Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward Sem

One evening last school year I sat in a café with my friend, Melissa, reading a commentary on Genesis for class, sipping an iced chai, and enjoying live bluegrass music. I looked up from my book and laughed to myself, “I am being assigned a text I would read anyway!” Melissa glanced up from her reading.

“I love seminary! There is no place else I would rather be than right here, right now. This is what I wanted to do for three years and now I’m doing it.”

I chuckled to myself under my breath and went back to reading, thanking God for giving me such a joyful peace with my position in life.

God had given me inclinations toward becoming a pastor throughout my growing up years. Folks had encouraged me to become a minister in junior high even. My parents and I, however, had looked into other fields for my career.

I started at Michigan State University as a physics major. I did well in my courses. I even worked at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. I felt aimless, however, and disconnected from people. I asked my supervisor at the Cyclotron, “How much of your time, as a percentage, do you spend in your office thinking about and working on physics problems?”

“Oh, about 75% of my time,” he replied.

That was the clincher to me. I couldn’t be cooped up in an office for the remainder of my life. Physics was cool, but it was the moral equivalent of playing with Legos: fun and interesting but with no real everyday impact on people’s lives. At that point I knew I was going to be a pastor and I needed to change my major.

My parents took the news with a little difficulty. They always imagined me going to college to train myself for a successful career, that is, a career in engineering, medicine, law, etc. Picturing their son as a pastor just did not inspire confidence in them at first. They’re happy about me becoming a minister now, but there were some harsh words in the beginning.

There is a peace that comes with knowing your future at least on a macroscopic level. I had committed myself to the pastor career path and thus every other decision branched off of that primary goal. I changed my major to community relations with a specialty in peace and justice. I started working with the Lansing Refugee Center. Within each course, even, I had a focus. I could ask myself, “How will this class fit in with my becoming a pastor?” Several times my professors encouraged me to bring my religious views to bear on different topics our classes discussed. For example, I evaluated the ELCA’s position on abortion in light of recent feminist scholarship on the topic. The future became very clear.

Now, I am living out my ambition and it’s a blast: debating politics in the dorm late into the night, playing in a folk rock band for Spirit Garage Underground, leading a theological roundtable at local bars called Theology Pub, and just hanging out with so many fellow young Christians. Thank God for Luther Seminary. There’s no place I’d rather be right now.