The Call? Appendix 2

Ok, so after a couple of weeks of no post I have some news to report. First, I apologize for the silence. I had finals. Secondly, the direction in which these posts will be written will change from this point.
The news is this. Regretfully I report that I am no longer wondering about ordination. After multiple conversations that were unscheduled and not strategically placed by me; I have become an enquirer in the PCUSA church.
Over the course of three weeks I had some very clear conversations with people that affirmed that taking the step of ordination was the step I should take. My frustration with the church and lack of clear call to a position remains but the notion of ordination is no longer vague to me. Several examples of conversations went like this.
The first is with a major supporter of my ministry. She approached me and said that she loves "The Call" blog. I asked her what I should do. She said with out hesitation, "be a campus minister." I thought this was a weird response to the content to my blog. So asked her a clarifying question, "should I get ordained?" Again she said without hesitation and without much worry, "sure, why not, but you are called to young adults." I thought about this exchange for a while. She clearly wasn't fretting over the issue as I was. So I thought well if a supporter of my ministry, one who knows my skills as well as anyone in the CCO thinks it isn't a big issue then why should I?
Another conversation with in an hour of this one was even more peculiar. A young lady with dreadlocks started a conversation with me. She was dressed very casually and asked some very casual questions about my life. It turned out that she was a PCUSA pastor and started a communal living house in the East End. Though when asking about possibilities of ordination I suggested that my membership with the PCUSA is with a church that currently closed its doors. She went on answering all of my church polity questions. She gave very detailed answers. That helped me see that starting ordination wasn't as tough as I once thought. This conversation almost gave me no excuse not to consider ordination. From a highly unlikely source I had my dogmatic excuses over church polity removed from why I should be at the very least an enquirer.
This does not mean that I feel confidant about being a pastor. Though it has been a major step forward.

The Call? ed 5

I left Pitt with a very disillusioned view of campus ministry and headed to Ohio State. While there, God blessed me with a very rewarding ministry. I saw fruit of growth with students. I enjoyed the work. Though there was a fly in the ointment that brought me back to my time at Pitt. It took place at a church that I observed from a safe distance. I saw the actions of what went on and I think it affected me deeply.
With an attempt to remain nameless: I saw a close ordained pastor friend of mine almost lose his job. He was in my opinion the epitome of a good, God loving associate pastor of a large suburban parish. I observed his love and kindness on many occasions and in many circumstances that proved to me that what I was witnessing was the true definition of a pastor. Though I also saw the Board of Trustees of his church almost let him go because his mission trips to New Orleans (in which he took 150 people over three trips in the course of a year) come over budget by $2,000. This is a church with 4 full time pastors and a multi-million dollar budget. I saw this church all but sign his papers of termination before the session stepped in and stopped it.
What affected me was the issues that drove their decision. It was hard to see this laboring pastor be treated so poorly. The people making the decision thought they were doing the will of God by letting him go for a well spent 2 grand. This is clearly an issue of poor discipleship though why are the poorly disciple people allowed to make big decisions? This question however is not my problem with call.
The major problem is this. How can we trust a system that would hire and fire someone due to money questions? The statement "we cant afford this pastor" repels me from wanting to be apart of the system that would utter it. I don't ever want to be in that pastors shoe's.
My questions: should that have a weight on why I should be a pastor? Should I see my work as redeeming that system?

The Call? ed 4

When I left the University of Kentucky I was confident in my call and excited about going back home. I was also excited about being in the CCO. An organization that I felt I could make a serious contribution to immediately. It also encouraged me to work directly out of a church. There was no reason to feel that I wasn't going to be a campus minister for a long time.
That is until I actually started working in the church. I had a real tough time rectifying the gifts God gave me with the particular demands that my supervisors at the church placed on me. The position wasn't getting better and confusion about why I was there set in. I joined seminary and started to see ministry from different angles. I enrolled in seminary part time and took Church History that happened to be taught from an Eastern perspective. The things I was learning in this class was nothing I was experiencing in the church I was working in. The church I was working at recognized the difference of their desire for my position and mine and decided to not renew their contract with me (to explain would require a whole new series of blogs). If I wanted to continue the work I felt called to do I needed to move away to Ohio for there was a position at Ohio State that would be a good fit.
Campus ministry is the only sense of call next to being in seminary I was certain about. I wrestle and sometimes feel guilty if it is something I will be called back into after seminary. I love campus ministry and if you read the first "call" post, I suggested that I wanted to teach in college. This is a direct outpouring of my love of college students and the university.

Here is my dilemma, I have seen good men and women doing great work on campus let go or even worse made financially crippled due to poor church interaction with campus ministry. This might sound shallow but after seminary, how can I take this profession that I excel at seriously if the church as a whole treats it with a low amount of respect?

I have a lot of positive opinions about the answer to this question because I love campus ministry but I pose the question to hear what others think because right now it seems to be a big obstacle for my thinking through campus ministry as a profession.
(p.s.not to say that there are not some churches highly committed to campus ministry, because there are)
-Next blog OSU-

The Call? appendix a

So since I have been writing this series of blogs on Call I have learned a lot from several sources. First from a close friend named Bob Robinson, (http://vanguardchurch.blogspot.com/). He has revised my blogs with good questions that have made me think.
For example, Bob challenged me to clarify the "lack of joy" I was experiencing while using my gifts. The answer is something similar to what Bob offered in his response to my blog which is an unquietness over using my gifts in campus ministry. I love campus ministry but for some reason feel disillusioned by it.
This goes into another source of teaching. I met with a professor a week and a half ago and after talking with me for twenty minutes he said you seem like something is bothering you. I told him my struggles and he offered several pieces of information that I am still wrestling with. The first is that not knowing God's call means you are vulnerable and naturally unquieted. The second is that the guilt I am experiencing might be me drawing myself to a sense of familiar control; Campus ministry is all I ever knew. Since I am in a season of an absence of control over my call I might be grasping for the familiar to gain a sense of control. Finally, which is something that I knew but needed to hear again which was; Joy is not to be ashamed of, if the joy is in Christ then I should strive for what makes me happy for this is how I am created.
What do you think?
I had one more major conversation but I intend to speak about that later.
I am sorry for preempting the Pitt conversation though I promise I will speak about that next.

The Call? ed 3

Kentucky, was the most affirming time I ever had in ministry. With story after story, God confirmed my call to be doing ministry at the University of Kentucky. Under almost any general definition of what is good campus ministry, I was experiencing it. I was leading people to Christ. I was discipling students into a strong relationship with Christ. I was having fun and loved my job. Through several circumstances I was called away from the ministry their. I learned several things about myself. One is that I am gifted by God at sharing Christ with others. The other gift is that I am good at helping people grow in their relationship with Christ. Two gifts that I have exhibited in the past eight years over again.
Here is my question. If I am not experiencing joy using my gifts anymore does that mean I should stop doing them (in the setting that I have in the past; of course I know I am always called to do them as part of the Great Commission)? Or should I fight past the lack of joy I may experience and just keep my gifts in the same manner? Can the absence of joy be an indicator of call or lack there of?

My next post will be about Pitt.

The Call? ed 2

I feel compelled to write about call and specifically my call. The reason I want to write about call is because I feel such an absence of it in my life now. Let me fill you in on what is happening currently in my life regarding call. I had a draw towards teaching in college while working at Ohio State. This draw to teach was a major lure for me to enter into seminary. Though upon coming to Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (PTS) I have discovered there is a steep up hill climb to get into a theological PhD program let alone graduate from one, on top of finding a college with a vacancy in a theological department. These factors have scared me to some degree from thinking that maybe my desire to teach was just that- a desire and not a call. God may have used this desire to get back into seminary for I certainly feel confident that God wants me at PTS.
This sense of a flux in call has caused me to evaluate my gifts and abilities as a way to sense my call. I will go into what I am and might be good at in another post. Though I ask the question; should I try to sense call with evaluating what I am good at?
Next post will be about my time as a minister at Kentucky.
(Edit: Bob Robinson added a good post and I will respond in part with an edit to this post. It must be said that I fully intend to keep persuing a PhD. With the advise of a proff. I was challenged to consider all possible options of how God maybe calling me.)

My Call? ed1

I have never experienced before such an absence of a sense of call. Let me go back to explain a bit of this. When I was in middle school I knew on some level I wanted to be in law enforcement. I wasn't sure exactly how and in what way this was true. Though I knew I wanted to do it. Of course I had my dreams of being an FBI agent but my desire to do something with law enforcement was less of a dream and more of a deep desire. I went to college and came to know Christ as Lord. This didn't even change my call. In fact it made my call even stronger for I learned how I could bring my faith into such a call. My once strong resolve to do law enforcement is how I was certain that I was no longer called to do it. I lost the desire to do it somewhere around my senior year and after a year of being a probation officer I was not excited by it anymore.
This is what led to my deep desire to do campus ministry for 8 years. I will go into that in another post. Though I must ask, should I have tested my call to do Law Enforcement by the level of my excitement? I have often heard where the cross roads of gifts, abilities and desire meet God's kingdom is where your call lies. Is that a fair statement or is there something more to call? I hope to continue this personal dialogue in this very public (though probably not read) forum.
My next post will be about why I am writing this now.