Nathaniel Ogden Kidd

I think of myself as a thrift-store kind of person. I have a strong sense of who I am which allows me to try on whatever strange hat or shirt or idea I find surreptitiously as I rummage around, and not feel too embarrassed about wearing it out in public. My eclecticism often places me on the margins, but also allows me to forge unlikely connections and cultivate keen insight.

 

Materially speaking, I know that I am one of the most blessed people on this earth. Growing up as a middle-class American, what needs did I have that went unmet, or what desires did I have that went unfulfilled? But all of these material advantages earned me little more than the opportunity to take a long, hard look into the tremendous spiritual poverty hiding behind our thin veneer of wealth.

 

Behind the busy, crowded lives, behind the millions of options for entertainment and little indulgences, behind the big houses and big cars that define contemporary American life, lurks loneliness, lack of meaning, fear of death.

 

We deal with it mostly by anesthetization-through addiction, through hedonism, through cynicism, through superficial religious self-justification. But the more we ignore it, the bigger it gets, until the darkness threatens to overwhelm us. Yet a Light shines in this darkness that the darkness cannot overcome. I see ministry in this context chiefly as the vocation to lead others on the pilgrimage out of the lifestyle of consumption and into the life story of restored communion with God and one another through the Cross of Jesus Christ.

 

I see the Church and the Sacraments as essential to addressing the dangerous trends of individualism, gnosticism, and deism so prevalent in our culture. I do not have all the answers, but I do know the Way, and by the grace of God and in the power of the Spirit I am walking it.