This weekend I am flying up to Manhattan to take care of some things before I move. Sunday is the last week for two services there so Matt is using it to give his farewell address to the church and then there will be a symbolic "handing over of the keys" to me, which will involve all of the elders giving me the charge and then praying over me. Then it will all be ceremonially official - I will be declared the campus minister for Cats for Christ and the Manhattan church.

It's interesting to think about because it seems like such a big change. It's kind of like a wedding - in a ceremonial kind of way it changes everything, and yet, it is still the same two people, with essentially the same relationship they had five minutes ago before they weren't married. I'll still be the same guy with the same gifts and faults, the same ways of going about things, the same hangups, the same successes and failures. I like to think that ceremonial kinds of things don't really define the reality, but in an odd kind of way they do. After Sunday that church and community will be looking towards me in a way they wouldn't have before. Which means I'll have to necessarily look at myself differently. The ceremony is going to symbolize some of that in way, because Matt is going to hand me a pair of his old shoes, and I will let him know that they don't fit me. They'll be thrown away at that point, indicating that I'm not a replacement for Matt, I'm the next campus minister who is unique in all my own ways.

So, Sunday is going to be like a wedding for me. Scary!