Pastor Ryan Gaffney

An End of the Fear of Whales

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I hate that so many of my posts are meta-posts. It was less than 6 months ago I was reflecting on where we had come from and updating my website with this as a regular feature. Yet here we are again, and what I feel pressed to write about is my own writing.

Screw it, says I I’m pretty much the only person who reads this thing anyway right? RIGHT? I’m not doing this for ad revenue. I’m doing this to process my emotions. And right now my emotions are questioning the future of this venue.

”Fear of Whales” was started by a college kid who was discerning his place in the world with a call into ministry despite serious concerns and misgivings about that career. It was a way for me to reflect upon my life as a person who didn’t want to be called, but was going to try to go anyway. “Fear of Whales” was about my path to ministry, and the ideas I had on the way there.

I have a counter on my phone. 82 more days until I graduate from Seminary. It could easily be another year after that before I am an officially ordained minister, but still. The end is in sight. The path doesn’t fork anymore from here. I could turn back… but that’s not likely. Something in me that I’ve previously needed to process is just about settled.

There’s another piece of it too. The times in the past ten years where I have written the most were always the loneliest and slowest times of my life. When I had a youth group, or a thriving campus ministry, or a cigars and theology pubnight I always wrote less because I was sharing my new insights with them instead of casting them into the ether(net). That’s true again. I’m preaching every week and posting those videos online. People are listening to what I have to say. I’m saying more than I often care to.

I dunno blogfans. I’m not shuttering this thing yet. I still have 82 more days to fear whales. After that maybe I’ll start a different blog about being a young pastor (as if that hasn’t been done before) maybe I’ll be writing church bulletins and that plus sermon will leave me with nothing to say. Maybe something new will break in me and I’ll keep needing the reflection space for the forseeable future.

Regardless I’ll be as interested as you to see how it turns out. Probably much more interested

Written by admin

March 2nd, 2016 at 1:33 am

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