Life Update

So, what's been up over the last year?

In brief, in May 2008 (I think) I was contacted by a church in Dunn, NC, looking for their first full-time Associate Pastor, with responsibility for music, youth, and children's ministry. I, of course, had never considered youth or children's ministry as possible avenues of service for myself. In fact, in seminary, the only two things I "knew" where that I wasn't being called to preach or to be a youth minister. Shows what I knew!


It's a church of 85 or so attenders, with a choir of 15, youth group of 6, and children's ministry (k-5th) of 20-25. I moved in mid-August and started working officially in September, and it feels like I've not had a moment's rest since! This is not really good - I'm going to have to do better Sabbathing - but it has been interesting and exciting. In a lot of ways, it feels like the culmination of work I've been doing in bits and pieces for the last 15 years - I get a use for skills I learned in pastoral care as a chaplain (esp. as it's an older congregation), a use for musical skills I hadn't used in awhile (I'm having a ball planning worship and rehearsing a choir again - I'd really missed that), skills learned dabbling in college ministry the last couple of years, things learned working with the education ministry at my old church (Emmanuel Baptist Fellowship, Lexington SC), where I was part of a small, semi-missional church where I learned a lot of other things that I'm now putting to use.

The difference is, while I was a chaplain and a church pianist and a volunteer college minister, I was doing these things in bits and pieces, at different times and places. Now all those bits and pieces get to be used in the same place. I feel more whole and fulfilled than I have in years.

It's a good church. It calls itself missional, which it's not. We have a project every month or so where we have an emphasis on a particular project or need, and raise money for it, fairly successfully. There are also times of service - and the church works pretty hard on some of them, like Operation Christmas Child, or putting together packages for Meals on Wheels at Christmas, or supporting a food bank. But the service times, while good and valid, aren't relational - we rarely meet the people we're ministering too. As a result, though there's some talk about the least of these, we're rarely meeting or going to church with people "not like us".

But there's a lot of good things going on, and a lot of potential for better (more relational, loving, Kingdom-serving things), and some of us (I like to to think I'm included here) are starting to get the mental and emotional shift necessary to understand giving not as giving money but giving your whole self, even as Christ gave His whole self to us.

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A tweet (but not that kind)

Well, it's been nearly a year since my last post. In that time I've accepted a new job (a calling to church) in a new town in a new state and begun to integrate into a new community. It's been extraordinarily busy, mostly good, occasionally painful, usually exhilirating, and always time-consuming.

And so I've not been posting.

Some of that is, honestly, because as I was in the job interview process I decided I needed to not put all my thoughts on-line...that I wanted to be honest and transparent with interviewers but still maintain the right to filter.

Since I've moved and started working...in a church, where people should be loved and accepted for who they are, but as we all know, that's a struggle...since I've moved, I've continued to wrestle with the boundaries of public and private honesty, and haven't quite decided to start posting again. And, of course, I've simply been really busy, too.

Plus, about a month before I stopped posting semi-regularly, I discovered Facebook...and that deflected a lot of my on-line time.

But I have missed the outlet for self-reflection combined with reaching out. I've begun to feel that I'm too busy *not* to make time for that, actually. And the twitterization of Facebook makes my like for it a little less - and I feel the need for something that allows more of me, and less time dodging invitations to add new apps.

So anyway, now that I've had a year to forget how this works...here's a peep of a whistle. I'm back, I think. See you soon.

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Discipleship Emerging, pt. 3 - Chaplaincy

As I work through this job hunting process, my thoughts have done a lot of circling around what *type* of job to look for, as I've already written about (endlessly). A calling or vocation is not a calling to a job description. I feel like being a minister *is* who I am - or who I'm called to be/become. I also think all people are called to be ministers, in some way - and that for me, what it means to be a minister is that I'm a reminder-er - my role is to remind others that they are ministers. And, I guess, to support them and equip them as they go about ministry/service/working for the kingdom in their own spheres of influence. And to remind them they're not alone, and foster community and connection between the various spheres. And...well, that's enough!

So whatever job I have at any point, it doesn't have to be identical with my calling...but it does need to be consistent. I was becoming progressively troubled as a healthcare chaplain, because my primary understanding of my calling - reminding and equipping and building up - wasn't what I was spending most of my time doing. This, as much as frustration over paperwork and evil corporate greed and governmental waste, is why I'm not a chaplain right now.

Well, being laid off had something to do with it, too.

But I'd already decided I wouldn't stay more than another year. Really. Anyway...to some extent, volunteering at my church and with the college ministry while working in hospice as a 'day job' worked. But hospice isn't really the kind of thing you can do long term if you're not really passionate about it. And while it generally worked ok, sometimes it didn't leave much emotional energy for volunteering, even though that was the stuff I 'really' wanted to do. It was frustrating to know you were doing second-best at things that were most important to you. Meanwhile, I was trying to find ways to be who I am - a reminder-er (really need a better word!) and equipper, but thinking I really ought to be around people who were going to live long enough to do something with the insights they were having...

When the hospice job evaporated, I took that as my cue that it was time to shift to doing a job that was where my heart was - in the church.

My understanding of vocation may be shifting, by the way. I still agree and am passionate about what I've said - being a reminder, equipper, and community-builder. But there's another element that comes to the surface in the last few years, an element that working in hospitals and hospices has helped to crystallize, as well as reading literature from the emerging church, and my own Bible study.

I have seen too many men and women die feeling lonely and cut off from the church…too many people die without believing they are loved, or that God intended for them, for us all, to have lives of meaning and purpose - to know that we are of infinite value.

I have watched people die who never got to the point where they trusted that. At best, I could say that because of me and even more the nurse's aides, nurses, and social workers, they at least were *told* that they mattered. More, they saw people *acting* as if they mattered. That's something. For some of my patients, there was no one else in their lives telling them those things.

We all bear some responsibility for the lives we lead, and I'll grant you that many of those folks made choices that contributed to their isolation. But so what? We all fall short, and some of us only have bad choices to start with. The fact remains, whatever else, that often hospice was standing in the gap in solidarity with those patients when no one else was. Not family...not church.

(Not to say I didn't encounter many incredible and inspiring families, and churches, and a synagogue. Sometimes things - people - work out. Sometimes they don't.)

My dream is to be a part of a church community that is not content to leave those needs in other hands. My dream is to be a part of a church that believes Jesus meant it when he said that whatever we have done for the least of these - feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, visiting the prisoners and the oppressed - whatever we have done for them, we have done for Christ.

And whatever we have not done for them, we have not done for Christ.

The fact is, the church is meant to be doing this work...and when we're doing it right, no one does it better. Can you imagine showing any more love and compassion and solidarity for the desperately poor of Calcutta than Mother Teresa did? She's a model for us. Christ is the model for us.

The hospice I worked for was a business...at the end of the day, decisions about how we gave care were made with concern for the bottom line, and the value of the company's stock. The decision to eliminate a chaplain position - to go from having a full-time ministerial presence in the hospice house, to a chaplain visiting 10-15 hours a week (though I know he does 20 or more - go Tom!)...this was not a decision based on care for patients. Nor do I believe it was based on financial necessity. It was based on cutting corners...on not valuing spiritual care for the dying. Because the model of what we "had to provide" is set by industry standards of care, concocted to meet Medicare guidelines. Which is fine...but it's a different model than the model of Christ.

I know...it's just business. In our culture, that excuses pretty much anything that isn't actively illegal. But...Amos 5:10-13, 15 should speak to our culture.
They hate him who reproves in the gate,
and they abhor him who speaks the truth.
Therefore because you trample on the poor
and you exact taxes of grain from him,
you have built houses of hewn stone,
but you shall not dwell in them;
you have planted pleasant vineyards,
but you shall not drink their wine.
For I know how many are your transgressions
and how great are your sins—
you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe,
and turn aside the needy in the gate.
Hate evil, and love good,
and establish justice in the gate;
it may be that the LORD, the God of hosts,
will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

End of the day - I feel called, compelled, to find a way to minister to the lost and least, the overlooked and neglected...to serve as a reminder that they are loved, that there is purpose and meaning for their lives, to help them find community. My dream...whatever my job...is to be a part of a church community that embraces that, not as an occasional project, but as the meaning of our lives - the working out of our calling - the source of our joy.

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Discipleship Emerging, pt. 2 - Redux

Let's be a little less conceptual and a little more concrete this time.

I've often told folks that I wasn't really discipled well. I think this is pretty common in my Baptist heritage. Baptists (when I was growing up, and at many other times) were really concerned about professions of faith - conversions - and less so about discipling those making the professions. To be fair, Baptists had developed educational systems that had that end in mind. Church training (which was fading throughout my childhood, but still clung to the church schedule), Sunday School, education through choir and missions organizations like RAs/GAs, ACTeens, and other programs were intended to produce disciples.

Perhaps those programs worked well at one time. I know that in many of my undergraduate religion classes, and in my seminary classes, a lot of non-Baptist students didn't have the same degree of familiarity with Bible stories (Samson and Delilah, Shadrack, Meshach, and Abednego, Daniel in the Lion's Den, David and Goliath, etc.) that most of us Baptists had, and didn't seem to have "memory verses" they'd memorized. They didn't show evidence of, ahem, "sword drills" - they were slower to find passages in the Bible than those of us who'd engaged in races trying to beat our opponents with how quickly we could find a particular book...

There have been times in my life when I've been grateful for those Bible stories and working knowledge of how to look something up. Doing summer missions in the Philippines as a college student, I got thrown without preparation time into teaching high schoolers "values education" using the Bible. I'd have been lost that first day without some good Bible stories to pull from.

So a lot of the Baptist educational programs had their good points. Overall, I doubt they really worked on a deep level. There's a couple of reasons for this.

1) They mistook education for discipleship. Bible study and education, any kind of education, are unquestionably very important. But education does not, in the long run, produce transformation. People do all sorts of dangerous or bad things even though they "know better." Education is important, but the key isn't what we know, but Who we know, not what we know, but who we become. Obviously, if we're to be transformed into imitators of Christ, then we have to know things about Jesus so we know what to imitate; but knowing about Jesus in and of itself doesn't require imitation. "Knowing about" is not the same thing as "having a relationship with".

2) Low quality. Not always and not at all times - sometimes I'm sure the material was very good. Sometimes gifted and/or dedicated teachers could do a lot with a little, too. (My best Sunday School class, growing up, was the one taught by my parents. They did a great job.) But looking overall at Vacation Bible School and Sunday School, much of the education that we did remained on a very basic level (so as to be open to newcomers?) - about a 3rd grade level, it seems to me. I wonder if there are any studies on that? That's good up until 3rd grade - but over time, discipleship ministries need to grow up.

Lots of times, and at multiple churches, Sunday School revolved around asking obvious questions with yes or no answers, while acting as if the questions were difficult. Results: boredom, contempt, frustration, people leaving church.

Who had this discussion (multiple times) as a kid growing up in church? (You can substitute lots of things for "cocaine" - drunkeness, going to movies, slow dancing, fast dancing, any dancing...)
Teacher: "Do you think Jesus used cocaine?"
Students: "Um...No. It didn't even exist yet."
Teacher: "Do you think Jesus would've used cocaine if it had?"
Students: "...No. Why are we talking about this?"
Teacher: "Be quiet and answer my questions. Do you think Jesus would've used cocaine?"
Students: "..."
Teacher: "Why won't any of you answer my question?"
Students: "..."
Teacher: "Didn't any of you study your lesson? Why aren't you participating?"
Student 1 (thinks this is stupid): "...You said to be quiet. And we already answered your question."
Student 2 (asleep): "...zzz..."
Teacher (floundering - why isn't this going well?): "Please pay attention. Answer my question. Would Jeus have used cocaine?"
Student 1 (frustrated): "No!!!"
Student 2 (drooling): "...zzz..."
Teacher (good, they answered - we're back on track): "And would Jesus want you to use cocaine?"
Student 1: "ARGH!!!!"
Student 2: "...zzz..huh?"


Real discipleship needs depth - and the freedom to ask questions, not just answer them - questions that don't necessarily have yes or no (or any) answers.

Real discipleship requires community. Not just people we hang out with, but relationships with those who know us well, who see - or don't see - transformation, and helps us to see (or not see) that as well. Spiritual Directors do something similar when they help a directee to "attend to the work/presence/voice/etc. of the Spirit" in their own lives.

Real discipleship also, it seems to me, has to include challenges to *do*, not just to *hear* or *repeat* or *memorize.* Referring back to part 1 - we are to act. We are on mission. Discipleship involves us in the mission, helps us to understand that the mission is central to who we are, if we're disciples of Jesus.

I want...

No, yearn...feel called...to be part of a community where real discipleship - with depth, transformative relationships, and missional action - can take place.

My hope, dream, and prayer, is that as I look for places to serve in church, I will be brought to that kind of place. Not necessarily that they've arrrived at that place...but at least that they're willing to go looking for it.

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Turbulent Victory, pt. 1

Lots of thoughts running through my head, still, as alluded to in my earlier “Running Mad” post. It’s been, to coin a phrase, an exhaustively thoughtful month. [I often feel like I have about 4 different trains of thought going on at once, so this isn't that unusual for me!] Mostly I’ve been seeking clarity. This will surprise no one who knows me, and will probably exasperate many of them – as I seem to have infinite capacity for reflection and rereflection and rerereflection (to coin more terms).

By clarity I mean, most basically, clarity about my job situation. But…and again, this will exasperate the more practical-minded among you (hi Dad!)…but on a more fundamental level, I mean that I am seeking clarity about…geez…about all of it, everything. Not just a job, but a vocation; not just looking for work to do, but for good to do; making a life more than making a living.

Not that I haven’t been doing that, or you and the rest of the world haven’t been doing that…it’s just that I obsess about it more. :)

But seriously, the layoff (Thanks Heartland – love ya, really.) and concomitant job search make this a natural transition time. I have to consider not just changing companies but changing careers and where I live, with all the personal and relational upheaval that follows this stuff. (Thanks again Heartland – really.)

Well, I suppose I don’t *have* to do all that. I could just look for another hospice chaplain job, surely I’d find something (there are more than 22 in Columbia by last count – 5-6 years ago, there were about 5). Even if it were just part-time to start, I’d make as much as I’m doing with unemployment, and could and can supplement with other work, whether it be music or waitering, delivering pizzas or telebanking, temp work or…whatever. I could do that, and in the meantime, I could keep working with the students at USC, stay near friends and family, stay in a community where I have roots.

I could stay at my church. My wonderful church took a year and a half to find, and despite being composed of human beings and thus being necessarily flawed (sometimes exasperating – like me), is a great place. It’s a warm community, a place of authenticity and commitment, a place fitfully but definitely trying to learn how to be missional and transformative. That ain’t all that common, folks. It’s a place I can serve, and a place that’s helping me be a better person and a better disciple of Jesus.

So I could stay. I like where I live, I like what I’ve been doing. There’s no dissatisfaction driving me out.

Except that there is, and the truth is, I was “in transition” long before this layoff came down the pike.

But that's for part two...

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Running Mad 2 - A Place to Stand

This post references stuff from my earlier Running Mad post, specifically the following section (italics are me quoting myself) [I often feel like I have about 4 different trains of thought going on at once, so this isn't that unusual for me!]:

"Still trying to let this be a spiritual process of discernment and growth, and not get too bogged down in my many questions. What kind of job should I pursue? Am I chickening out by deciding to look at only associate minister positions rather than senior pastor roles? Should I be thinking about church planting? Do I have the right to take unemployment while choosing *not* to pursue another chaplaincy position? Should I only look at full time church positions, or should I be open to part time church and part time chaplaincy? Should I move, and how far away is too far? Should I look for ways to pursue missional/emergent callings - like missions work, new monastic communities, etc., or just try to incorporate those leanings into more traditional (and more settled, and better paid) church work? Etc. In my prayer time I hear the words 'Everything must change' - but what does that concretely mean? And how do I balance being as pro-active as I can be, while also letting myself be led?"

The last week or so has been busy, mostly in good ways, but busy, and sort of turbulent emotionally and spiritually. Again, mostly in good ways - but all in ways that seem significant, worth attention. I've been doing some unpacking, praying, and processing for the last few days, and feel like I have gotten to something I can stand on - hence the title of the post. But outlining that, clarifying it, is gonna be a bit of a ramble.

By the way, he said (rambling, not getting to the point), I blame high school speech and debate. As a 4 year member and co-captain of the debate team, I was trained to see multiple sides of every issue - and to be able to support any side at need, with logic, rhetoric, and impassioned reason, so that all who heard me would agree with me. Sometimes, that works too well on myself - I convince myself of whatever side I'm coming from at the time - then I look at another side of things, and convince myself of that one, too!


Exasperating sometimes (also fun, sometimes, to exasperate others), but it's also sometimes good theology. Much Christian theology, after all, requires an embrace of paradox and ambiguity. How can God be One and Three? How do you become great by being a servant? How can Jesus be fully human and fully divine?


Okay, I seem to be digressing. But there is a connnection, and it comes back to this idea of embracing paradox and ambiguity. One more example, then: Christian theology is built on the idea of revelation - that God seeks relationship with us, and seeks therefore to be known by us. As Jesus said, as Judaism has said - God has acted in history, and God's acts reveal to us things about who God is and what God is like. God has sent prophets, to continue to speak and reveal who God is and what God is like. That climaxes in the coming of Jesus, who while being as human as you and me is also as divine as God. Jesus and God are one, Jesus says. So by looking at who Jesus is and what Jesus does, we get the best revelation of who God is and what God is like. In Jesus's speaking truth and acting in compassion and seeking for justice, grace, mercy - love - in defying the powerful, healing the broken, befriending the lost and lonely, aiding the poor and hungry, finding the value in the "discarded", dismissed, marginalized people - these traits are traits of Jesus. This is what Jesus is like. This is what God is like.


So...revelation...it's central to Christian theology, to any theology, really. And if you believe that God has revealed stuff, then you can be confident in that - really, really confident - and find a faith that you can wrap your life around. Not just a convenient cultural faith, but something so profound, something from God, something that you have to listen to and allow it to change you, not counting the cost.


But interestingly, one of the the things _Revealed_ over and over agin, throughout the pages of Jewish and Christian scriptures, is how limited our knowledge is. Over and over again, in different ways, we are told this. Isaiah 55 puts it like this: "my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."

There are other ways its expressed - the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, for example, or the famous "we see through a glass darkly" from 1 Corinthians 13. In the NAS, it reads like this: "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known." And a few verses before that, "For we know in part and we prophesy in part"...though love never fails.


God thoughts and ways - God's words and actions - are different from ours. God is different from us because God is better - wiser, smarter, more compassionate, more powerful, more giving and forgiving, more loving than we can imagine. Fundamentally, God is beyond us. The normal theological term for this is that God is transcendent. The very revelation of the community of believers over the millenia is that God is beyond what we can grasp.

And yet, Christians do have a belief in revelation - a belief that though we finite beings cannot cross the gap between us to grasp the infinite, still the Infinite One can, and has, crossed the gap for us. Anything we learn this way remains partial and incomplete - it's notable that the NT so highly praises humility as a fruit of the Spirit, when neither Roman culture nor ours puts much stock in it. And yet it remains revelation, and, Christians affirm, the greatest expression, the most complete revelation, the place where Infinite and finite beings most fully connect...is in Christ Jesus. That revelation can be phrased lots of ways - one way is to say that Jesus, called Emmanuel ("God with us"), reveals that the transcendent God is also immanent, powerfully and intimately present with us.

Healthy Christian faith, it seems to me, lives in the paradox and embraces the tension. God is far beyond us, and intimately with us. We must be humble, and remember that we know only in part - and still be so confident of Christ that we are willing to die for him, and that while we live, we shape our lives to further his Kingdom.

Confident...sure...humble...limited.

So what does this have to do with what I started with? Discernment - understanding the will of God for a person, time, or place - isn't so different from revelation, really. I am called to be humble, obedient, corrigible, to be willing to say at any moment "I'm wrong" or "This was right but it's not any more", or whatever.

I'm called to keep asking my questions. To obsess over them, even - sorry, folks, but I don't think we're meant to be without questions. All the time, we are to be working out our salvation (a word with many meanings, all related to healing, health, and wholeness - as we see in our word "salve". It speaks not simply to "forgiveness of sins", but to becoming a whole person, in body, mind, spirit, and in relationship to God, self, others, and the world.), working it out "with fear and trembling."

I'm also called...and so are you...to faith. To embrace the paradox, to not fear what I don't know, to be willing to take up my cross even if I don't know where I'm headed, to be willing even to suffer for the sake of the Kingdom of love, of God, of salvation...to be willing to take risks, boldly, confidently, freely.

Where can we stand? In the fulcrum, in the eye of the storm, in the place of convergence, always emerging but never fully formed, carrying the cross....dare I say it, reformed and always reforming...

Stand on the paradox.

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Interview Report

So I had my conference call interview with the church in Texas last night. It went well, I think (whether or not I wanted it to!). It was a conversation with 5 search committee members (3 men, 2 women - both of them in the choir) and the pastor. We talked for about 45 minutes - they asked some "practical" questions about how long it's been since I've led a choir, how comfortable I am with things like handbells and praise teams, etc. - and some "interview" type questions, like my philosophy of ministry or what the best thing about me is. To the latter question, I responded that there were so many good things it was hard to choose, and I reserved the right to think of other things about me that were even better down the road...

(I said the best thing about me was that I was always learning and growing. I had to say the worst thing about me too - which I said was sort of the flip side, in that I'm always thinking and pondering and considering and sometimes forget to act on what I'm thinking.)

Anyway, it was pretty relaxed, they seemed nice, they seemed to respond well, they even laughed at my jokes without me having to explain that I was joking - which is pretty rare!

In short, I liked them. Darn it! :)

So we're agreed to keep working the process and see what happens next. The position sounds like it's heavier on music than discipleship (in contrast to the job description, which is pretty evenly divided), and I'd talked a lot about how doing "just" music wasn't enough for me. We'll see what they think of that as they talk it over. I know it'll be something I have to pray about. I've often thought that I miss immersion in music ministry, but...Over the last 6-12 months I've also found myself looking back on my most active music ministry years, and questioning how much time and effort went into a half-dozen weekly rehearsals, special programs for Easter and Christmas, worship planning, etc. Back in the day, service for the kingdom meant singing with several ensembles, accompanying a couple of choirs, playing handbells and clarinet, singing solos, etc. None of that did much to aid the poor, the hungry, or the oppressed (Luke 4:19ff), so was it time well spent? I have my doubts.

I love music ministry and would like for it to be a part of my life. But I don't know that I want it to be my primary focus. It's too - engrossing, too easy to get distracted into being a musician and forgetting to be a disciple.

I'm probably making things overly complicated again. :) Anyway, the interview seemed to go well - ball is in their court now as they decide if they want to keep going and if so, they will probably be asking me to fly out to visit sometime in the next month or so.

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Job Hunting, or...

...what's the deal, anyway?

So, I've referred several times to the fact that I'm an ex-hospice chaplain, or looking for work. Several people have private messaged me for info, since I've never gotten around to clarifying that. So I'm going to steal from myself again, and stuff I've written people off-blog, to give you at least a short version of the story.

I'm doing this for a few reasons:
1) to update you, as there are still lots of my friends that I've not mentioned this too, in any depth.
2) To ask for your prayers - and to give you enough information for you to pray with some specificity.
3) Since I've written most of this in emails to others, putting it here saves me time and coming up with another blog post. :) It's an economy of effort thing.
Update 4) Apparently I'm doing some processing, too - all the stuff about seminary and CPE was added as I was editing the post. That stuff's more for me than you. Bunch of voyeurs. ;)

Anyway...I've been working for several years now as a hospice chaplain. My sense has always been that this probably wasn't permanent. When I graduated from seminary a little over 5 years ago, I had some personal and denominational issues to work through, and also felt pretty ill-equipped, in some ways, for ministry. There was only one 3-hour pastoral counseling course, for example, and it had no practical component. Most of my seminary training seemed to have little to do with actual ministry to hurting people or a troubled world, honestly.

So I didn't want to look for a church yet. I was mad at seminary, mad at Baptist life in general, mad at me and mad at God, depending on the day of the week and the hour of the day. I didn't think I'd be good for a church staff, at that point - or that church work would be good for me, seeing as I was mad at churches and churchy people. ;)

So I decided to enroll in CPE training - Clinical Pastoral Education. This is the training for chaplains, and it involves having a supervisory chaplain critique and monitor you and help you learn to monitor and critique yourself, alongside a group of peers. That's a really shorthand description - but it's a model of learning where you act, reflect on your actions (alone, with your supervisor, and with your peer group - "why'd you do that? Why didn't you do this? What were you really thinking as you did this? What's really going on here?" - the latter being my favorite rote CPE question!), and then act again - hopefully with greater insight, expertise, sensitivity, courage, etc. That kind of action/reflection model really appeals to me. Plus, the chance to do that in the context of ministering within a hospital seemed a great response to the divorced-from-real-life-and-real-hurts complaint that I had with seminary. (Others didn't feel that, by the way - I acknowledge that a big part of the problem during my seminary years was with me - hence, the anger at myself as well as at seminary/the church/God.)

This is turning into the long version of my job-situation. Oops. Well, if you know me or you've read previous entries, I daresay you're not really surprised...

Anyway, cutting of the retrospective - I worked in the hospital as a chaplain and CPE student for 15 months - a summer internship and a year of residency. It was a great experience and helped me grow in all kinds of ways. (I'm trying to be briefer - hence, vaguer.) By the time it finished up, I felt ready and even eager to look for work on a church staff. I also felt much clearer than I ever had in seminary about the kinds of jobs I was interested. In particular I was much more sanguine about serving in a "pastoral" role, whereas before I'd always preferred to use terms that, for me, were less loaded - "ministry" or "minister" as opposed to pastoring or pastor.

I'm not great at this shorter/less introspective/just the facts stuff, had you noticed? I thought you had.

So, it's my last week at the hospital, I've been job-hunting for a couple of weeks - and in the space of 24 hours, I get three calls from three unconnected people telling me about a job.

But it's not a church job, it's as a chaplain. A hospice chaplain, in fact.

Well, the hospice opportunity intrigued me a bit, and I decided I'd pay attention to the three providential phone calls. I'd had the opportunity to serve in several different areas within the hospital during CPE - in oncology, ICU, general surgical, pediatrics, Trauma, all kinds of stuff. But I kept requesting a placement in hospice and kept getting denied it.

The main reason for this - as far as I know, anyway, was for continuity. ("As far as I know" - CPE centers are big on you knowing and expressing your motivations, while at the same time hiding their own. It builds character or something. Plus, they like for you to reflect on what you want - and then give you something else, so you can reflect on the disappointment and learn to be open to the unexpected, and stuff like that. They're very intentional and occasionally sadistic about it. Really. It's great training - and great fun, if you're twisted like me - but it's not for the faint of heart.) Hospice patients and families need some continuity, with so much of their lives in turmoil, and they don't need to be afflicted with a new chaplain every 3 months if that can be helped. Ironically, that was my very reason for wanting to serve in hospice. I was constantly frustrated in the hospital with having 100+ new patients each day, many of whom would be gone a day or two later - relationships had to begin and end very quickly. As much as I enjoyed being at the hospital, I desired the chance to form on-going pastoral relationships with folks, and felt like hospice was the best place to do that, within healthcare. It still wouldn't compare to parish/local church ministry or even campus ministry (my other great and, at the time, latent interest). But it was the area within healthcare chaplaincy that most appealed to me - in theory. So I kept asking for a practical stint within hospice to check that perception out and see if I should pursue it.

Didn't get that opportunity during CPE, but now here I was being offered a full-time job in hospice. I took it, and stayed there ever since. Sort of. I didn't leave, but the company left me a couple of times, and changed names once (so far) as it changed management. Local management changed 8 times, depending how you count it, in 3 years.

The company was having lots of power struggles on upper corporate levels. Lots of people were laid off right and left - the other chaplain that started with me was laid off 7 weeks later, for example. So it felt unstable from the start. Lots of other people quit over the next couple of years. The local office had 35 staff (roughly) when I started; after a year, all but 5 of them (roughly, and counting myself) had been replaced. After a year, I was one of the most senior employees left!

It was a really unstable situation in a lot of ways. The ministry aspect of it was great, and you got to see God working in people's lives just about every day. The corporate aspect was not great, and was a constant distraction from the work.

But my sense was that it was where God wanted me to be for the time-being, that there was a lot for me to learn from it. As in CPE, it allowed me to develop pastoral care skills - practical & theoretical - far beyond what I'd gotten in seminary. I was immersed in the real needs of real people - the stuff I felt so isolated from in seminary. You could pay attention to the corporate stuff, and constantly be listening for rumors and putting out your resume - or you could focus on the work. That's what I did for the next 3 years.

Chaplaincy also gave me the chance to meet people I probably wouldn't have in a typical church, and put me in relationship with people from a variety of backgrounds, faiths, and ethnicities. It helped me to grow a lot. Moreover, it enabled me to be involved on a volunteer basis in other ministry opportunities, through my church and, this last year, through the Cooperative Student Fellowship at USC Columbia. That's allowed me lots of different outlets for ministry - pastoral care through hospice, music and education through my church, spiritual formation and just plain fun through the college group. Any time over the last few years that I've thought about leaving my hospice job - and that's been a number of times, with so much staff turnover! - I've had the clear direction that I was in the place I needed to be - not only with hospice, but with my church and with the CSF. (When I say that chaplaincy enabled me to do these other things - I mean that if I'd had to look for work at a church, I wouldn't have been able to be a church member at Emmanuel. The community at Emmanuel has been really good for me - it's been a time of healing, trying new things in a safe and supportive community, learning to love the church again.)

But that time is drawing to a close, from what I can tell. The week before Christmas, I was laid off from my job with hospice. Technically I'm still on-staff; they like me and have kept me on, theoretically, on a 'prn' or as-needed basis. But they were making cutbacks, relating to a buy-out. (That's the second time the company's been bought in a two year period - our last buy-out was in June 2006. I got an eventual promotion out of that one.) Whatever, the fact remains that since Dec. 26 I've not had any paid work from them, nor does that seem likely to change.

I've spent a lot of time in prayer and discernment over the last two months. Over and over again, I hear God telling me "everything must change" - that it's time for me to step out into a new phase of life and ministry. At this point, even if my old job and hours were offered to me again, I would have to decline to go back to work for them - or probably any hospice, except on a part-time basis. More and more, over the last couple of years and especially the last couple of months, I feel myself drawn (back) toward pastoral, congregational ministry. This is difficult to explain to folks who try to be helpful by telling me about job openings in chaplaincy - I might work that way bi-vocationally, if I had to, to allow me to work on staff with a church - but otherwise, I think that ship has sailed. That's not a reaction to bad stuff with chaplaincy - despite my disdain for corporate life, church work has its issues too, and then some. It's more my sense that chaplaincy was a stop for me, to learn more of what I needed to learn, but that ultimately my calling is to pastoral work in the church, helping God's people to grow into their roles as the hands, feet, and voice of Christ in the world.

Pastoral care is part of that - but so is education and discipleship, worship...all the things that the church does. And I want to minister in and through the Body of Christ, in the name of Christ - not in the name and under the authority of a business conglomerate.

I could go in a lot of directions from here - long-term, I feel some drawing toward pastoring, maybe even some kind of urban church-planting with a lot of community involvement. But in the short and medium term (3-5 years?) I'd love to find a church staff position as an associate pastor, with some combination of responsibility for spiritual formation/discipleship, pastoral care, and worship...as I say, I could go in a lot of directions and I'm trying to be open to possibilities. I've loved where I've been the last few years, and I'm still in love with both my church and the college ministry. But neither pays the bills!

(That's not the real issue, of course. Chaplaincy paid the bills pretty nicely. And it allowed me to do real ministry with real people. And I don't know what the future holds. But for now, I think it holds something different. "Everything must change" is the word I hear. I'm excited...and a little nervous, too...but excited to see what that means.)

So that's my current situation in a nutshell. As I say, I'd appreciate your prayers. Grace and peace.

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