35 years ago - a ministry anniversary

35 years ago this month, I officially began working full time for a church. I'd actually started during the months before, but the official start of a salary, a place to live, etc began December '89.  

I'd begun working officially in "paid ministry" about three years prior, preaching, teaching, leading singing, etc for a small church south of Batesville and north of Searcy, just a couple miles down the road from the city center of Bradford, AR.

It is amazing to leave behind a job and a career and have little to nothing to do with any of it or any of the people I was connected with before. Such a weird dynamic. But I'm okay with that.

Some have asked if I had or have any regrets. Not really. I loved much of my time with many good people that God used to shape me and I'm guessing vice versa. 

As mentioned in the other posts in this blog, I just got to a point where all the stuff came crashing in, theologically and relationally, and had to make a decision about what to do next.

I chose to move on. The six weeks of sabbatical I had last fall only confirmed that it was time. Deciding to leave something that had already left me should have been easier, but sometimes I lived in denial.

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Some reflections that come up this month, looking back on all that time:

1. Religion goes through different forms over time. Like family, government, education, or any other institution, the format, purpose, and goals change and blend with each other over decades and centuries. What people experienced three hundred years ago would be unrecognizable today and vice versa. 

We tend to look back into history with our own experience as the way we interpret "back then". So much in religion is lost to history unless you take the time to explore the various incarnations of things from 2000 years ago until now.  And it will continue to evolve in dynamic relationship to the world around.

In the US, we've been fairly isolated with our forms of church and religion and we're at a potential turning point where we decide what we believe, what we feel is important, and how we'll react to our own reaction and the world around us.

2. The story we grow into or tell ourselves is important. Most people are unaware of this idea of "the story they live in" - they just live in one and don't question it much. Both crisis or opportunities arise when the story is challenged and you see that there are different stories available.

It is very hard, but okay to leave a story behind and "change horses mid-stream". You will, generally speaking, have to rebuild everything from the core of your being outward.  There's not simply a change of labels - it's a different world.  If you can grasp that early in the process, it's helpful.

On the fun side, starting over is potentially amazing with so many new horizons to visit. You really get to think through what you believe, what you want to do, who you want to be with, and what you've not seen before because of the story you were living in.

3. People will disappoint you. And you will disappoint people. It is possible for people to be both a blessing and a curse - same people, same time. That is just people. God uses all people to teach, bless, mentor, stretch, lead, and so on. It's real Romans 8:28 stuff.

Some people are like mosquitoes - they might irritate you a lot, but you know God made them for a reason. Be okay with mysteries that might not be resolved in this life. There's that beautiful tension of "pray for your enemies" and the possibility that your enemy might be your "friend" in some way, someday.

There are still personalities and adjacent processes I regularly recategorize or even block out in my mind/sight - good, bad, and in-between - for the time being, so that I can move on in peace.

4. Ministry roles are changing. I see it in other people's writings and hear it in other people's conversations. From the inside, I don't think people can see the growing artificiality of the current institution and roles involved in relationship to the nature of the world around.

In many ways, ministry and religion work to keep ministry and religion alive and paid for. Not trying to be a jerk about it, just reflecting what it's like to look back from another side. It's in a Mexican standoff with itself, trying to change what's needing change without destroying itself entirely.  A true catch-22.

Ministry jobs and the institutions, like universities, that support them have a lot of soul searching to do in the next decade. The capitalist influence of popular religion and church growth is coming up against the high cost of maintaining institutions and their holdings that were built in and for a different time.

5. Life is bigger than we see most days. One of my favorite lyricist wrote a song where they talked about tidal pools along the shoreline - the tides recede and leave little pools where a whole little ecosystem develops and does its own thing - "living in their pools they soon forget about the sea".

I am fairly amazed at how the story of religion, church, and ministry was my whole world for so long. Sure, I did other things as well with teaching a little at a university, engaging in hobbies and pastimes, but it, at times had become "everything" in an unhealthy way, for me.  

I wonder, at times, if there are other people who see life through such a narrow lens and feel the occasional cult-like grip.  I'm grateful for the storm of cognitive dissonance that blew through last year that saved me from that which I did not know I needed to leave - moving on before the tide came in.

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Good things are not just ahead, they are also here now.  One of the lies of religion I bought into was that everything good is "out there" in the future.  That kind of thinking will cause you to discount the things and people around you now.

Part of the good life with God most people miss out on is that NOW is with God. Like, right now, as you are, in the situation you're in - good things are. And that sentence is written like that on purpose. We're just not familiar with the idea.

We often just haven't learned what it is to be and to live now, even in the midst of failed expectations - expectations that were given to us by people who led us with an agenda we were unaware of - and that they too might not have been aware of.

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Much love to everyone. 

To those who are present now and those who are no longer. 

May you see the blessings God has laid all around you already. 

May you look to the horizon and know life is good here and not just "over there".

May you hear his voice in the regular part of the day. 

That's usually where you're going to find him.

Peace and goodwill.