Hello friends and family,
I know; my blog has been dormant for some time now. Please trust that it’s not because of a dearth of noteworthy adventures or news items, but rather that blogging comes fairly low on my time priorities. Gotta keep first things first (does anyone else find it curious that in Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits “First Things First” is the third chapter?). Another excuse is that the research has been going full steam since Christmas, so after 8 hours of programming and writing, I generally don’t want to look at screens for the rest of the evening.
Excuses aside, as you may know my Marshall funding ends in September, at which point the Air Force would like me back. I wanted to take the chance to share and explain a fairly big career decision I’ve made regarding this upcoming transition.
This may come as a surprise to some, but I have asked the Air Force for a different assignment, other than flight school, after I finish my degree here in Sheffield. I mulled over the decision for six months or so and finally submitted the paperwork in late November.
Being a military pilot has been a dream of mine for a long time – it’s partly the reason I went to VMI and partly the reason I joined the Air Force. But I’ve been convicted over the past couple years to really consider whether my career decisions actually reflect my priorities in life – particularly regarding family and ministry/missions.
I believe our families (both our natural families and our church families) are one of the biggest responsibilities that God has given us. So, while I want my work to provide financially for them, I also want it to leave me with the time and energy to properly invest in them. Similarly, I have been learning that the local church and church planting are crucial to the way God is bringing about his Kingdom, and that serving the ‘widows and orphans’ of society is a central response to the good news. I have seen that in action here in Sheffield, and I have absolutely loved being a part of it. So, I want to go into a job that gives me the freedom to continue.
Military life in general, but especially flying, is demanding both in terms of time and energy, as well as requiring frequent moves and time away. I’ve known that all along, but now seeing close VMI friends in the military has made those challenges seem more concrete. Similarly, having to wrestle through courtship questions over the past year has made me more cognoscente of the challenges that such a lifestyle places on families. I don’t want family and ministry to become secondary, getting the leftovers of my time, energy, and attention after my career ambitions have first been satisfied.
Now, obviously, family life is tough and church is messy, regardless whether you are in the military or not. And I’m not saying that it’s impossible to be a family man or a missionary within the military. I know it can be done, as good family friends have shown. And someone needs to do it; there needs to be missionaries in the Air Force just like everywhere else and I am glad that there are committed believers who will do it. But I guess what I’ve come to learn is that it doesn’t have to be me (that being said, I must remember that God sovereignly brought me here, so as long as I am in the Air Force I will enjoy it as a blessing and fully invest in it as a mission field.)
I saw it as a wisdom/freedom issue. I was free to either continue down the piloting path or to choose something else. One choice may have been wiser than the other, but neither was intrinsically wrong. So given that, I freely chose (in fact, I wanted, preferred, desired…) the one that would allow me greater flexibility to shape my life around ministry and family, giving them the priority they deserve (by the way, splitting ministry and family, and ministry and career is a bit artificial. I think that ministering to our families is just as important as any other ‘ministry.’ Plus, ministry is a whole-life thing, not an event or a task that we can separate from the rest of our lives. But I digress).
To be honest, I’m not looking for any sort of existential fulfilment in my career anymore, just a just ‘tent-making’ business that will allow me to serve my family and others. While I don’t want my career to be a waste of the skills and gifts God has given me, I think the bigger waste would be selling out on what is of eternal significance in the pursuit of a career.
So there we have it.
What will I do next? Well, I still have a 6 year commitment to the Air Force (down from 10 if I were a pilot). So, in mid-September, I’m scheduled to go to a developmental engineering position at Vandenberg Air Force Base, in Lompoc, California. Vandenberg is the Air Force’s West Coast space launch facility (like a Californian Kennedy Space Center), so I’ll be working in some way/shape/form with rockets, rocketships, and satellites. One thing that made it relatively easy to give up the flying is that I love so many different things, especially creative engineering.
The base owns a large swath of the Pacific coast and is bounded on the east by national parks; square in California’s wine country. The big unknown at this point is finding a church where I can be received and with whom I can invest my life.
After that, I don’t know. There are loads of opportunities and I’ve got a bunch of ideas, and a lot could change between now and then anyway, so it would be naive to try to nail it down too much.
All very exciting.
Soli Deo gloria!
-Will
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3 comments:
Will, Well stated. As usual your thoughts are well laid out and well written/spoken. I appreciate your reasoning and no one can contest your motives or priorities.
I would challenge you to embrace your comment that you will treat the Air Force as a mission field. In fact I would challenge that the entire world is a mission field and the most overlooked mission field is the workplace.
There seems to be a prevailing mentality in Christian circles that to do real missions/kingdom work we need to "go" somewhere or be engaged in traditional church events. I challenge that as clearly not biblical. Although there are certainly many solid ministry/missions activities within the traditional mission field and the traditional church, they are clearly NOT the only venues for "kingdom" work.
As you say Paul was a tentmaker, but more than that he ministered and witnessed to people in every circumstance of his life. I take that to be the key.
Applied to our lives, we must see ourselves as missionaries/ministers in every element of our lives.
I had a Pastor point out to me once, that he was unable to reach and minister to those people whom I worked with everyday. In fact the relationship I developed with them could be the only light of Jesus they ever see. The key is the relationship and meeting people where they are, just as Jesus did.
You can do that in many different ways, just never underestimate the power of God to put you in a UNIQUE place of His choosing for SUCH A TIME AS THIS.
BTW, I have a good friend who left the Navy Seals, went to work full time for the Navigators, and then began a couple of bible studies with those old buddies from the Seals. He eventually went back into the Navy and is still ministering on that mission field in a way that no other missionary ever could. ANd those folks need it as much as the most desolate folks in Africa or the inner city.
Please understand that I am not challenging your path, just providing a bit of elder wisdom to be considered.
God Bless Brother! Enjoy VandyLand
I completely agree!
We have a missionary God, and we are a sent people; it is an integral part of our identity, and I want my career decisions to reflect that. Mission is a lifestyle, not an event, but we still need to be purposeful about it. My pastor over here likes to say that most gospel ministry involves “ordinary people doing ordinary things with gospel intentionality;” that is, a commitment to living and proclaiming the gospel, whether at work, at home, at school… And like you say, we know that God has sovereignly brought us where we are.
To nuance what I said originally, I would also suggest that the local church (not the building or the Sunday gathering, but the people) are God’s primary agent for mission― “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” We are not left to be lone-ranger missionaries, but are members of a body with many different gifts; we are together a light to the world, a city on a hill. Lesslie Newbigin likes to say the local church is “the hermeneutic of the gospel.” – it shows our friends and neighbours and work colleagues what the gospel means.
This doesn’t minimise or detract from personal evangelism, but it should enhance and shape it. So, I want my work colleagues and neighbours to meet my church, so they can see and be a part of our life together – hopefully a community marked by grace, forgiveness, joy, love, service, etc. I want them to meet Martin who is a gifted evangelist, and Amy who has struggled with the same issues as my friend… Similarly, I want to meet my church family’s work colleagues and neighbours.
So, that’s why I was saying that I want to invest more in building up the church and be involved in planting new ones – to help spread that vision.
Thanks for the advice and encouragement. I do value it.
Enjoy grace,
Will
So glad to see you doing a bit of the blog again. I was missing it. Thanks for sharing with all your recent decisions. I know God will bless!
Love you,
Mom.
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