I met with my lay guide for the second time this morning. The Lay Guide, again, is the person that the church assigns to prospective ministry candidates to work through the ministry inquiry process, otherwise known as the Big Purple Book.

At our first meeting, a few weeks ago, I didn't have any idea what to expect from the lay guide, either as a human being, or in his role as lay guide. All I knew about him from our brief phone conversation was that he was in his thirties and had two children, just like me. Beyond those basic likenesses, though, we are fairly different people; I was worried at first that our difference would separate us, but that has not been the case. He's a very high-up manager at a Texas state agency; he and his wife, I learned today, both have six-figure incomes. He's a very responsible suit-and-tie sort of guy, but in an extremely congenial and non-self-important way. I liked him instantly, although I'm nothing like him in that respect. What we seem to share is an intellectual approach to matters of faith, a certain deeply rooted skepticism, and a love for dry conversational wit. He's a master of the wry witticism dressed as a sly, offhand remark, with just a bit of eyebrow raised to show you he's joking.

Our first meeting, three weeks ago, was mostly a "getting to know you" session, and so we didn't really delve into any particulars. This week, we started in earnest. The Big Purple Book gives you a path to follow, questions to answer. It asks you to consider things. The first session covers the process itself; what's expected of both the "seeker" (which is me) and the lay guide. You're expected to talk about yourself a lot, and the lay guide is meant to answer those questions himself. So it's very much in the form of a dialogue, but a dialogue that is led and facilitated by the lay guide.

The process itself, it seems, serves two coordinated purposes. The primary purpose, which is the stated purpose, is to help the seeker qualify and analyze his or her call to ministry. This is an eminently wise thing, I think, and I don't think I could have done a better job of compiling it. My fear, that it would be corny and hokey, was mostly dispelled. The book reads like the study guide for a book that doesn't exist--or, you might say, that my life itself is that book. If you've ever read any kind of self-help workbook, you've read something similar. Most of the questions are in the form of: "Think about a time in your life when x. How did your faith help you?" or "Describe your idea of the Christian life." The lay guide and I quickly agreed to ignore the point-by-point format of the book and let the questions be starting points for a more freeform discussion, which was nice, and I think probably what the book's authors probably intended.

The other, unstated, purpose of the ministry inquiry process is, I think, to weed out those who aren't serious about it. I'm told that nearly everyone who completes the book goes on to ministry in one way or another. Most of those who aren't cut out for it, for whatever reason, simply never finish the process; either because their heart isn't in it, or because the process raises questions about themselves that they're not ready to answer. The lay guide writes a report at the end of the process, but as it turns out, he or she has no influence whatsoever on the seeker's destiny. Really, it's just a format for the seekers to work out their actual intentions.

Given a long enough breakfast, I would have gladly gone through the whole book in one sitting. There's nothing I love more than talking to other people about faith, especially people who have original and interesting viewpoints, as my lay guide does. These first couple of sessions have already yielded some interesting personal revelations from each of us.

My biggest issue with going into ministry, I think, is that I don't feel like I'm good enough. As in, I can easily name a dozen people who: know more about the Bible than me, know more about the church than me, are more involved than I am, are better leaders than I am, have more faith than I do. And so on. But the thing I realized this morning is that this is between me and God, not between me and everybody else. It's not a cosmic competition, where the holiest people are the ones who rise to the top of the church. The church oughtn't to be a hierarchy at all. We're a collection of frail, fragile humans, and we strive to meet God where we feel called to do so. So I need to stop comparing myself to everyone around me and focus on developing this relationship with God.

One thing that has been a stunning revelation to me over the past couple months is that I'm starting to find God in places where I never expected God to be. Despite my growing faith, I've always pictured the Universe as something that God ultimately set in motion and then left to its own devices. I never saw God as intervening in our world in any meaningful way. I clucked my tongue at charismatics and people who believed in miracles. But now that I'm beginning to actively tend my faith in new ways, I'm starting to see God pop up in very real ways.

For instance. I have a friend who likes to say that our lives are a tapestry that God weaves, and that every part of us eventually gets woven in. By that she means that all of our badness and mistakes can eventually be woven into something beautiful, even the blackest threads. But what has occurred to me recently is that my whole life--both in my successes as well as my failures--has been leading me toward this career. I realize that it's easy to find evidence for foregone conclusions, but new evidence for this conclusion keeps leaping out at me; I'm not consciously striving after it. My lay guide said that he knows he could never go to seminary because he hates studying languages and there wouldn't be enough math to satisfy his interest. "Really?" I said. "I love studying languages! In college I studied Spanish, French and Italian!" I confided that I'd already started secretly teaching myself Hebrew and Greek. My love for languages, which is something I devoted a great deal of time toward in high school and college, and which never found any practical application (making me think that it had all been a grand waste of time), suddenly has shown its great value.

Here's another example. I spent several years of my life pursuing a music career. I even moved to Los Angeles to follow that particular dream. Like many people, I was chewed up and spit out by Los Angeles. I hated it. Songwriter Mark McAdam writes in "Driftwood," "Maybe I'll just cut my losses in my city; this is how we say surrender." I felt like an utter failure. But now, all that experience--the people I met, the things I saw and did, and my appreciation for music--will be an enormous asset for me as a minister.

I could go on in this vein for several more paragraphs, but I'll leave it at that. The point is, when they say that God works in mysterious ways, they're not kidding. All these things that I always thought of meaningless but well-meant platitudes about that ways that God works in the world are now beginning to seem real to me. Amazing.