The Sixth Decade: 1998 - 2008

(Last in a series of life-reflections in the week before my 60th birthday.)

One sign that God may be calling is a certain restlessness, a certain dissatisfaction with things as they are. Other signs of God’s call may be a sense of longing, yearning, or wondering; a feeling of being at a crossroads; a sense that something is happening in one’s life, that one is wrestling with an issue or decision; a sense of being in a time of transition; or a series of circumstances that draw one into a specific issue.

---Source: Suzanne Farnham, et al, Listening Hearts

That quote has been even more real in the past decade than it was in any other decade. This was a decade of wrestling and transition I would not have believed possible this long after mid-life.

• Elected to our Western District Board. I enter into the church politics for better and worse. Politics are politics, no matter where they occur. In the church we often just hide our politics behind some understanding of God's Will. At times that may be okay. At others it may be manipulation. It is often difficult to explain the difference. Friendships can be strained by circumstances or ideology.
  


• Meeting and working with Bill Easum and Tom Bandy. Here I was opened to many ideas and directions. The biggest was the awareness that the stuff I was reading had real significance on the church. I became more and more aware that the purpose of the church is "to make disciples who make disciples who make disciples." I also became aware that so much of what we do in the church is almost totally unrelated to that purpose. Institutional survival underlies more of what we do than I had ever been able to see or admit.
  


• The restlessness of the missional calling when the church has difficulty doing that began to creep in. I saw so many opportunities and too little time or effort to do them.
  

This was at the same time as

• Our daughter went off to college and three months later


• We left home in Watertown, WI, and moved to Chaska, MN, to a new call. As I said earlier in this series, you usually have to leave home in order to make the changes and growth that you need to make. After 15 years in Watertown we had settled in - at home. But life was calling us- and God is always in the midst of life. We moved. Talk about pain. Deep pain. Deep grief. And even after all the deaths in my past - or perhaps because of them - I do not do well with grief. Neither does Val. But we moved.
  
  Fortunately, in God's grace, God called us to Minnesota only 45 minutes from Betsy. We gave her space but our proximity allowed us to continue to enjoy her life and keep the contact of parent/child so it could grow into a true adult friendship.
  


• Personality, spiritual, and other conflicts ended the ministry in Chaska. Unfortunately the move did not turn into the missional and church growing opportunity it appeared to be ahead of time. There were many things at work that are best left behind. It was difficult and devastating to us and to many. Yet, we never doubted God's call in the whole process. We may never understand the reasons or God's purposes. That has to be okay.
  

Family-wise...

• I reconnected with my brother after years of minimal connection. One of the great things recovery gave me was the willingness and ability to make connections with my brother. There was not a big breaking apart. We just stopped connecting very often. I finally made a trip back to north central Pennsylvania after a 19 year absence. It was one of the highlights of this decade. It was also one of the real difficulties as less than a year later he calls and tells me his son is quite sick.
  


• My brother's 26 year old son dies of cancer almost exactly a year after the reconnection. That is now almost 4 years ago now. In these past four years I believe that my brother and I have become friends in ways that we were never able to be. As I write this I have finished two days being with he and his wife, doing fun things, celebrating my 60th with them. I am grateful- very grateful.
  


• Betsy thinks she has a call to ministry. It is not affirmed by situations and circumstances. So, instead, she finds a new and exciting direction for herself. It is interesting to watch her bloom!! It is also interesting to see how others feel she is somehow doing something inferior to church work.
  

Through and over and around it all...

• I go on leave of absence to enter secular work as an alcohol and drug counselor. It started as a way to stay at the church with my wife and save the church money. It was also time and I knew it, to move in a new direction.
  


• My wife spends an amazing 5 months directing our district conference and camp center and being renewed after the difficult ministry.
  


• I realize that God has actually called me to a new ministry, a "secular" ministry as an alcohol and drug counselor. I came upon the realization one day that I was finally listening to God trying to convince me that the calling is not to the church but to God in service to people. That sometimes by truly living as a disciple one has no goal but to serve others.
  


• We move to Rochester, MN, nearer Val's church and for me to work at the Mayo Addiction program. It was at that point that I realized that I was truly in a second career, not just some holding pattern until retirement. It was exciting and energizing and actually a whole lot of fun.
  

And, as of tomorrow, August 4, 2008, my 60th birthday,

• I will be retired from the active ministry of the Moravian Church. Sooner or later retirement happens. I have been unofficially retired for several years. Not from ministry, and certainly not from God. But from the church-based ministry. By becoming retired though, I enter a new relationship with the church. I continue to work and have no plans on quitting working. When a person loves what they are doing why should they retire? Fortunately Mayo agrees with that general principle. I don't know what my next relationship with the church will be. I have just barely gotten through the new employee comfort level. I haven't had a whole lot of time to spend thinking about that. But I haven't left the church as such. I am seeking only to be faithful in the whole of my life.
  


• Somehow or another I do feel that God knows that.