It's Shake and Bake and I Helped!

Almost the first question everyone asks me is how we came up with the name Pagus? And since that answer is on the home page of our site, I will skip to the second question people always want to ask – and a few are brave enough to actually do it – Who are you to be doing this?

Got me.

It wasn’t exactly something that you just wake up and say “Hey, I think I will live the rest of my life filled with doubt and uncertainty, wondering if people would like to hear what I have to say, never sleep at night due to an overcrowded schedule, pray that there is funding for the next event, and slowly lose any shred of sanity that accidently slipped through the genetic code.”

Okay, so that begs the question why do we do it? But let’s stick to the original question. Who am I to be doing this?

I really wish I knew. I argued with God about it for a long time. I even ran hard and fast the complete and opposite direction. Any good Bible scholar (or attendee at their local Sunday School) can tell you that usually means you wind up swallowed by a big fish, and I did. (Whale vomit, yuck!) I made every obstacle that I could to keep me from this life, but in the end I just had to climb over some and drag the rest along with me waiting for the right time to climb over them.

I could give you the credentials, that is what most people really want, and I have a few. I have a Masters degree in Biblical Literature (that is just the fancy way to say I can read Hebrew and Greek), and two other degrees one in psychology and one in fine art. And a couple of really odd certifications, that still confuse me. Only God can weave together an education like that, and somehow that’s what He did.

The truth is what makes me the person to do this is the reason everyone else who is part of Pagus is qualified to do this. We love God. We want to see great things for and from His Church. We believe that all of us have a story, some beautiful and some horrifying, but we serve a God of redemption and He is redeeming our past as we move forward with Him. None of us can imagine not participating in the things of the Father.

Oh, we realize that He is much more efficient on His own, and we are a lot like the three year old who is helping make dinner with mom. Mom doesn’t need the “help”, but a good mom can’t resist her child’s smile when the kid proudly declares, “It’s shakin’ bake and I helped.” That’s all we are really doing at Pagus, getting in the way in the kitchen and loving the time we get to spend with the Father, and if I read my Bible right, He likes it too.