In 1997, I was pastoring my first church out of seminary. It was in Louisiana, literally in the middle of no where. It was a young church that had been without a pastor for almost two years before I arrived. They forced their first pastor out by cutting his salary and making life hard. After less than a year, they were doing the same to me.
I was married just over a year and loved my wife dearly. During the week of Mother’s Day that year, she flew to spend time with her mom and dad and I spent that week praying and fasting. It was during the first night of that journey that God broke through and in very clear terms indicated that I was to resign. Two weeks later I did. We sold our house (3 days, all cash) and moved to my in-laws’ condo in Central Florida.
My wife’s cousin knew a guy who had started an internet company, and since I had a degree in computer information systems, he gave me a shot to do some light database work. That led into internet programming. That led into more intense programming and five years and two companies later, I had done work for Microsoft, a Top 5 CPA firm, the 4th largest law firm in the US, and the largest association of retailers in the country. I would go on to do some contract work for a division of AOL/Time Warner.
I had not only programming experience, but enterprise systems administration experience. I had load-balanced web servers, clustered databases and managed some pretty rugged hardware. I was good, not the best by any means, but good and respected among my peers. I still mess around with coding some and often tell my friends that while I can make things work, I don’t always know how to make things pretty! (more…)
