To places unknown

A lot has happened in the past few days. It all started with a few simple questions asked by my club manager, “Where do you want to be in fifteen years? What are your goals in life?” The first time someone asked me this question was high school. I didn’t have an answer then. I had a direction, but not an answer. When I went to college I formulated an answer. “I want to be a youth pastor in the state of Washington.” Post college the tension between chasing that answer or choosing to help my family created a small crisis. Should I pursue church vocation? Or should I help those closest to me who need me right now, even though it means walking away from a dream. Four years later I am sitting in my house in Australia while my wife gets ready for work. Obviously I chose to walk away from pastoral ministry and I’ve ended up on the far side of the world. I wouldn’t change the past four years, but that initial choice has haunted me ever since. Should I go back to a church vocation? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that decision. I know I made the right choice, but I have doubted and felt guilty that I should have chosen the church. After thinking about my manager’s questions, and seeking God I can honestly say I will no longer be pursuing church vocation. That doesn’t mean I have given up on ministry. Instead I believe it’s because I have embraced ministry that I feel comfortable closing the church vocation chapter of my life.

Here’s why.

I have met certain men in my journeys who have advanced the gospel without holding a church position. These men have had ordinary jobs, but they have extraordinarily let God into their lives and let him use them, exactly where they are. Instead of looking for some kind of sacred position, they have spent their time working in the fields, and they have powerfully changed lives. I firmly believe when we embrace God’s call on our lives we can do the same, whether that’s answering a call to a church position or answering a call into the rest of the world. The place is not what is important, and neither is the type of work we do, it’s all about serving God through whatever he has given us to do.

I learned this first hand on a South Dallas YMCA basketball court. Basketball is not my best sport, so when I arrived and shortly found myself as the head coach of a boys high school team I wondered what God was doing. I was pretty sure He had picked the wrong guy and then put him on the wrong side of town. God obviously thought otherwise. It was on that court that I came to fully understand the power of the gospel and how it can transform any activity into something holy. I watched players begin to understand how I wanted them to play. I watched a street baller turn into a team player. I watched timid and quiet players turn into ferocious indomitable defensive players, with reputations of being bad guys, even though they were the nicest kids on the team. I watched players with average skills become team leaders. I watched good players push themselves to become great, and it wasn’t because their basic skills improved; it was because their hearts changed. That's not a skill you learn on the court, that's God working in someone's life. None of their achievements would have been possible without God leading the way. I would never have made it to South Dallas if I hadn’t first answered a call in North Dallas. God prepared me for what was to come, only because I was telling him yes in my life, even though I thought He was crazy putting me on a basketball court, let alone making me the head coach of two separate programs. God wasn’t crazy. He had a purpose, even though I didn’t understand it. Looking back I preached more Jesus as a coach than as youth group volunteer. Why? Because preaching has more to do with who we are rather than what we say. More to do with how we act rather than the philosophies we enforce. I fully believe God used me inside the church, and the relationships I built there were not in vain, nor were any of the lessons I learned invalid. I simply believe God used that period of my life to teach me how to go outside the church rather than stay inside of it. Even though I was convinced I was preparing for church ministry, God had other plans.

I think we live in an age where we measure the health of the church by how many people are inside of it, and whether or not we have a special role within it’s walls. The church isn’t a building, it’s a people and when people live together they don’t let walls come between them. Our ministries are not about whose set of walls were in, but rather how we act inside those walls. That is our vocation, that is our calling.

I have many friends who have trained for the ministry, some of which have jobs within the church, others who now work outside of it. For those who didn’t “make it” there is often a sense of guilt and shame, of not being good enough for church ministry, or the ever redundant, “if I just had more faith”. It’s not about measuring faith, it’s about serving God where he tells you to go. To schools, sport fields, factories, phone centers, fitness arenas, etc. Where is not important, serving God is. Allowing him to work through us, that is our ministry.