Hopeful Compositions: Sermons from Partway Up the Mountain

Just about every single day since being ordained as a pastor I have felt like Admiral James Stockdale at the 1992 Vice-Presidential debate when he said: Who am I? What am I doing here?Being a pastor was never on my radar. I grew up or at least was born and raised in Findlay Ohio and my family attended a wonderful congregation there: First Presbyterian Church. It was in this congregation and literally in their beautiful sanctuary that I was baptized confirmed and eventually ordained. It is the only congregation that I have ever officially been a member of and I will always consider it home. The two pastors during my entire childhood and teen years were Terry Bard and Dean Carzoo. Theirs were the only sermons I heard for the first 18 years of my life and they set the bar high for me.I graduated from Denison University with degrees in Philosophy and Cinema and then wandered for a few years through Yale University (trying my hand at Philosophy) and Hollywood California (trying my hand at Cinema) before returning to Ohio to Bowling Green State University where I obtained a M.A. in American History. I fully intended to go on and earn a Ph.D. but God had other plans. While in Bowling Green I reconnected with First Presbyterian Church of Findlay and with Terry Bard who one day suggested I consider going to seminary. It was and remains one of the most outlandish suggestions Ive ever heard. Yet I was unable to shake it and when I finally realized with some help from Saint Augustine that this might be more than a mere suggestion and the true source might be from higher up than my childhood pastor I returned to Terry Bards office to ask: Now what? Another question I have been asking ever since.I graduated from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University and was ordained by the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 1997.