The Calling

A little background for you: My name is Patrick Kilby, I am 28 years old and I live in Visalia, CA. I have decided to create this blog to document the journey I am taking to become a pastor after the calling I have felt placed on my life. When I reflect back on my life I can see that I first recognized God's calling in my life when I was 15 years old. I was attending Bethel Baptist Church in Greeley, CO at the time and felt compelled to dive into the human mind and discover what might impact lasting behavioral change for God in their lives. Sadly, like many youth, my early 20's pushed me far away from where I should have been going. I accepted positions in ministry at 2 different churches, only to be disenfranchised by the idea that politics rule the American church. (I define politics for the sake of this posting as any personal agenda placed into the church setting which seperates the body from the kingdom work for which it was designed.) I left those churches and churches in general for a number of years with the belief that if that was how God designed the church I didn't want to be part of it. And for years I thought that my personal relationship with Jesus was enough to carry me through, and that corporate worship was optional, even detrimental at times. Skip forward about 8 years, and stumbled into a church 20 minutes away from my house called Church of God of Exeter. I live in a fairly large town with 50+ churches but I went to a tiny town 20 minutes away to church with some friends and my life began to change. This church has about 400 members, in a farming town, with nothing particularly special about it and yet for the first time in my life I found the presence of God in the meetings. What an amazing feeling that turned out to be. Knowing that God really does inhabit the praises of his people not in an abstract, unavailable way; but in a powerful and tangible way. Since that first visit 3 years ago, I have found comfort, security and confidence in what the true church was always designed to be. The single most important realization that I found was that you cannot depend on your pastoral staff to develop your own personal walk with Christ. If you go to church dependant on your pastor to "feed" you spiritually, you will always be disappointed and you will always find a reason why they don't deserve your respect. I came to realize that church in it's best form is nothing more than a like-minded community of people loving each other and sharing their experiences with Christ. I think that now I can accept that truth, I can walk in the confidence that the call to pastoral ministry does not require perfect Christians or those above reproach, but rather those who are the most committed to bringing to kingdom of God to earth through community and relationships. Until next time, Patrick Kilby