This post will continue my thoughts regarding a life graph that my mentor illustrated for me. Please refer to ‘Life Mapping 1’ for anything in this post to make sense. It’s interesting… but I don’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a pastor. I played ‘pastor’ for my family members when I was young. I felt called to ministry in Jr. High. I knew early on in high school that I would attend Indiana Wesleyan University in order to gain a degree that would allow me to be ordained in the Wesleyan church (the only denomination I knew anything about, truthfully.) From a family standpoint, I was encouraged to pursue this dream.
College was more of the same. It was the first time I saw any kind of academic success… but really only within my major. I still felt a little out of place with the normal Christian Ministry major at the time. And truthfully, I don’t think many of my professors really knew what to do with me. I think most of them liked me… but not many really knew what to do with a long haired, overweight, hippy looking kid that wanted to be a preacher. In fairness, I’m not sure I would have known what to do with me. During college, I never faltered in my desire and interest to become a pastor.
Relating back to the funnel… I almost feel like I never had a ‘wide open’ moment in my life… where there were numerous occupational decisions in front of me. It was always ministry. Always. Fast forward a couple of years to my second church… and there were moments where I desperately wanted out of ministry. I wanted the funnel to widen for my life. There were a lot of reasons for it… none which I’ll go into here… but I could think of a handful of other things that I’d rather be doing… but just couldn’t afford to go back to school. Truthfully, I think God had (and continues to) purposefully remove a ‘plan B’ because He knows that would be too much of a temptation.
Anyway… I am currently in my 30’s doing lead pastor ministry. There are days when I love it and it really makes sense to me. There are other days (or weeks) where I can’t imagine carrying this load for another 35 years or so. It’s a humbling journey. It makes me curious to see if the ‘life-map’ will be accurate from here on out. Will I have a time of refocusing in my 40’s? If so, what will that look like?
This second post was written over a couple of days… so I’m not sure I got down what I really wanted to get down on this issue. I’m working through a lot of different personal issues in my head. I would say that the past six months have been extremely valuable for me in rediscovering my base… my foundation. God has pointed me to several books that have been so important for me to read recently. I’ve really done some interesting introspection that has turned into some tangible ways forward in keeping myself healthy and fully engaged in ministry… I’ll get to that on a different day.
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