They are angry because the PYMA meetings are on Thursday and they want them on Wednesday! No one had asked to change the meeting day.

I'm out of the network. We changed the meeting to Wednesdays. I lose most of the former attendees because Wednesdays doesn't work for them. I held one Wednesday meeting and then there is a meeting with the youth pastor that wants to be in charge of everything. I gave him leadership of the Pearland Youth Ministry Alliance. He never put me on the email invitation list. Within 3 months, I was no longer being invited to the meetings.

When I started a new network 6 months later, I was accused of being divisive! I just wanted to be part of a network in my community.

I'm really out. Another 3 months later, the network was now the Pearland Student Pastors Alliance – opened only to student pastors of churches and had put themselves in charge of all the community ministry I was doing.

Gosh, I love networking!