It is official. I am a retired United Methodist clergy person, having completed forty years of “professional” ministry. I actually began ministry as a lay person as youth leader and director of Christian education at High Street United Methodist Church in Muncie, Indiana way back in 1977. I was licensed as a local pastor in New Jersey in 1985, ordained deacon in 1988, and ordained elder in 1990. I was elected to General Conference four times, attended twice during my fifteen year tenure at the General Board of Discipleship/GBOD/Discipleship Ministries, and was briefly considered a candidate for the episcopacy until health problems ended that path. I merged and launched a new church, served the Wisconsin Conference as Director of Connectional Ministries for six years, and Assistant to the Bishop for six more, then ended with the best four years of my ministry at People’s United Methodist Church in Oregon, Wisconsin. I served on the General Board of Church and Society, contributed to the newly updated and adopted Social Principles, and have been blessed with so many opportunities to serve the church locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. In the late 1990s, I wrote FaithQuest Bible Study and Vital Signs, two resources that provide the foundation for my blog in retirement. I have had a marvelous Moses moment in the history of our church; now the time comes to step back and let our next-gen Joshuas lead us to the Promised Land.

So, what do I plan with FaithQuest Revisited? I plan to focus on the positive. I want this site to be about Good News (Gospel) and not get sucked into the spirals and eddies of negativity defining so much of our culture at the moment. This is risky. When I was blogging regularly before, my more critical and caustic posts received an average of 700 views with dozens of reposts. My positive, devotional, visionary, and generative posts averaged about 70 views with no reposts. So, I am writing this blog for myself. I will be delighted if others read it, and even more delighted if they gain any benefit from it, but I simply don’t have time to gripe, bitch, attack, disparage, bemoan, insult, aggravate, irritate, and name call, even though this seems to be the popular reason to blog these days. (This doesn’t mean that there won’t be some parody, satire, and sarcasm from time to time).

I believe we do a severe and serious disservice to the gospel of Jesus the Christ when we ignore the vast majority of his teachings and guidance to use our faith as a weapon instead of a tool. In days to come, I will be writing what I believe to be focused on the good, the beautiful, and the true. I will highlight resources that I believe offer grace and encouragement. I will be posting occasional podcasts, hopefully continuing in the vein of the People’s Podcasts from 2024. I will launch a Zoom book group soon. Retirement is going to be fun, and by God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, it will celebrate the best in us instead of the worst. Blessings!