Life update

 Jordan reminded me yesterday that I have this blog. A lot has changed since I wrote last…

1) I stopped being a pastor after 27 years. 

2) I started being a financial planner. 

3) I stopped being a financial planner. 

4) I started my own startup called Renzoku. 

5) I closed Renzoku because market conditions changed permanently.

6) I got a job as a project manager at an IT company. 

7) I became a grandpa.

I’ll just answer the most popular questions about each I guess. Starting with #1:

1) Do you miss it? No. I don’t miss the responsibility, the grind of writing a sermon a week, the exhaustion of always needing to be on, the inability to have a personal opinion. The only thing that I really miss is the feeling of community and belonging - but I don’t think I’d feel that in the church today anyhow.

2) Why did I quit? I left my last church because it was time for me to go. They needed someone else to take them the next leg of the journey and I knew I was the one to take them there.

The bigger question is why did I quit the “profession”. I really don’t recognize much about the church that I see around me anymore. It doesn’t reflect what drew me to Christianity. Being a leader in the church felt like trying to boil the ocean. I was never going to get there and in the end, I’d end up just the same as the ocean - which would have been against everything that I want to be about. 

3) Will I ever go back? No. But i wouldn’t rule out going forward into church leadership again in the future. It would need to be so different than the past that it would feel completely new but there is a universe out there that I’m in ministry again. But theres probably more universes out there that I’m a chronic gambler or a nihilistic billionaire so thats not really saying much.