Jarin, untold.

Well, I’m Jarin. After a few conversations with some important people in my life, I decided to start a blog about church and culture. I’ve been involved in church leadership for a great amount of time in my life. Before that, I didn’t have much going on in my life.

We’ll start at the beginning. I was born to a family with a humble life. Things went well for a great while. When I was relatively young however, my family split up. Dad and Mom divorced; throwing my life into a whirlwind. I was forced to choose whom I’d live with. This is the worst thing to put a child through, and it shaped my life in a crazy way. I’ve spent the rest of my life dealing with it. I ended up staying with Dad, and seeing him try the dating scene out. Eventually, he found my step-mom and things have been great since then. I couldn’t be happier for him, or his decision on marrying her.

A similar story occurred with my Mom, she dated a bit and finally picked the man who is now my stepfather. They’re very happy, and they are good for each other. Again, I’m happy with the outcome.

The worst part of the whole ordeal was in my poor social skills as a child, I developed anger issues. Most people who know me, will never see these. I hide the anger well. In fact, most people say I’m one of the nicest people they’ve ever met. However, underneath the containment, I can get angry at the drop of a hat, and hold anger for a good amount of time. The Lord is working on me, and I see it everyday.

I currently work in a retail AT&T location, and deal with frustration after frustration with customers taking all their anger out on me. Most of the time, I grin and bear it, providing my best service to them. I “kill em” with kindness. In all honesty, I go out of my way to be especially nice to the worst of people because I get satisfaction in the fact that I know they’ll feel like a total jerk.

Regarding leadership, I started attending church my sophomore year in high school, at the request of my grandfather. I love that man to death for his persistence. I went a bit with he and my grandmother as a child. New suits every Easter, getting baptized on Easter Sunday in 1997. I fell away nearing Junior High School.  Again, fast forward to high school, I started going back.

I honestly went, because I still lacked social skills, enough that I had no friends. What happened next amazes me, and has become my motivation for ministry. The kids in the youth group came and introduced themselves to me, and implored that I sit with them. Here I am, this lanky, skinny kid with giant glasses and goofy face. (If you want the epitome of the most awkward high school kid for a poster, you can call me, I’ll sell you a couple photos of me. I was THAT kid.) Anyway, they invited me to sit with them, and hang out. I was overwhelmed with incredible shyness. I denied it.; Three Sundays in a row, actually. Finally, I broke, I started going to youth group and siting with them on Sunday mornings.

I went, because I knew they HAD to hangout with me for at least an hour on Wednesdays, and Sunday mornings. When in actuality, they WANTED to hang out with me. My world was changed. I quickly came to knowledge of Jesus Christ and who He is, and devoted my life to serving Him, and quickly succumbed to the call of Student Ministry. This is where I met Shane. Shane was instrumental in my desire to minister, and he took his leadership and influenced me to become a leader within the group. I wasn’t the most popular or most well spoken, or thoughtful, but what I had was the example I needed to jump forward and pursue leadership.

I began to become more outgoing, and carefree with my interactions with people. At the High School I attended, I still was nerdy and alone for the most part. I joined the journalism squad. I developed skills in design, and layout. I also gained some social skills. In walks Matt, I began to develop a friendship with Him and a few others, which to this day has been great. He took me under his wing, introducing me to music, culture, and creative writing.

After high school, I later became an intern at this church. This is where the church hurt me. Before I was allowed to intern, I was forced to cut my hair. Now, in all honesty, it was gross and made me look terrible and the decision to cut my hair was beneficial. The problem was, and the stand I took was the length of my hair didn’t dictate my effectiveness to minister to the students. The second way I was hurt was I was given little responsibility. I was officially the student ministry intern, and I was mostly in charge of helping the janitor. I got to do a little graphic design, albeit my designs were awful. I got to drive a church van every other week or so, and that was cool, but I was never put in a position to really lead. On youth trips I was allowed to “lead” some, but, again since I wasn’t allowed to do so at home, I had no idea what I was doing, and was chastised because I couldn’t do things right.

Things were expected of me towards the end of the internship, I was pushed to run the audio and visual booth during the main service, and did very well there.

I was “asked” to wear a suit and tie on Sunday mornings. I didn’t have the items and the church provided me them. I was extremely grateful, and still am to this day. However, one Sunday morning, I was late. Really late. I could be extra late and wear my shirt and tie, or I could wear a decent polo shirt and a pair of jeans and be “on time” to get the video items ready. I opted for the second choice. That Sunday sealed my fate there. I was let go shortly after for not wearing what I needed to wear. At least in my mind that’s what the final issue was. I harbor no ill feelings now, but at that time, I was devastated.

I later moved to East Texas, to live with my dad and pursue college education. I also began to attend a church in that town, I later interned for a summer and my leadership grew, my influence and knowledge began to grow as well. This is where I developed most of my core beliefs and theology. I loved that church. I still do. I continued to volunteer after my internship ended and continued to pursue school.

I later moved to Dallas, to finish school, and began to volunteer with a church there. I love the students in this ministry. I’ve made some great bonds, and some really awesome friends and connections in ministry.  I plan on pursuing bi-vocational ministry; my goal is to end up working in Apple, Inc. corporate and being a student minister in a small church that can’t afford full time church staff.

My life has had its fair share of shortcomings and failures.  One thing I haven’t done is question my God, nor His sovereignty.

I’ll add more to this in future blogs, as more parts of my story are necessary. Please continue to watch for new blogs, we love doing this and love serving the Lord with our skills and gifts.

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