Alan Creech points to this remarkable post by Michael Spencer expressing his apologies and regret to his family for entering professional ministry. Whether you agree with him or not, it is worth reading. And please, please, please, listen to his heart. Here’s a bit of his post:

“The first thing I want to say to Denise, Noel and Clay is how much I regret the day I walked forward and said I believed God was “calling” me to be a preacher. There was no one to guide me, and no one to talk to me. There was no one to help me reconsider. No one told me the first thing about preparation, education, money or the life of a minister. I had no models- just a few heroes- and no one to help me see the real-world substance of my choice. I walked that aisle with good intentions, zeal, a love for God, a desire to be useful and a bunch of other things… I regret it so much today that my bones hurt to think about it. Why wasn’t there someone, somewhere who could have talked to me about my life? Why wasn’t there someone in my family, or at my school or at my church, who could have told me that I could be an english teacher and a preacher? Why didn’t someone tell me what it meant to be the pastor of a church? There were so many options, but I never knew them. I simply plunged ahead.”