GFMorris.com

I got a phone call today that confirmed something I’d been thinking was happening even before I was promoted: I have been asked to take TBE’s internal program management training course.

I’ve felt for some time that my boss has been training me to be his … successor isn’t the right word, because that implies that he’s leaving. Anyhow, either way … work wants me to consider jumping into management.

I turn 26 a week from Friday.

Now, Mark thinks I’m overreacting here a bit, but I recognize this: it’s been my stated consideration that my avocation—church ministry—would truly become a vocation. I’ve felt this way for some time, largely due to the perception that I have been called.

Despite many people urging me towards full-time vocational ministry, I’ve never made “the leap”. I’ve often said that now isn’t the time; I’m beginning to wonder if my perception of those events wasn’t right in the first place. I’ve had barriers—I don’t really want to get into it—thrown in my way at times in terms of pursuing this conception.

I’m really trying to figure out if what I’ve been doing inside the church—being a solid member of the laity, teaching Sunday school, working with UMYF, singing in chancel choir, and soon working on the church Web site—is what has been asked of me. My discernment is … unclear.

I’m trying to decide if this leaning towards vocational ministry was just some cooky, selfish idea. I have no doubt that I’ve been called, but as you can read from the linkage, I wasn’t really called to anything quite specific.

Why is this a huge thing? If I stick here at work, it’s time to put roots down in Huntsville: buy a house, look for a wife, again consider graduate school at UAH. That takes me from the assumption that I’ve always had with my life—that I’d stay an itinerant—and shatters it completely.

I’ll be honest … I’d appreciate prayer for discernment. This has been building for too long, and I’ve been working with a set of assumptions that might be wholly artificial.