Back to Blogging - Where I Am

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So I'm in a new place - physically. It it a strange thing to deal with moving as a pastor - you celebrate your ministry, you are mourning leaving where you have been, yet you are excited about moving to new opportunities and challenges that God has for you. It's not like any other job move that I've made. When I left teaching, it was for a calling into the ministry - it was definitive, it was a clear ending of one path of my life and a new journey was beginning. When I left some of the "lesser" jobs, it was even easier - I worked in the restaurant industry for six or seven years when I was young - started as a dish washer, ended up what amounted to the night manager* at this family owned restaurant - but as much as I love restaurant work, that wasn't the life for me and I knew it and when I quit, as hard as it was to say good bye to Bernie and the others, I knew I was moving forward. Working construction, working as a baker and at the deli, my very brief stint at UPS**, and lots of little pick up jobs here and there. All stuff that was easy to leave behind and say to myself, I know I am moving forward from here.

Not so when a pastor moves from church to church. It's not so much a moving forward, per se, as... sideways? I don't know how to describe it. Every church has had amazing opportunities of ministry, amazing people, amazing God moments that I carry with me that simply won't be duplicated anywhere. Can't be topped. Maybe they'll be equaled.

And that's the thing. I'm no longer on a career ladder, but a faith journey. It's a beautiful, amazing realization.  But that's what made it a little hard to process the move for me, I think, until now. I was so happy at Otterbein Church, so deep in the ministry there, that I couldn't imagine wanting to move...until it was time to move, then I was excited to move - which sounds...wrong. But isn't. Because it just means that I'm still right where God wants me.

Same book, new chapter, if you will...










*All that meant was I did the ordering and the scheduling - it wasn't an official title - I was just the "senior" guy there :) and the owner trusted me. He even let me make his homemade pies and rolls when he was laid up for a few months recovering from open heart surgery.

**All of maybe a month, maybe even less - I think after a week or so I think I gave my two-week's notice. I knew almost immediately that this wasn't going to be my future - and that my back wasn't going to be able to take the punishment... and 25 years later I'm still paying for it...