Reflections on Internship

Good afternoon all!

I'm sorry for neglecting the blog for a while now. As I was recovering from illness, the internship was coming to an end and my senior year at Ohio Northern was getting started, the blog fell on my list of priorities. The internship concluded with a number of changes in my life and my future.

I have decided that at this point in my life God is not calling me into ordained ministry. It is not something that I will never again consider, but at this point it will not be the next step that I take.

I'm truly feeling a call into multi-site development and change management within the local parish. Multi-site pursuits are attractive right now partially because of the cost reductions and resource utility that results. However, many times the church makes common mistakes during the organizational change process that result in excess spending instead of savings. One of the reasons and possibly the most common reason multi-site ventures fail or stumble is the lack of effective cultural change within the organization. It is something that can easily be overlooked. However, cultural change must be the first step in creating efficient and effective change that can be maintained. The posts that follow will elaborate on this issue and evidence of God's calling in my life.

Upon returning to school, I immediately dropped my religion major to a minor and picked up a minor in entrepreneurship. This is simply in an effort to better prepare myself for what God has in store for my life. The previously declared religion major is not completely necessary if I decide to go to seminary (which is probably not going to happen right away). The addition of the entrepreneurship minor provides me with the opportunity to gain some business knowledge and work on a business plan for the West Ohio Conference of the UM Church in pursuing multi-site development.

As usual I have a number of different things going on at once. I really want to host a lecture series on student to professional development through my involvement with Lambda Pi Eta (the communication honorary). I'm also actively working on a case-study research paper on multi-site development. I'm leading a small group, playing golf, sitting on the Student Advisory Board and working at Lima Senior High School.

As I continue my pursuit of God's will for my life, I humbly ask all of you for prayer. Pray that I will leverage and prioritize my life properly, that I will continue to receive guidance and remain in constant discernment. If there is anything that God leads you to do for or say to me, please, please listen. Thank you and as always...

In Christ,