Some of my subscribers and regular readers may be wondering, “What happened to the guy who once wrote this blog?” It’s been more than a little crazy since we returned to the states in late May 2009. I started working really long hours at an AT&T call center, then they decided after five weeks of training and five weeks of OJT that I didn’t have the right kind of statistics for a long-term position. And I was fired! It was my first experience and, sadly, I was ineligible to draw unemployment benefits since we had lived overseas over the previous five years.
Thankfully, another promising position surfaced during that first job and it s-l-o-w-l-y simmered on the back burner over many months. I thought it would never come to fruition, but after four and a half months of unemployment I began working on November 23, 2009, as a special investigator retained by the U. S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal government’s HR department. I’m doing background investigations, primarily for the Department of Defense (DoD) that lead to security clearances for members of the U. S. military and defense contractors. The most common background investigation looks at every place a person has lived, worked, or attended school over the past ten years. Every single day I get to do my part towards insuring a strong national security. An average week consists of interviewing people and gathering background information from courthouse records, real estate leasing companies, high schools and universities, all sorts of job sites, and neighborhoods.
Things are settling down slightly, so I hope to resume a little more writing than the past eight or nine months. That’s not an ironclad promise, but an aspiration. I have a lot to share, but not nearly as much time to write, which is very frustrating for me. Thanks for hanging in there! I’ve been amazed that my blog stats have not wavered very much at all, which means that a lot of new people are finding the content that I’ve built up over time. Hopefully, they’re enjoying what they find. Anyway, gotta run!
Bill- It is good to have a word from you. I wondered what had become of you. The grace of the Lord be with you.
G’day Bill.
Really nice to see something fresh on here again … been a long time since I’ve checked in.
I was quite caught up into your blog back in 2007, especially engaging in discussions on church structures and preaching, and the role of ‘clergy’. The scholarly writers who had thrown the most light onto it for me were Gordon Fee (then Prof of NT at Regent College) and Mark Strom (Principal of Bible College of New Zealand (now Laidlaw College)). The missiology of Mike Frost / Alan Hirsch etc also had quite a practical impact on us.
As a consequence of a fresh investigation of the NT, and deep longing for reconnection with the marketplace, we left paid full-time vocational ministry (which we did enjoy quite a bit), and headed out into the largely unknown. The Lord has been good, and we’ve ended up in a pretty good space, not without ongoing longings, but certainly without deep dissatisfaction.
Take care,
Adriaan (your Aussie mate)
Bill,
Thanks for the update. Glad that you’re doing well and that statistics are not basis by which any of us are viewed by Father.
T