New Church Life July/August 2015 | Page 77

   deeper friendships.” He found a job as the operations manager for an up-and-coming landscaping company. “Again, I loved my work, I felt useful, and I really learned a lot from my boss whose main goal in business was to employ as many people as he could at a livable wage. During my three years there we grew from 30 employees to about 65.” More importantly, he says, it was during these years that he met Susan, his future wife. They had moved to Georgia from out of state for different reasons and were neighbors in the same condo complex. “As our relationship developed,” he says, “I felt more and more called to the ministry, and now felt I had the support I needed for the process.” He had always felt drawn to the ministry, which was strengthened by friends at the Academy. But it was the Rt. Rev. Brian Keith, then Dean of the Theological School, who talked to the Junior boys and “said something very powerful to us.” That was: “Don’t become a minister unless you have no other choice but to become a minister.” This sounded like the worst pitch ever for the Theological School. But, he had added, “Think of it like marriage. Don’t get married unless you have no other choice but to be married to that one person, meaning that your whole heart is engaged in it. The choice to be a minister needs to have that kind of dedication. It is more than just a career; it is your life.” So despite always feeling a tug toward the ministry, Alan says, “I used the excuse for a while that I don’t have to do it! Eventually I got to the point where I no longer had a choice, I felt like I had to do it, and the excuse was no longer true.” “I vividly remember the moment when this shifted in me. I was at the dog park after work, part of my daily routine. Normally there were several other people with their dogs, but today it was just me, my dogs, and my thoughts. And while I was there contemplating my life, I suddenly felt warm, comfortable and peaceful – and in that peace I felt the time had come: I have to become a minister. So here I am now about six years later doing what I have to do. Luckily I love to do it as well.” He credits his wife, Susan, as one of the biggest influences in making the choice. “I think she saw that passion in me very early in our relationship and gently moved me to pursue it. On the way home from one of our first dates, I struck up a conversation with a ‘street preacher’ who was warning people about the end of the world, using prophesies from the Alan with his wife Susan 389