I have always been a people pleaser. From the time I was young, to the very day that I type these words. I have dedicated my life, intentionally and unintentionally, to the pursuit of making those around me happy. To impressing those in my life. To making them proud. While this can, at times, push me to great things, it has also proven to be a great detriment to my success in this world. At the core of my personality, for most of my life, I would choose what I believe people want/expect from me over what I know to be best/most beneficial for me.

The most blatant example of this in my life, was my pursuit of Pastoral Ministry. I was in High School when I felt the call to Ministry. I had spent most of my childhood serving in the Church. Volunteering, leading, teaching. When a woman from our small town congregation approached me and said “you should consider being a Minister.” That’s all it took. I was off, signing up for school to Major in Pastoral Ministry and finding every opportunity that I could to lead within the Church. It made the people around me proud. It made them excited, and I was pretty good at it.

I am a natural when it comes to public speaking. I am fairly charismatic and very personable. I can organize a group to achieve a task. I can teach lessons to just about any group and I can cast a vision for an organization. All of these things are great attributes for a Senior/Lead Pastor to have. They are not however, enough to make a good leader into a good Pastor. I struggled greatly. My personal faith life was not great. I had a very difficult time with the constant scrutiny, judgement, and volatility offered to my family and I, by many of the church members we had been called to serve.

The final straw came one day when my son (5 at the time) woke up one Sunday morning and said “I don’t want to go to church, everyone’s mean to us there.” Game Over.

We packed up, moved back to our home town, and I took a job with our county’s 911 center. My father had been a firefighter/Chief my whole life. I had been a licensed firefighter in the State of Michigan for about 4 years and I knew that emergency services was something that I was passionate about.

I have never fully recovered from the damage that I caused to my family by pursuing a career to please other people, while ignoring God’s direction. Was I called to ministry? Probably, just not Senior Pastoral ministry. I should have listened and obeyed. I should have chosen a different path, one that was pleasing to the Lord. I should have done things differently. It was my fault and my family pays the price to this day.

I hope the words that I share in my posts on this site will help people to get a better understanding of what the Lord wants from us, and how to follow Him, no matter where he leads. This is an outlet for me, because I truly believe that I was called to evangelism/teaching and I don’t have another venue for using those skills. I hope my venting can benefit you in some way.