As the Associate Pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Hutchinson, KS, I write a weekly article for the newsletter article. I invite both members of the church and other visitors to my blog to share their thoughts!

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As many of you know, my wife has been appointed as the pastor of Stafford UMC.  She and I will be living in the parsonage there; I will drive into Hutch each day to continue serving Trinity.  By the time this reaches you the movers will be here– that means my life as I write this is all about packing.

In the United Methodist system pastors are itinerant.  It’s a tradition that goes back to the early preachers on the frontier, riding from town to town on horseback with no permanent roof to their name.  These days pastors tend to change churches and towns every few years on average, but there is still the atmosphere that change is always on the horizon.  It keeps fresh faces in front of congregations and it keeps pastors fresh by always giving them new challenges.

It’s not a bad metaphor for how God works in the world and in our lives…  We all say we don’t like change, but the truth is that the Holy Spirit is all about change.  God’s Spirit is often compared to wind: impossible to see but easy to feel– and always on the move.

When we move from one house to another, it forces us to throw out the garbage we’ve collected and look at our lives with fresh eyes.  To some extent it’s a chance to start over, a chance to re-arrange things to fit the world as it currently looks, not how it used to.

When was the last time you “moved” your faith?

As always, I welcome comments on my blog at http://ministrygeek.net.