A definite life change

So I'm at a leadership conference at FOTW put on by WillowCreek Church because the MET was gracious enough to pay my way to go to the event. So I'm in the middle of Gary Haugen's talk on social justice and I wrote this, "Cast down your idol of hip cultural urban ministry and pursue the heart of God recklessly. No longer serve the vain statue of counter-cultural pastorship but be a lowly worker of the harvest."

It was as if I finally, in a very clear way, felt as though I was receiving an invitation by God to participate in His work of rescuing the poor and oppressed in the hurting places in the world. I don't mean to speak for God or to say definitely how this is to be worked out, all I can say is that for a growing while I cannot watch a video of starving people, dying people, hurting people somewhere in the world and not have this voice inside me say, "I need to go there. I need to help those people." All my life I have known I want to help the hurting people of the world. As if it is written on my heart. But I felt that there were hurting people in the US I could help. However, I feel as though for me this would not be truly answering my call. For me, okay, for me...I feel as though if I were to be a pastor in the US I would either be serving the capitalist, shallow, glory-seeking model of cheap suburban christianity or bowing to the idol of hip, underground, counter-cultural pastor. As if my society has placed Billy Graham and Rob Bell as the idols I am to bow to. Now this isn't to say that my brothers and sisters who are working to authentically embody the Gospel of Christ in the United States are wrong or sell-outs. It simply means for me, I cannot serve in the United States without feeling a void in my heart because I am not with the lowest of the low. I must go to the poor. I don't know what I will do, I don't know how to do it, I don't know where to go, I don't know how I'll get there...all I know is that right now I feel like God is calling me to leave the States to go to His hurting people. And I simply pray that He will continue to move in my heart and to lead me down the path of His love and endurance.