No, that’s not the case; actually, I’ve been active and busy and working and…and frankly, just not up to writing a whole lot.  I wouldn’t call it “writer’s block”, so much as “writer’s disinterest”, coupled with “writer’s fatigue”, coupled with “it’s summer, and I’m enjoying the out-of-doors, and just ain’t in the mood to sit indoors much.”

Which leads to what I’m leaning toward: it strikes me that the time may well have come to bring this blogging enterprise to a conclusion.  I’ve been at it for about 7 years (the Archives don’t show it, but way back in the beginning, if my ever-fading memory serves me, I blogged under another format for a few months).  It would be overreach to call me one of the pioneers of blogging, but it wouldn’t be overreach at all to call me an “early adopter”.  And it’s been fun.  And I think there are at least a handful of people whom I’ve inspired to blog, who are doing so with varying degrees of regularity, but who have some things to offer, and I read them and appreciate their insights and am happy if indeed my venture emboldened them to do the same.  Thoughtful, well-written commentary from a Christian perspective is ever-needful in this godless society in which we live.

But I’m just about ready, I think, to move on.

So here’s my tentative plan: this post is post number 1950 on this site.  I turn 50 in about 50 days.  That would give me an even sum of 2000 posts, if I hit about one a day.  I think I’d like to post #2000 on my 50th, and then sort of fade into the sunset.  That sounds right.  I hope to post (mostly) substantive stuff in the days to come; I hope to do a “best of” post or six, where I go back through the 1900+ and search out the ones I think are worthy of re-running; some of them may provoke new discussion, which would be fun.  I cannot tell you what a blast it can be to spend some of one’s day thinking of how to answer a person with a different point of view, not by “flaming” that person, but with a cogent, Christ-honoring answer.  I love it.  Next week, I’m meeting “Bob” in person to talk about the whole issue of homosexuality; some of you might remember that a few months back, in response to “Bob’s” questions, I did a 7-part series on the subject.  I look forward to seeing him and chewing the fat in that regard; I love it.

Now, it may be that if I meet this lofty goal, I in turn get re-inspired to continue.  I doubt at this point that that’ll happen, but I reserve that right.  It’s my blog, and I’ll…blog…if I want to…but for now, that’s the plan.  But I guess the bottom line is that I try…not always hit it, but try…to either do something reasonably well, or to not do it at all.  Lately, I haven’t been doing this blogging thing particularly well, hence my decision.

It is my intent to leave this blog up, at least for some time; I pay just a few bucks to maintain it a year, and I think I’d like to keep it for at least a couple reasons: one, it does serve to elucidate what I think about life (and might serve for a few good laughs in a few years when I’m older and wiser and want to repudiate some of the dumb stuff I undoubtedly think now).  Two, on occasion there are people who stumble upon it for one reason or another, and it gives me opportunity to engage them in conversation.  Some of them rail at me (Ryan, of recent vintage, being one example), but with tact and patience, I think I can, if not persuade folks like Ryan, at least present perhaps a different picture of a Christ-follower.

And that has been worth doing.

Uggh…

Sound like a pretty good mission statement?  Make the “we” an “I”, and it could be your personal purpose.  But apply it to a major corporation?  Sounds a little too “religious”…I mean, can you imagine IBM or GM or McDonald’s having such a purpose statement?

It belongs to Chick-fil-A, in case you didn’t see where this was going.  And yeah, I’m pretty jazzed to be working for a company where that is the purpose.

No, that’s not news, I grant, but today is a day unlike any I’ve had in my life.  Yesterday, I completed my time as pastor at Red Oak, an Evangelical Free Church.  Today, I am opening shift manager at the Macland Crossing Chick-fil-A in Marietta, GA.

I’ve not been in this position, really, in my entire life.  I went to seminary in order to prepare for vocational Christian ministry and, with the exception of a roughly-three-month stretch in 1986 while living in Colorado, this is what I’ve done for the past 25 years (even more, if you count a two-year internship at my home church in Roanoke).  A review, for no particular purpose save to bring my friends up-to-date:

• I was Youth Ministries Intern at Shenandoah Baptist Church in Roanoke, 1983-1985.
• I was Minister of Youth in Pit of Darkness Baptist…err, Lighthouse Baptist Church in Pueblo, Colorado for a few months too long, 1985 (I should be more charitable; there were some wonderful people there, wonderful people, and some long-term good came of that experience).
• I was Minister of Youth for Gideon Baptist Church of Fountain, Colorado for a period of about 14 months, 1986-1987.
• I was Minister of Education and Youth at First Baptist Church, Bassett, VA, for two-and-a-half years, including a 14-month stretch as Interim Pastor, that lasted until the end of 1989.
• I was Pastor of Brentwood Baptist Church, High Point, NC, from January 1990 through March 1993.
• I was the first Pastor of Fellowship Community Church (EFCA) of Mercer, PA, for thirteen-and-a-half mostly-wonderful years.
• I came to Red Oak, An Evangelical Free Church, in October, 2006 and finished yesterday.

The difference between my several-month hiatus in 1986 and what I’m doing now is that my intent was to find another youth pastorate as soon as possible in 1986, and God provided in rapid fashion.  This time, I have no idea when—or if—I’ll pastor again.  For the first time in my entire life, I’ll begin searching for a home church that won’t be paying me a dime.  We are committed to two years minimum at Chick-fil-A, and two will likely equal at least three, given that Practically Perfect Daughter has just finished her ninth-grade year, and moving during or just before her senior year would be, well, a bummer.  Of course, by that time, I’ll be 52 years old, and while the somewhat prevalent contemporary viewpoint that a pastor of that age is “past his prime”, as we ever pursue youth, is a deplorable and foolhardy trend, that and three years absence from pastoral ministry are likely to serve to diminish my prospects further.

So what.

God’s in control.  I’m not leaving the ministry; I’m leaving (for 2-3 years) the paid pastorate.  As a Christian, I will leave the ministry when God sees fit to give me my promotion; otherwise, being in ministry is an occupational hazard for every child of God, and only a foolhardy and unbiblical cleavage between the “clergy” and the “laity” accounts for that nonsense.

Now, it’s certainly a fair question to ask how I will employ my main spiritual gift: teaching.  The answer to that remains to be seen.  I might eventually seek an interim pastorate.  I must ramp up my Walk Thru the Bible ministry (I’m excited about doing that!).  There’s a cutting-edge ministry opp that I’m talking about with a friend (gotta get this CFA manager thing down well first, though).  We’ll have to see.  For now, taking a few months off from sermon prep, getting my family into a church where people see me as a regular guy instead of as “the pastor” (and that’s no swipe at Red Oak, FCC, or anybody; it’s just what it is, of course.  I’ve got no complaints; none.  Had a great last Sunday yesterday!).

And so began today, the first day of the rest of my life.  I’m looking forward to the ride…

For some of you who’ve not heard the news, this will come as something of a surprise, yea shock, to you, I have no doubt.  I’d like to share a few things with you in bullet point fashion, and then we can go from there:

• I am leaving Red Oak on good terms, in case you’re wondering.
• I am personally doing quite well, actually.  Quite well.
• I am extremely excited about taking the position with Chick-fil-A.
• I do not know when—or if—I’ll return to pastoral ministry.
• I am not leaving ministry. Period, end of story, over and out.  I am merely not going to get paid for doing it for the foreseeable future.
• I am very excited, as a matter of fact, about a cutting-edge ministry venture that may materialize in the not-too-distant future.  Stay tuned for details.

What this move will—and will not—mean for us:

• I won’t be getting rich anytime soon, though we should be able to do fine (I write this in case anybody is tempted to think that this decision is somehow financial.  It isn’t.).
• We will be staying put in the ATL, about which we love most everything, and tolerate the traffic (most of the time).
• We have a significant number of friendships outside the church here in the ATL (and of course when we leave Red Oak, we’ll have more—since all our Red Oak friends will be outside the church!).
• Practically-Perfect Daughter should be able to finish high school here.
• We love our house, and we’ll be staying in it, we believe.  Come see us.
• Working the shift I’ll be working will allow us to continue to be involved with community theater, something that has been a great joy these past 8 months.
• My hope is to be able to do some speaking, perhaps even some interim pastorate work, as well as developing, at long last, my Walk Thru the Bible ministry.  I was born to do this; talk to your pastor about having Walk Thru in your church!

OK, that’s the straight skinny.  If you have questions, feel free to comment, or to ask me in a private email.  This is uncharted territory; I’ve been in some form of paid pastoral ministry, effectively continuously, since 1985, and that ends in three weeks.  But God is good, and we’re eager to see how the next chapter of our lives unfolds.  Pray for us during this transition as God lays us on your heart.