Reflections on the road of life

The last few months I have been forced to reconsider the career path I need to head down. This past December I graduated with a B.S. in Pastoral Studies. A few months before graduating I had a job at a local church. It was this job that was a confirmation for something I suspected for a years. It was at this job that I received confirmation about something I suspected for years.” As most of you know that suspecting idea was the thought that I really didn’t want to work in the church, at least not in a full-time position.

From mid-high school on I told everyone that I was going into ministry. I immediately became active in the high school Christian organization and started a highly themed event for the community. Then my senior year when post-graduation plans began coming up I started questioning the full-time ministry path, at this point though I had convinced myself it was God’s will for me to be in full-time ministry. I found the closest college offering pastoral studies and went there; it was the only college I applied to, the only one I looked at and the only one I thought about.

When it came time to declare a major I decided that a major in Church Leadership would be better than just Pastoral Studies. I had a personal recommendation from a successful Chicago pastor who told me to take a business major with a pastoral minor, I didn’t listen.

After a few years, I realized the school I was at didn’t have a good reputation so I went with a to a school that at the time was very promising and was focused on becoming a large ‘Ivy League’ like school. By my senior year of college I had begun to almost despise the church. I rarely went to church and I spent more time talking about what was wrong with it than I actually spent being active in it. The churches lack of ‘coolness’ and total disconnect from society fueled everything I did. I was active off and on with a church back in Orlando that I first began attending while at my first college. It was here that I was first introduced to church being in touch with culture. This church spent thousands of dollars on huge spectacles, cool hunting, videos, art, supporting local indie music and film; they had and still have a HUGE impact upon the local culture and a noticeable impact upon the national culture.

I dreamed of doing this in all churches, I imagined all churches being this hip, this in touch and I imagined what would happen if they all had this amount of impact. I went away to Germany for almost 2 months prior to my senior year in college, staying with a struggling missionary couple, attending a dying church, visiting empty cathedrals and seeing unchurched cities full of religious artifacts. This trip filled my mind with a whirlwind of thoughts, many of which I am still dissecting to this day.

After the trip through London, Germany, and Paris was finished I came home. I came back with a fresh fire and vision for ministry. I wrote a 27 page vision plan on how I was going to transform one of Tampa’s roughest neighborhoods into a thriving Christian community. A community full of art, education, healthcare, housing, among other things. I imagined having huge villages filled with shops (owned and operated by those in the community, using all fair trade products), restaurants, and conference centers that would double as church buildings. I imagined huge weekly church services that looked more like a Cirque De Solie shows than normal church services. These services would embrace the multi-lingual communities they were in, thus using few words and more art to portray the message. I took inspiration from the churches I saw while in Europe. I imagined huge cathedrals filled with stained glass, monuments, lasers, smoke machines, plasma TVs, acrobats, and the like.

Then came my senior internship. I choose a local mega-church that like the one in Orlando had a level of excellence to all it did. They had the huge stage designs, the massive and highly themed children’s area, the high def screens, they were the church I dreamed of building. Then I began seeing the church politics. (Details aren’t needed, all churches have politics involved, and this church happily has shifted its course back to the basics, as I hope many other churches do.)

Soon I was seeing the true cost of having a high profile church. I was seeing the budgets, the over worked employees, and the communities not being reached because the focus was on performances. At the same time the Orlando church that gave me hope in the whole process was having its own mid-life crisis. Their attendance had become flat, cash flow lessoned, and staff morale was quickly dropping. I began seeing, at both churches, how the Sunday morning performance was destroying the church. The very things that made them unique, the very things that caused them to grow, were now killing them (literally and figuratively). At this same time the church whose pastor I didn’t listen to about a college major came out and admitted its former style of hip (Seeker) church wasn’t working anymore. This was the whole idea behind my plans, my plan was to take the seeker style and move it into the 21st Century. Now I am told that this style isn’t working, this time I decided to listen.

I left my job at the church and spent the next few months digesting all of what I had taken in. (I had plenty of time to digest since I didn’t find a job for 6 months after I left the church job.) I graduated in that time, proposed to Maggie, and with my parents help bought a house in Tampa.

I knew the plans I had drew up would never work. Those plans were based not upon God but upon church trends, yet how do I convince people that those plans were mine and not God’s? How do I convince them that I still have a passion for the same neighborhoods I did before yet now I have no 27 page plan on how to reach it?

I spent time in prayer, time listening and not planning.

I struggled over figuring out how to help have an impact upon a community without being in full-time ministry? Then an idea I had dismissed all those years before, back when I was doing the highly themed youth events in high school, came to me.

Now I am convinced that this time this idea is from God. I still don’t have all the answers. But I know that God has called me into ministry, just not in a traditional sense. My business passion is also being used. I had always thought of my life as compartments. I had my business side, my church side, my artistic side, my private side, my online side, now God has been merging those.

I imagined being a millionaire by 30. I imagined leading a huge church with sermons that echoed in stadiums filled with acrobats and trained animals. I imagined living in a high-rise condo where I hosted highly themed parties. I imagined, I I I!!!

The last few months have been some of the hardest of my life because in the midst of everything I have realized I am still the same as I was in high school. Some call it a quarter life crisis, some call it growing up. I call it getting back in touch with God.

The other day I drove through the neighborhood I so want desperately to change. Many of the ideas I had are now in place. As I drove through the neighborhood I began to cry. The ideas I had are there, but those who I intended on helping are just being pushed out. I have realized that ministry is more than just a job, more than just a 501c(3) organization, its more than just a single focus. True ministry, like that of the original church, is more than just singular focus. It’s more than just being hip or having cool buildings, lest we become the empty cathedrals I witnessed in Europe.

I was first in awe of the majesty of those empty cathedrals, but like the Temple itself, they will fall. Sadly when they do there will be no sign of Christians or Christianity left in most of those cities. I now imagine helping others gain the passion I have for ministry. I have no desire to stand up front, no desire for my name to be on the marquee, no desire for the huge mega-church. It won’t work, it never did work. I am chasing after God’s desire, slowly trying to regain the passion for ministry I had, slowly giving up my desires and passion, slowly listening to God. I have been chasing after this career path and that career path, when God’s path is right in front of me the whole time. Now I must not only deal with going on God’s path but cleaning up all the mess I made by trying to make my own path. I am not alone, that church in Chicago, the church in Orlando, the church in Tampa are all dealing with the same thing. I realized churches are like people; they too struggle with staying focused on Gods path and not their own.