Church...

I quit my job as a youth pastor in January of 2007. I had been there for five and a half years and it was time to move on...

Ministry takes it toll on a person. I decided to take a year off and not stress. It is amazing how much you worry about as a youth pastor. People that you care about make bad decisions and you wonder if you could have helped them better.

Now I am rested.

I feel like I am now able to breathe, to listen to the voice of God and to lead His people into a new way of life.

So where is this way and who are the people...?

In the last year, my wife, Erin, and I have been to lots of different churches and have been mainly disappointed. We have not been captivated by a style or a particular experience. We have seen some good techniques and have been to some fine worship services...but none have captured our hearts or dared us to think about life in a different way.

So we begin our journey.

A journey to discover God and His face and to follow Him with courage and novelty. One that leads us into a life that is truly living and one that we were made to live.

We want to be open, honestly showing our lives as people who are not completed yet and who don't have everything figured out. We want to be loving, so much that we are unable to do it without the help of God. We want to be caring, so much that people respond by asking us to explain where we get our motivation.

We want to live giving all of the glory to God, because we couldn't possibly live the way we live without Him in our lives.

Where am I headed...?

I love going to the airport. You arrive at the terminal (which is a bad name for those who are scared to fly) and begin a journey to every different part of the world. You go through security with someone who has a passport, another who is a business person with their laptop and blackberry, and another family who is heading to see family and worried that their kids are going to bother the other passengers.



But I just slide through security on my way to a location.



I look up at the big wall of screens and try to find the gate that I will be leaving from. And right there, I can see all of the possibilities. New York City, Tulsa, Spokane, Tuscaloosa, Honolulu....



It is overwhelming to know where I could be going and to feel like I am actually in charge of my own destiny. I don't like that feeling at all. I get this way when there is a change in my destination. I quit my job and search for a new one.



But in this exercise, I find that my heart is opened up to all of the places that I could travel. I look up to the monitor and ask God to tell me what is next....



So here I am.



Where should I go? What should I do?



I am trying to metaphorically go to the airport....to check in.....and to pass through security....trusting that God is taking me to the place where I was meant to live.