It turns out that the melting pot culture of Florida is somewhat different than the slow paced culture of eastern Kentucky. Who knew?
In 1982 I planted a church in Morehead, Kentucky where I served as lead pastor for seven years. Then, in 1989 I moved to Tampa and planted a church from scratch/nothing. I had some success in Morehead, but the success did not transfer to Florida. I later merged the Florida church with another church and that’s where Kidz Blitz started.
In Florida we locked our doors, drank bottled water, spent most of our day stuck in traffic, learned to communicate with non-English speaking clerks and never ever ran into anyone we already knew. None of this happened in eastern Kentucky.
In Kentucky we saw friends on Saturdays at Walmart. Our idea of a traffic jam was a slow moving hay truck on main street. We didn’t lock anything because we didn’t know where the keys were. Tap water tasted just fine. And everyone spoke English…just much slower.
The ministry adjustments were off the chart and I was not prepared.
Do you live in a place that is vastly different culturally than what you are accustomed to? How much does that impact your children’s ministry?
