This is the third of three excerpts from admissions essays submitted for my masters program at Fuller, starting September 2025.

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In my early twenties, I wasn’t ready to be a husband, or father, or business owner. Had I understood this, I might be credited with courage. But in fact, I suffered from that naive enthusiasm that cannot tell dreams from goals, the kind that careens headlong down the road less traveled, strewing disappointment and shattered relationships behind.

If only I had been walking in the Spirit.

But then, the Spirit-life is no kind of ready-fire-aim affair either. Jesus himself was a skillful planner, pausing always for the "least of these" and still arriving right on time for his own crucifixion. With a nod to Dallas Willard, one might say the Spirit is opposed not to planning but to self-will. It is the Spirit that impels me to the vocational change before me and to the preparation it entails: awareness, learning, equipping, planning, practicing, and support.

A thing worth doing is worth doing well. I feel the weight of this, not as a burden but as a holy hand on my shoulder. My calling came clothed neither in can-do khaki nor in sanctified satin but in sack cloth soiled with the ashes of compassion. It echoes not down from the pulpit but up from the pit. It whispers in the wilderness and gasps in the gutters. This is the voice of Jesus. To serve the most vulnerable is a sober calling, and sacred.

Again I find myself unready, only this time there’s no mistaking the fact. I cannot do this. Not alone, not today. I need to learn, and more than that, to be changed. I am called to tell the truth about Jesus, and yet all my life I’ve practiced avoiding the subject. I am called to live amid poverty, yet my flesh is marinated in ubiquitous comfort. I will need consistency, courage, and character for what lies ahead.

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Over the next five years I hope to learn to navigate world cultures; to meet people with the good news where they are, as they are; to learn to hear the Biblical authors in their own languages, unfiltered by my own milieu; to cultivate an imagination unfettered by materialist dogmas; and to nurture the gifts of the Spirit.

As unready as I may be for my eventual ministry, today I need only be ready to prepare. ... I trust the Lord to prepare me for the ministry he has set before me.

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