The Reckoning

What remains when the dust settles on twenty years of ministry.

Beyond the Silence

In my last post, I shared a clip from an interview about the heavy cost of keeping quiet. I talked about the exhausting reality of masking your truest questions to protect a fragile system.

But long before I ever found the words to talk about that season out loud, I had to find a way to process it in secret. For me, that processing didn’t happen in an official document or a structured meeting. It happened on the strings of a guitar and the pages of a notebook.

When you spend twenty years in ministry, the weight takes a toll. It shapes you, it stretches you, and if you aren’t careful, it can slowly erode the very parts of you that were designed to flourish.

I wrote a song during that season of transition. It’s called “Reckoning.”

The Tension in the Melody

A reckoning isn’t an angry explosion; it’s an honest pause. It’s like listening back to a track you’ve been recording for decades, taking off the headphones, and finally admitting where the melody felt forced.

When I look back at those two decades, I see a beautiful, intricate arrangement. I don’t regret the time I spent serving communities, walking with people, and leading creative teams. There was immense goodness there.

But I also have to be honest about the fatigue. I have to acknowledge the years spent maintaining an illusion of perfection, carrying the unspoken expectation that I should always strike the right chord or have all the answers, and playing a part that didn’t fit my original design. That kind of pressure leaves a mark. The toll was real.

A Different Kind of Love

People often look at stories like mine and assume that when you step away from the traditional stage, you must have lost your love for it entirely. They think you smashed your instrument and walked away for good.

But that’s the trick: I haven’t given up my love for it. Not even close.

My love for the Divine, for deep community, and for helping people discover their inherent goodness hasn’t vanished. It’s just different now. It has been untangled from the performance culture and the rigid scripts.

I used to think my ministry was tied to a job title. Now, I realize that inhabiting the earth, creating art, and opening up spaces for honest conversation is the work. The love is no longer bound by the walls of a specific building. The arrangement is wider now. It’s more spacious.