the opening of possibility

monday was not all it was cracked up to be today. it was not a great day. on the one hand, i secured my wife and i two tickets to see U2 in concert when they get to Dallas, TX on their current tour: U2 360. that was all it was cracked up to be. shortly before that i found out that i was not getting hired for a job i thought i had a good shot at procuring. this is a pressing matter for me since my current job ends on may 31st.

the aforementioned job going to someone else is outside of vocational ministry. and i see this as a huge possibility. i have worked now for 6 years in vocational ministry and i have been uncomfortable for all 6 years. i often even find myself uncomfortable in the christian mainline church that i am a member of. i am called to be a member in that mainline denomination. i feel that with the same certainly that i feel i will wake up for tomorrow morning. i am not sure that i have ever truly felt called to be in vocational ministry.

let me take you back a few years, if you are unfamiliar with my personal story. at the close of my undergraduate days at Southwestern University, i felt what i would term a calling to attend seminary. i was prepared to go to public policy school and focus on educational policy, but chose instead to follow a calling to go to seminary at Perkins School of Theology at SMU. i am glad that i did this. for three years of classroom work, i learned an immense amount, and i came out on the other side of this adventure much better able to think about and articulate my own theology. however, during that time i experienced what i would call partial discernment in vocation. i decided not to pursue ordination in the the mainline christian denomination i am a member of for a myriad of reasons. while those reasons don't matter here, suffice it to say that this was shocking to a number of people, and many people still try to sway me now to reevaluate this decision. because i decided not become ordained, i had to find a suitable internship to pursue my final year of seminary. i chose to come back to Southwestern University where i completed my internship and have been subsequently employed for the past two years. currently i am seeking employment in the university setting to pursue university administration as a long term goal.

but that isn't what this is about. it is about leaving vocational ministry and feeling very comfortable with that. when i decided that i wouldn't pursue vocational ministry in my next career iteration, i felt comfortable with that decision. a lot of people asked questions, mainly focused on why in the world i spent four years to get an advanced degree to not use it in their eyes. since i have made that decision i have seen a world of possibilities open up to me that i had forgotten i even had the time to think about when i was spending all day in ministry as my job. i think the bottom line for me is that i will have the time and energy to pursue ministry opportunities that i feel passionate about instead of turning them into a job. for whatever reason, around ministry, a job takes the passion away for me.

in some ways i feel like Jonah. i don't even necessarily like Jonah, i think that he shirked his loyalty, duty, obedience, and responsibility when it was plain to him what he was supposed to do. for the most part, we tend to call these people jerks in our society. but part of me finds some sort of identity in Jonah. i feel lost like he must have felt when something seems right and wrong at the same time. i also feel the unassuredness of stepping into territory that must have looked foreign. this might not have been where he felt like he wanted to go, but this was where he was needed.

i hope the ideas and passions i have for living life together can grow and blossom into something beautiful. for me the opening of possibility is not seeing greener grass, but seeing the dead grass in a new way.

"i have no idea where you fit!"

a student and i were chatting it up yesterday afternoon in my office. he actually had needed a copy of something that i had in my office, and i was happy to make it for him, but our conversation quickly turned to things theological. he is going to be attending my most recent alma mater and i was happy to help him with letters of reference, etc.

in the course of our conversation we covered over a great many things including my views on eschatology and salvation, what the concept of "the kingdom" means to me, and some political identifiers or labels. he informed me that he and some of his peers had been discussing a few of us older guys, alums of our fraternity, and where we stood politically and theologically. he said for several them they were easy to label. conservative, liberal, sort of moderate, and then he said the conversation turned toward me. he informed me that when my name came up and his peers asked him where he thought i stood he simply said, "i have no idea where he fits!"

labels are easy identifiers. they help us categorize people for easy use, but they can be deceptive. i told him i don't believe in traditional labels, and therefore find myself to be outside of them, generally speaking. i explained to him that on some issues i tend toward what would be considered a conservative viewpoint and on others a liberal stance. and that is ok.

after we finished talking i couldn't help but to think that part of what got us to our current economic situation has to be our need to label and adhere to those labels as though they make us and tell us who we are. and that seems to not only be trifilingly simple theology, but also simply bad logic.