Bridges are burnt

I quit my old job today. Er, woo.

The choice wasn’t too hard. There was no anguish or fretting, no late-night chats with Lorien over a cup of tea trying to talk through the pros and cons of it. I just woke up yesterday and wrote a resignation letter, then posted it this morning (how did quitting become so easy and impersonal?). It was more a necessity to leave – I am enjoying full-time paid ministry work, I think I am more productive for the gospel as an MTSer than I was at my secular job (which shows how much of a wuss I am), and my year of unpaid leave will expire when I am on a train somewhere between Delhi to Varanasi early in 2009. So, I quit.

Quitting feels like a concession to failure. The job I did with the NSW government was hard, like climbing a mountain with two heavy rucksacks on my back, a suitcase in one arm, a watermelon in the other. There was a lot of work. There was a lot of heartache. There was nearly burnout. My lame efforts at sharing the good news about Jesus with my co-workers did not seem to fall on fertile soil. To leave makes me feel like I’m bailing out when perhaps there is more I can do. But God gave me the MTS position for this year and next. It has reoriented my thinking about ministry (I daresay I have learnt more about the Bible, about God, and about ministry in the last ten months than I have in the last five or six years). It has given me so many more opportunities and connections which, I pray, will be useful in the coming years. And, ultimately, the government, though generous in giving me a whole year of unpaid leave, cannot be my employer while I am doing full-time ministry. So, it’s one or the other.

My thinking about my old job is more sentimental than I thought it would be. It was a difficult job, but a good job, and as I reflected on it while I wrote my resignation letter, it is one worth doing. I had a lot of impact in certain points in the community I worked in. I met a lot of great people and made some good friends, and I got to work with some pretty awesome little guys and girls.

The plan now is to finish MTS and then go on to college somewhere – the jury is still out between the Big Two in Sydney, though my slight incline is becoming somewhat more inclinated – and then out into the great beyond. It is scary to not have a certain plan, but heck, God is in control.