It’s a Mad Mission… Sign Me Up

I’m a native of Olathe, Kansas, but currently spend most of the year in Atlanta, Georgia as a student at Emory University. I plan to graduate in May of 2009 with a BA in Sociology and Religion. After that, the plan is seminary/theology/divinity/wizardry school and a Master of Divinity degree. After that… who knows? Pastoral ministry in Kansas? Ph.D work in… church history? Dragon research in Romania?

I grew up in the same house in Olathe, KS a suburb of Kansas City. I had a pretty average privileged childhood: soccer, music lessons, etc. I grew up in a loving family and in a wonderful church family. I’m still a member at Aldersgate United Methodist Church, the same church where I was baptized as an infant in 1987. I’ve always attended worship and Sunday school weekly. I was Joseph my sixth grade year in the annual Christmas pageant. In junior high and high school especially I became progressively more involved in leadership in the connectional United Methodist Church as an officer in my youth group, on my local church’s administrative council, on the district and conference councils on youth ministry, other conference administrative boards, on jurisdictional (regional) and national boards of youth ministry and discipleship. While my experience has been heavily programmatic or administrative, I also have gotten the opportunity to preach a little and to teach a little. Dozens of people have asked me: “have you thought about ministry?” or said, “you’re going to seminary, right?” When I’ve looked at other careers like medicine (my parents are both doctors), engineering, or education, something just doesn’t fit and I come back to full time service in Church of Jesus Christ. And every so often when I am serving the poor, reading scripture aloud, assisting with Holy Communion, preaching, or just talking to someone about ministry, I feel God affirming to me that I am on the right track, that those are places where I belong, that proclaiming the Word, serving God and others, and helping to order the life of the Church is where I am called.