Albuquerque anyone?

Is there a place you have visited that you would just love to move to – I mean, if it were practical? I actually have two: Southern England (outside of London somewhere) and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Really! I find the thought of moving to either place very desirable – if I could live anywhere I wanted, that is.

England. It is just cool! Darcy and I went there on a mission trip back in the summer of 2000 and had a fantastic time. The culture is so close to our own, but so different. They drive on the other side of the road and just about all vehicles over there have a manual transmission (I love stick shift!) – including the mini-busses our group rented. Their architecture is amazing, much of it pre-dating the US by a few hundred years. While the cities are densely populated, it doesn’t take much time to get out to the lush country-side. Canals are everywhere, and then there’s the people, and that accent…too cool. Gotta go back!

For Darcy and I, however, the big “Okay, let’s go!” location is Albuquerque. We visited in 1999 for a job interview I had with a church in the city’s northeastern quadrant. The church was maybe a mile from the rock face of the Sandia mountains (Sandia Peek reaches 10,000 feet above sea-level.) We could see the cable-car to the top and the rock face literally turns red in the sunset. The Bed & Breakfast we stayed in was an Adobe-styled home and our room had a sliding-door onto the 1^st-floor roof. There was at least one day that I went out to watch the sunrise over the mountains. You had all the modern conveniences of a city with either the desert wilderness OR the mountain terrain at your fingertips. I heard it said from one church member that you could go skiing in the morning and play a round of golf in the afternoon. Did I mention the Hot-Air Balloon Festival they have every October?

Unfortunately that church did not extend me an offer. I can see now that I wasn’t ready for a full-time ministry position, but we were still ready to go. In some ways, we still are. There’s a freshness to new things that is both expectant and daunting at the same time. The epitome of exciting and intimidating is that God is always looking to do something new in our lives. As we look at visioning, planning, discipling, and all those things we do at a church, new things are inevitable. We can face them with excitement, fear, intimidation, expectation…or all of the above.

Think about someplace that you’ve been or would love to go – maybe even live! Share it in the comments below. Then together, maybe we can take changes in the church, our families, jobs, schools, etc. and make them our Albuquerques…or Englands…or_____________.