TOON INTO THE WORD
By: Jonathan Trask
God has given me a deep passion for family ministry, as it has been through shepherding my own family that I have experienced the power of the simple, sweet and beautiful name of Jesus to break the chains of darkness, and bring me into a deep understanding of the nature of His light.
I grew up in a highly dysfunctional home in a small mountain community. Many of my earliest memories involve family fights, separations, custody battles, trips to the courthouse, counseling sessions, back and forth visitations, long periods of isolation, and constant shifts. I felt like an outside observer of the world, and it was hard for me to engage with others who didn't share the same experiences as me. I remember struggling with anger and loneliness. My family occasionally went to church, but even that was confusing to me.
So I learned to turn off the noise, and escape into the imaginary worlds of my childhood. Imaginary worlds were full of beauty, adventure, playfulness, and creativity. They felt very different from the “real life” I was living.
I loved playing games, solving puzzles, making things, creating art, building projects, and doing anything else creative. It was a refuge for my mind, and helped me deal with the emotions of a chaotic home environment.
Then, as a teenager, something changed.
At a creative Christian camp, I encountered Jesus in a way I never had before. There was a deep brokenness inside me, and I desperately needed the love and guidance of Christ. I responded to a message of the gospel that brought weight, meaning, and order to a life that had often felt empty and chaotic. Something else happened there, too. I discovered that creativity and faith didn't have to exist in separate worlds. I saw people who deeply loved Jesus and expressed that love through imagination, art, and play. And, I wanted that same joy for myself.
Over the next several years, I decided I should bury the emotions of my childhood and focus completely on following Jesus. I went to youth group as often as I could, and eventually attended a small Bible college after high school, where I began diving deeper into my faith.
But soon after I began college, my father was killed in an accident. He had been the one truly stable person in my family, and losing him left me spinning. It was like the ultimate capstone to an upbringing in brokenness. In order to emotionally survive, I “briefly grieved" and learned to accept that life is hard, and terrible things happen. I just needed to deal with it and keep moving forward.
It was at Bible college that I met my sweet wife, Sarah. I was an isolated guy, and she was an outgoing girl.... typical story :) We connected as friends, but didn't date at first. When we did eventually date, we only did so for about a year before we got married. About six months after our wedding, we moved back to the mountains where it was cheap to live. We also discovered that Sarah was pregnant.
With a new baby on the way I decided to pursue a career in the fire-service. I went back to school, got into an academy and spent the next three and a half years training, continuing my education, and gained experience by working part-time at a local station.
But the Lord brought along an opportunity that would better provide for our immediate needs.
One day a close friend who was working at a Christian youth camp, invited me to apply to be their ministry program director. It seemed like a perfect fit: I was a creative at heart, focused on my faith, had a deep desire to help people encounter Jesus the same way I did as a teen, and the fire-department taught me how to manage chaos... So, youth ministry here we come!
We also became volunteer youth ministers at a local church at the same time.
Sarah and I spent the following decade designing, developing, and directing creative children’s and youth ministry retreats. We built walking dinosaurs, light-up superhero costumes, weird puppets, and many other strange and wonderful projects in the name of Jesus!
Creativity became a major part of our ministry and family life, which at this point included our young son. Camp ministry was incredible, countless relationships were built, many hours sitting around campfires worshiping Jesus and talking about life's adventures, gave us a strong understanding of what matters most. This ministry also gave us the opportunity to come alongside many of youth, young adults, pastors and other ministry leaders as they walked through their own journey of discovering the deep truth of the gospel.
Eventually, a good friend asked whether I would consider becoming a children’s ministry director at a large church in Orange County. I didn’t see myself as “simply a children’s pastor,” but after much prayer, we heard the Lord tell us that this was to be our next move, as it was a ministry that would allow us to better focus on our young children.
So, we packed up our life in the mountains and headed to the city to start a new chapter.
A few years earlier, our family had fallen in love with the Disney movie “Inside-Out." It personified a young girl’s emotions as little cute characters who lived in her head. We had a little blond girl who also had big emotions, and it was the perfect tool to start up conversations about how to deal with big inside feelings.
As we were praying about what the Lord wanted us to do with the ministry that we were taking over, an idea popped into my head: ‘What if we used imaginative characters to help children understand what the Bible teaches about the mind and the light of the Lord?’ And, what if those characters could help children understand the fruit of the Spirit, not just as good moral behaviors they must produce, but as the light of God?"
I spent the next two years diving deep into the creative process, studying scripture, designing the world, writing different stories and working through different creative approaches to teaching children Bible history, and spiritual metaphor. It was fun, and I felt like a big kid, playing with my kids. However, while tapping into my own experiences with the imaginary worlds of my childhood for creative inspiration, something else started to bubble up to the surface....
The "other stuff" from my childhood. The hidden things. I discovered that the dark memories of my childhood I thought I had buried had never really left me.
The contrast of the two worlds I was experiencing in my mind caused me great distress. I was spending my life creating something filled with the child-like joy the scripture speaks about, while deep down I was still "haunted" by messages of anger, pain and fear that I thought I buried years ago.
I also started to experience the weight and grief of losing my father again, the many frustrations I had experienced in ministry, and life, along with some of the intense memories from a few incidents I had experienced in the fire department. It was a very difficult season for me.
It felt like the light of God's love and joy was exposing everything dark inside of me. The more I ran towards the garden, the darker my thoughts and dreams. I sought out pastoral counseling, and I began to see how the experiences I thought I had moved on from were still controlling me, as those "messages" were still deep down in closed off areas of my "inmost space."
Over the following years, I wrestled with depression, anger, grief, and unforgiveness, all while creating a childhood for my children. God showed me that returning to that garden like state of play I so desperately wanted, meant I needed to learn how to rightly turn off the noise that was persistently in my head, then just worship Him for who He is.
The cartoon world was no longer just about the children... it was about me learning to fight the influence of evil in my life through worship... just in my own creative way. It was a painful, yet deeply sweet season for me.
Piano music, Scripture, and doodling cartoons became my spiritual discipline as I "processed life," and other deep things.
After the chaos of COVID, Sarah and I began reflecting more seriously on living in the city. We weren't sure It was the best long term plan for our family. We began to pray about what the Lord would have us do next. It wasn’t long after our family started praying that we received an invitation to return to the mountains and help support a small church in the community where I had spent my early childhood. At first, we didn’t think it was a good idea, but the Lord showed us otherwise.
So, we handed off the family ministry to a great team, and said goodbye to our friends in Orange County, and returned back home to the mountains to continue raising our children in the community where my own story had begun.
I think someone called this "hugging the cactus."
I became an Associate pastor, coming alongside an aging pastor and congregation. The following years became a season of healing and growth for me. I went back to school, and then enrolled in a Seminary. Seminary helped me better structure my thinking and test some of the powerful experiences I had been having over the years against a straightforward, objective understanding of Scripture.
I graduated Seminary in spring 2026, and now I’m going back to pursue a Masters degree in Christian counseling. I also became the head pastor of the church.
As I was going through the process of fighting many of my own deep internal battles. Sarah was also going through processing her own internal struggles as well. This whole adventure helped us grow stronger in our marriage, and in a continued closeness with our children.
Now, we daily walk around our local lake, talking about life, spiritual things, and reflecting. Sometimes we dream about the future, other times we argue, and sometimes we are just quiet. We are learning to become healthier people as we marvel at this incredible journey of overcoming personal and true spiritual darkness, while we have intentionally taught and guided our own children to keep their mind in the truth of Christ.
As our children have gotten older and learned to follow the way of Jesus, Sarah and I have developed a deep conviction:
If we want to spiritually shepherd this next generation well, we need to start with the parents. Just as the Lord helped us overcome our own Spiritual battles, so we could be the spiritual shepherds for our children, we need to help other parents gain the spiritual tools they need to do the same.
Children need parents who know how to be authentic, humble, and model the self-sacrificing love of Christ. Parents who know how to explain the Scriptures clearly, and understand what it truly means to walk in the Spirit. Parents who are willing to go on their own spiritual adventure and overcome the lies that are still hiding inside of them, so they can become the spiritual shepherds God has called them to be.
Discussions about Spiritual things don’t need to be scary, or strange. They should be a natural and normal part of our lives. We must understand that life ultimately comes down to a Spiritual question, we just need to be honest about what we truly believe, what we struggle with, and still be willing to submit to the simple, sweet and beautiful truth of the Word. Jesus is the way.
That is what Toon into the Word is truly about. This isn't just for children. It's a tool for parents who are starting their own journey of becoming stable Spiritual shepherds, guiding their family into the simple, sweet, and beautiful truth of Jesus, and away from the noisy-lies of this world.
