So why am I not ordained right now.  Well the best answer is I am going to be an Associate Pastor of Children and Family ministries and my new church felt like it was bad form to have me start my job while my family stayed in Texas finishing the school year.  And my church in Texas is amazing and is allowing me some time to engage in a variety of different places outside of my traditional youth ministry role. My senior pastor best describes it as giving me time to "season" for a few months before taking on my new role. I love this and will be assisting in worship this weekend in a robe.

This means I'm in the rare position of already being hired at one church but not leaving my current church for 3.5 months.  This is both a great thing but also tough. Even today in some meetings I found myself both engaged and disengaged simultaneously. And this afternoon I found myself really frustrated at one point because I was thinking about some things I feel are unfairly being directed at my current pastor. I tweeted something out then that I immediately decided to redact because I realized that wasn't the best medium for dialoguing about that particular issue.  This blog series is going to be a response to all the thoughts that I had in the next three hours after that moment.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to post several times a week about some questions, thoughts and hopes I have for my new life as a PCUSA pastor. I'm hopefully that you the reader will see that in most cases I'm really asking questions without pointing fingers or picking sides.

What I'm hopeful for is that this becomes a place where my wrestling through things is helpful for you to engage in it with me. My denomination is wrestling through much of this right now too. Some people have hope but a whole bunch are starting to lose it.  I'm starting my ordained life during this very interesting season and I am hopeful that the Holy Spirit will direct my path because if it was up to me I would probably just struggle through it.

So thanks for reading.