Finding My Footing On A Very Different Path

It has been more than three months since I left my professional career and began full time ministry. It was a difficult choice leaving something I'd been doing for basically 37 years, and jumping into something I had only a year-and-a-half experience doing as a part-time bi-vocational pastor. But I knew it was God's plan for me.  I knew because God began closing doors on my professional career and opening doors in ministry.  The more I resisted where I knew God was leading me, the more miserable the environment I was working in became.  It got the place where I could no longer ignore the obvious--it was time to go.  

Change is hard.  That’s what you hear a lot.  But actually, change is inevitable—it’s the decisions about change that are hard. Once I decided it was time to go, I trained my successor, I cleaned out my files and my office, and walked out the door in roughly six weeks. I do miss a couple people I worked with.  I thought I would miss the job, or at least parts of it. I haven't at all.  I've had no regrets.   

But it is a very different life being a pastor compared to being a business manager in a University office. It took me a few weeks just to slow down. I've been workload driven for decades--it was necessary to be very disciplined in my work habits to survive.  I'd take a half an hour every morning just to make a battle plan to attack each day so I could stay on schedule.  

The pace of ministry is very different. It's more intentional.  There are things I need to get done every week, but most of what I do is driven by the needs of the congregation and the church.  Every day is different.  Every week is different.  I have regular office hours, but being a pastor isn't a 9 to 5 job.  It's a vocation.  It's about who you and what you are to the church and the congregation.  

It was a challenge getting used to that idea.  I quit being the business manager at the end of the day.  I wasn't the business manager on weekends.  I wasn't the business manager on vacations.  But I'm the pastor when I wake up in the morning, and when I go to bed at night, and even when that phone rings at midnight.  I'm the pastor when I'm taking a day off.  I'm the pastor when I'm on a trip.  I'm the pastor when I'm putting gas in my car and when I'm buying groceries.  Most of my meetings are unscheduled--people walk into the church to see me.  People will call me and ask if I have a few minutes for coffee somewhere. Then there's illnesses.  And births.  And deaths.  Funerals and weddings.  I spent time at my desk each week writing a sermon, and answering correspondence, but most of what I do is far away from a computer and a desk.  Much of it involves relationships.  Much of it involves prayer and study.

But the one thing I appreciate the most about this new season in life, is that most of what I do only God sees.  I still have lists I make each day.  People I'm praying for.  Things I'm grateful for.  Ideas for sermons.  People I need to check on because for some reason I've been thinking about them.  

And the one thing that keeps coming to my mind.  Why haven't I been doing this consistently all along?  That's what the Lord intends for us to do.  We all have a ministry.  We can all make a difference in our communities.  We can all pray for people.  We can all show gratitude.  We can all reach out and show our love and our care and our concern to somebody we know is struggling. We get so wrapped up in making a living we forget to live.  We lose track of what's truly important because we focus too much on what we do, and not nearly enough on who we are.  We can all do that, you know. We all should do that.  Live our faith.  Let people see what we believe in the way we live.  Live your life as if it's a ministry--because it is.    

~Pastor Todd Creason