Recycled Blog

Okay, okay, okay... I admit it! The blog I posted this morning was a recycled, yet slightly revamped blog from my previous Michigan experience. And now the weight of the guilt has overcome me in such a way that I feel the need to write a new one. Actually... I didn't honestly realize it was recycled until I started reminiscing over my previous blogs and all the cool things I've done and written about. It was fun to see how my "voice" has changed over the years, and a reminder of my experiences and what I've been through.

So I'm taking a step back and in a series of an indeterminate amount of blogs I'm going to fill in the gaps.

In 2010 I'd been everywhere and done everything, including: California, Louisiana, Montana, Michigan and my grand return to Indiana (which was technically in 2011, but you get the point). When I left Michigan (the first time) I would have thought that was the end...but in a cool "beginning" kind of way. I left St. Joe to move back to Indy to help plant a church. The planting pastor and I had met while I was in St. Joe and he and his family invited me to come along and be apart of what God was doing on the Southeast side of Indianapolis. I've traveled a lot and with that travel has come some amazing adventures and experiences and relationships with people that I never would have had otherwise. But it also came with a sense of loneliness. All those experiences were temporary, had expiration dates, but when it came to Indy, this was a new adventure in a place I really felt I could call home.

I had prayed for God to give me a place to hang pictures on the wall, and a place that had a sense of permanence. Something I'd not experienced since moving out of my childhood home when I graduated high school. So I thought Indy was it. Being a part of a church plant that 20 years down the road I was still working at is the stuff dreams are made of. At least, that's what I thought. But the closer we came to launching the church plant, the more frustrated and unsettled I'd become. After a long and hard conversation with the planting pastor - we determined that I was on the wrong seat on the bus, and children's ministry (my role in the church plant) wasn't where I needed to be. I felt like a failure. Once again, the door to church ministry was being closed, and truth be told I didn't know what I was supposed to do anymore.

I stayed at the church plant, and I loved every minute of it. I loved the relationships I built - many of which I still maintain today. And I loved the heart of the church and what it was offering the community it served. I loved being a part of something bigger than me, but something was still missing. And that was my place. After stepping out of children's ministry there was nothing else for me. We didn't have enough (or hardly any) teenagers to have a student ministry. And our church, as a plant with about 60 people maintained that we wanted to do a few things well instead of a bunch of things mediocre. So I became a "pew-sitter". And I questioned everything. I had a job that I hated, but at least it paid the bills, but I had lost a sense of purpose.