I had to leave Asia to learn about God's sushi bar.
Let me explain.
After almost nine years in South Korea, my wife and I felt called to move back to the USA - in part so that I could pursue a PhD. In addition to leaving behind a great church and great friends, we were also leaving a lot of stability in terms of finances and day to day life. We traded two steady well paying full-time jobs for one steady part-time job and whatever else we could scratch together.
We expected that our small business hosting international students would flourish and provide us with significant margin again. However, having three extra kids in our house for a few months was much more work than we expected, and we haven't been able to transition to longer term students.
The net result of that is two fold. 1) I can't even start thinking seriously about a doctoral program until we are more stable. 2) Sarah and I have scraped together a wide variety of part-time jobs to pay our bills, and, surprisingly, to regain margin one millimeter at a time.
In the past 10 months, I have earned income from at least 13 different sources, and Sarah's count is at least 5. I have done some of the normal pastor things: my regular job at Duneland Community Church, a wedding, and a guest sermon. I've also done some free lance writing for Northwest Indiana Times, Holiness Today, Standard, and Grace and Peace Magazine. I have been blessed with the opportunity to teach writing as an adjunct professor at Olivet Nazarene University, and I'm 80% of the way through the approval process to teach as an adjunct at Indiana Wesleyan University. Those are all within my normal skill set and experience base. However, I have also done some environmental testing for a small business owner in our church, and I'm also the website administrator for the Northwest Indiana District of the Church of the Nazarene. Both of those are out of left field.
I had to laugh when people at a pastors conference asked if I am bivocational. I'm bi/tri/quad-vocational. Categories don't fit what I'm doing right now.
