Jordan Trendelman

Faith Community: I have been worshiping at St. Alban's in Fort Wayne since moving to the area in 2015. A relatively small parish with a lot of heart, my wife and I felt immediately welcomed into the family that is St. Alban's.

Hometown: Bloomington, Ind. Growing up in a Big Ten college-town, I was introduced to a diversity of culture, lifestyle, and thought that would ultimately shape my spiritual journey. 

Who does your immediate family consist of?: My wife Christina and I share our home with a chihuahua named Kirby, a rat terrier named Lily and a very aloof cat named Bella.

In what ministries do you participate?: In addition to regularly serving as a Lay Eucharist Minister, I also hold a position on Vestry where I head a commission called Open Invite Welcome. OIW is an initiative started my first year on Vestry to challenge ourselves as a community to evaluate the ways we succeed at being inclusive and welcoming to those who are new to the church and the ways in which we can improve. The scope of OIW extends from relations within the church to our social media presence and the way we are perceived  by the outside community. I also was recently honored to have the opportunity to serve on Diocesan Council representing the Eastern Deanery. I'm excited for the chance to interact with more parishioners from around the Diocese in that capacity.

What are your hobbies? / What’s God been teaching you recently?: I've been into video games since I was a child. As a creative person, the combination of visuals, music, and story-telling that you can actively problem solve and participate in is something I find completely engaging. Despite enjoying many modern games, one game I always go back to is Tetris. There's just something meditative about the different pieces falling from the sky as you attempt to spin and place them somewhere that "makes sense". The better they fit together the more I have the tendency to be waiting on that one piece that is going to give me the coveted four line Tetris. At some point I will begin haphazardly placing all the "wrong" pieces in increasingly unorganized piles as I wait for that one "perfect" piece. Ultimately this is how you loose a round of Tetris, but it's also what God has been teaching me lately. We all have those moments in life where we fixate on this one thing. We've all had that expectation that if we could just get the one piece of the puzzle we need then we just might "win the game". The problem is the other pieces of our life are piling up around us and we are failing to see how they too could all fit together. Sometimes life isn't the about the big four line Tetris, sometimes it's about digging yourself out of the mess you've made one line at a time. God has been teaching me that every piece of my life fits in somewhere to complete a much bigger picture. Unlike Tetris though God doesn't give us pieces we canted work with. No matter what season of the church year we are in we are reminded that God is willing to change the rules of the game to share with us that perfect piece that's makes all the other pieces make sense. That perfect piece is love.