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Last night, I received an email from my cousin asking me how I ended up here in the midwest. Ironically enough, that message came 7 years to the day after I started in my calling at this congregation. While I sent off a very brief message back, the question kept coming back to me today. Why am I here? Not in the sense of “Why the hell am I in this place?”, but really thinking about the calling I have received and what it means today. To put it bluntly, I am in a very different place today here than I thought I would be 7 years ago today. Firstly, I didn’t think that I would be here for 5 years when I first started, much less 7 years. Second, I didn’t think that I would go through some of the things that have gone on both in the congregation and in my personal life. Third, I thought that by now I’d be living back in the mountains or somewhere along the coast. Surprise…here I am still in the midwest? Why? Easy…calling. Actually, its not that easy because that might imply that being called is somehow easy. Being called means a lot of things and most of them are things that aren’t easy. But its calling that has kept me anchored here and committed here. Its weird, but I really think that I have been called to this congregation several times over the last 7 years. Once when I first started here when I was that glassy eyed fresh-out-of-seminary 26 year old and then several other times since. Instances when I felt like it was truly time to move on to somewhere else and something came seemingly out of the blue to re-anchor me here. God? A likely source.
When I think about calling, I think about a commitment to the people and the mission of God in the world. Its both a general and a specific. A general to do reflect and live out the model set forth by Christ. A specific calling to a specific place and group of people. Both to do those things that I have been led to.

So where am I today? My sense of calling continues to grow more and more specific. Ironically enough, it echoes back to those things that I was so passionate about years ago (and never really stopped, but didn’t see the intersection of those with “professional ministry” before). We live in a media and technologically saturated culture. The elements of media and culture are becoming so ingrained in people that for the church to ignore them would be foolish. However, the church also can’t wontonly embrace these things without serious reflection and consideration. There are questions to be asked about appropriateness, usability, message, and more when using these new tools. I feel that it is this intersection that God continues to lead me.