New directions and new paradigms

I know I have been absent from here for awhile now. I haven’t posted in almost four months. But I’m back and I hope to get back to some more frequent writing on here. First off, I want to tell you guys about some new paths in my life. However, for you to know where I’m going, you have to know where I’ve been.

Let’s go back to my teenage years. Before I was 15 years old, I had my path planned out. I was a computer nerd. I wanted to go to college to get a degree in some field of computer science. I enjoyed learning about computers, software, and web design. Just to date myself, I was designing personal web sites on Geocities, Tripod and Angelfire back in those days. Some of you reading this aren’t even old enough to know what those hosting sites are. I used to spend my spare time with Netscape Composer and Microsoft Frontpage Express 2.0. Seriously, does anyone still use Netscape software?

I loved being a nerd. I planned to make a career being a nerd. But then it happened. I had an experience that I felt was a call from God, a call to stop living nominally for Him. A call to learn to live a life for Him. This event led me into a journey of trying to figure out what that call meant for me. Over those next few months, through what I knew, what I was learning and through my mentors, I felt that God was calling me into full-time vocational ministry.

But here’s the dilemma. The church (in general) has an extremely small scope of what full-time ministry means. In general, there are two or three basic tracks: preacher, youth pastor, or maybe music minister (and most churches don’t even consider their music minister as a “pastor”). So, not knowing any other way, I was put on the “preacher” track because “that is what you do if you are called to the ministry”.

No one thought to consider that maybe God wanted me to use the gifts and passions I already had. No one considered that maybe God wanted to use me to equip the local church and grow His kingdom in ways that didn’t involve a Sunday morning pulpit. No one realized that you don’t have to stand in a pulpit or lead a youth group to advance the Kingdom and the name of Jesus.

So, I began a journey that led me to college to get a degree in Christian Ministry. I’ll cut out some details, but this journey led me through some amazing experiences and leadership positions. After college, I went to seminary (thinking that was the next step for me) only to realize it wasn’t what God had in store for me. What followed after my year at seminary was a journey of searching, losing, frustration, and a forced destruction of the pride that I had been slowly building for years. I knew leaving seminary for an unknown adventure with God was going to be hard, and I knew He had some humbling in mind for my journey.

Here’s the light at the end of the tunnel (for those who have made it reading this far). Through this journey, I feel that God has expanded my perspective on the “call to ministry”. I don’t want to dive deep into that here (maybe a blog post in the near future). I feel that God calls many into the ministry and never intends them to step a foot behind a pulpit or ever lead a youth group (despite what every small church staff looks like). I feel that many are given skills and passions, but if they feel a call into ministry, we make them drop those skills and teach them to be a preacher.

And that is exactly what I feel has happened to me (and countless others who get pushed through the exact same “preacher track” at small, Christian universities). I could blame my mentors back then, but they didn’t know any better. To them, “call to ministry” meant you were going to preach. Period. They only did what they thought best to prepare me.

However, when I look back, I wish someone would have told me that God had already been preparing me for His vision for my life. All that time being a nerd, designing websites when I was 14 because I thought it was fun, was really preparation, not a distraction. I was told I had to pursue a pulpit to serve God, when, in fact, 10 years later, I’m beginning to realize that someone should have told me to pursue a computer to serve God and advance His Kingdom.

I’m beginning to realize that a call to full-time ministry doesn’t always mean a change in vocation. Instead, I feel that a call to full-time ministry just changes your vocation to become an avenue for the advancement of the Gospel, His Kingdom, and the local church.

Sometimes you don’t have to stop being a web or graphic designer to serve God and His Church. You just become a different kind of designer. A designer with a purpose bigger than himself.