"What are you going to do?"
It's Guy Sayles ... now America's greatest minister but back then he was only America's greatest college student ... having crammed 4 years of college into 3 before graduating ... while I was happily cramming 4 into 5.
"About what?" I reply.
"I think you should come to Seminary," he says with conviction.
Plucking crusty ear wax with my finger while sipping a beer, the world stops spinning.
WHAT?" I yell into the phone.
"It's time to come to Seminary," he repeats with more conviction.
"Shit!" I mutter ... and then say, "Alright."
That's how I was called to go to Seminary.
Once there I meet Bill Berry ... not the former drummer for REM but the other one ... who's from the big city and takes it upon himself to introduce me to ... POVERTY!
We head into the inner city of Louisville, Kentucky taking the love of God to people sleeping in dumpsters, hookers, thousands of kids living in the projects and numerous storefront ministers who try to save people before driving back home to suburbs.
So I move into the inner city to live with the homeless, hookers, kids ... and launch a campaign to run the storefront ministers out of business.
Inexplicably an inner city congregation calls me to be their pastor ... with a butcher knife.
"We want you to be our preacher," the tobacco chewing, bald headed, knife welding woman spits at me.
I'm too scared to say "No".
That's how I became an ordained minister.
It all went well enough.
We turn the church into a shelter ... a real sanctuary ... homeless moved inside, hookers have bathroom access, kids have Sunday School ... AND WE CLOSE EVERY SINGLE STOREFRONT MINISTRY DOWN!
We discover that if you're serious about actually living out your faith ... you will get in trouble.
My ministry's been plagued by trouble.
Almost 3 decades later though ... that church still thrives in the inner city.
I return to the ocean only to be shanghaied by the City of Savannah where I spend 23 years cutting its homeless population by more than half!
We also introduce job training/placement for the poor, housing for people with AIDS, numerous addiction facilities, the nations first major health care initiative for the uninsured and behavioral health services where they're actually needed.
That finally comes to an end and I become a full time resident of ocean side living, toes in the sand, perpetually tan and ... well ... THEN SARAH COMES HOME and we finally are married!
The Kingdom comes on Earth as it is in Heaven ... ABOUT TIME!
I'm pretty content.
Then Samuel Adams, who used to play damn good live music on Tybee Island, tells me that God told him to tell me that I'm being called to "Bar Church" ... a church in a bar ... because more than 50% of the country doesn't attend church ... though 97% believe in God ... so there needs to be something else.
Then Kyle Shiver asks me to help him start a spiritual movement ... Tybee SPIRIT ... because God is bigger than Church!
THEN ... this job wants to talk to me ... in a place where there's no winter, doing the things I do best for a people I love.
I'm left with this strange suspicion I'm being called ... yet again ... but I'm older and wiser now ... so Sarah and I evaluate these things.
"What are you going to do?" she asks with frustration and needing clarity as we sit at the kitchen table after she gets home from work ... she having a wine cooler and me sipping wine.
"About what?" I reply.
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