Who Am I

I’ve been faced with some reality lately. I’m not sure exactly who I am, nor am I sure that it matters much that I don’t know. But in thinking about this I ultimately arrived at a question that I couldn’t answer….besides “does it matter that I don’t know exactly who I am.” The question is “Am I greater then the sum of my parts?” In essence the onion thing, am I more then just a collection of my layers, if you peel off each one, what is left.

So, best as I can figure I might be something more, maybe a deeper inner soul kind of thing, but that doesn’t seem to likely. Or at least that isn’t something I can see or isolate. So I thought I would do a little public introspection. I’ll start talking about who I am, or at least who I think I am.


I am a Christian, and not just one of the 80% (or whatever ridiculous number) that says they are Christians and really isn’t interested in a relationship with a loving God. I am a person who is genuinely concerned about the future of my soul. And subsequently I am genuinely concerned with others. I believe that the things that have happened to me here and now because of the decision to genuinely follow Christ and look to Bible for wisdom and guidance is worth sharing. I do not think that this is a “crutch” that I use to get by, in fact I think I probably could have gotten by just fine without my religion, but it wouldn’t have been as good as it could have. I believe God works in his people today, and does great and miraculous things. If you think that makes me crazy or whatever then you have just put a limit on what is possible by what you know….and I willing to bet none of us know everything so that is pretty presumptuous.

I am preparing to be a husband. I don’t think of myself so much as a person who is engaged, or is a fiance’ to someone. Instead I think more of myself as a man who knows he has to learn how to be a good husband. Being a husband isn’t something that just happens to you, it is a skill you learn, and if you are willing to try you will get better at it. So essentially I know I have to do this, and I know it isn’t much longer before I have to start putting it into practice.

I am a son. I have my Fathers health, my maternal Grandfathers shoulders and gut, which I probably also got some of from my paternal Grandfather. I’m stubborn just like my parents. I’m very logical, but also creative. Both my parents are very creative, and very smart. My Mother is musical, she has a double major degree in voice and piano. My father is an artist and an actor, his bachelors degree was in drama, and he minored in political science (it amuses me that a drama major got a polysci minor which is why I mention it). My Mothers birthday is on Christmas, which makes Christmas a very special time for me, even though I’m not a huge fan of the holiday by itself. My Father is an outdoors-man, loves to fish and hunt, but I think even more then the sport aspect of it he loves to be out in nature, just looking at the beauty around him. Both my parents have provided me with a solid love of music, drama, art, and nature growing up. And they gave me lots and lots of chances to explore what interests me apart from them.

I am an oldest brother. I have two younger brothers, and I was always the ring leader. I was the mastermind behind getting everyone in trouble. I came up with the plans. I set the tone. I also had to look out for them, and according to my parents I was supposed to be a good example. I saved Aaron’s ass in high school more times then I can count. He would have got his ass kicked a lot more then he did if I wasn’t convincing the football captains not to hurt him every day after practice. I gave David advice on how to train for football when the coaches weren’t getting it done in the off-season. (I went to a different high school than Dave, and mine was better at football) And, I’ve learned that being the oldest brother doesn’t always mean I know more than they do, just that I have seen a little more of life than they have.

I am a pastors kid, and not just a regular pastors kid, I’m a double pastors kid. I’ve never not been involved in a church for more then a year or two. I hate being asked to clean up churches because I spent all my time growing up getting calls from my Dad asking me to come over and help put things away. I used to hate hearing the same Bible stories over and over again. I used to read Revelations in the pew Bible (or David and I would read Proverbs and talk about which ones described how annoying Aaron was) while my Dad preached because whether I was at home or in the church it all sounded like another lecture to me. I don’t know anyone who isn’t a clergy that attended as many annual conferences for the United Methodist Church as I did. I know a lot of pastors from Central Illinois, because my parents are very sociable kinds of people. I’m a multi-generational pastors kid, at least third by my count, but maybe more according to my cousin. My Grandfather on my Fathers side was a pastor, and my Grandmothers Father from that side was a pastor as well, and his Father was a pastor. My Dad’s brother is a retired pastor, and my Grandfathers brother is a retired pastor as well. My cousin, the oldest son of my Uncle who is a pastor just became a Vineyard pastor in Greenwood IN.

I am a Catlin. I have one of the family’s in modern American that isn’t torn apart, and still has a strong sense of who we are as a family, both as an immediate family and an extended family. My Mothers side desperately works to make sure it stays that way, they try to get together every year despite any divorces, deaths, breakups, or long distance travels. My Fathers side does the same, but deals with less of the divorces, and less of the new guy factor because people remarry a lot on my Mom’s side.

I am a story-teller. My Grandfather was the oldest of three sons, he loved the outdoors, and he loved to tell stories. He passed this on to the rest of his family. He died when I was fairly young (ten or eleven), and he left big shoes to fill for the next leader of our family. Grandma picked up the pace pretty well, and now instead of him telling us stories about Canada, (a trip I never took with him before he died) or fishing in the local pond, or hunting in the woods around where he lived, we get together almost every year and tell stories about him, and we re-tell the stories he told us to the next generation of Catlin’s, and we add our own into the mix. I didn’t realize how important a part of my life this was until just recently. It took an argument about the validity of non-fiction as literature, and a sappy movie about a guy telling tall tales before I really understood what this meant to me. You know something is up when you watch a movie that starts about fishing, and you immediately identify with everything the guys says about it (this happened to me in the movie “River Runs Through It” as well, but now I’m talking about “Big Fish”) but you never really enjoyed fishing yourself. Then in the end you see the tales that were exaggerated, or had parts where he took some liberties with the details, but you understand the sentiment in every story, you get the purpose, the fact that this man inspired awe in people by telling these stories. He reminded us that a little bit of wonder in every story never hurts anyone, it just makes it a little easier to see the wonder God already put there when you see it yourself. I didn’t cry when my Grandfather died, I was too young to realize what that really meant for me. But now I’m older and I think about the part of my heritage, one of the things that makes me me, and the fact that I only got to see it for the first decade of my life and I cry. I cry when I watch movies that remind me of my family, and I think about what I missed and I fear that one of my other relatives could die before I could glean all their knowledge I could. Or before I could tell them how important they are to me. Sorta makes me wish I knew what I was loosing when I lost it.

I was a Methodist, I am a Vineyard guy. My family has been United Methodist my whole life. Everyone except my great Uncle who is Presbyterian or something like that down in Florida. My Grandfather was an United Evangelical Brethren pastor before 1968 when the Methodist merged with the UEB’s to form the United Methodist Church. So Methodism is a part of who I am. My Father studied a lot about John Wesley. He tries to live his life very much in line with what he took from John Wesley, and he taught us those things. Prayer was always an important part of my family, so was going to Church, and experiencing God. Worship was very very important to my family, but I didn’t seem to pick up how to worship from them, I sorta had to figure that one out on my own. Saddleback church started to teach me to worship, and gave me a much better idea of what a holistic approach to church is (If you don’t know what I’m talking about read “Purpose Driven Church” by Rick Warren, the senior pastor of Saddleback), and for the first time I realized that some churches could fill in the gaps that I had always noticed in the small town churches I came from. Vineyard taught me a lot that I value. Kingdom theology, while it sounds an awful lot like rewording the theology I grew up with, sorta changed the way I look at things a little. The fact that God sent Jesus to break through the sin in the world, and to show us a little of the glory of his Kingdom on Earth before we see it fully when we die is a great way of describing how I feel about Christianity. I learned the five-step prayer model. (this part is going to sound a little like Jeff’s speech the other night) I highly value that prayer model, and while I think we actually don’t do as well in intercessory prayer in our church, I know there are other churches that don’t do any kind of direct prayer for its people, so I believe we got an awful lot of good stuff going on with this prayer model, and it is one of the biggest differences in the Vineyard from other churches. While I started to learn how to worship at Saddleback, I’ve come all the way in the last couple years at Vineyard. I value the up-beat worship songs, that express the feeling of love I have for a personal God, and I value the freedom from feeling self-conscious during worship so I can express myself in whatever “posture conducive to worship” that I feel like. If I ever am forced to move somewhere where there isn’t a Vineyard I would be tempted to try to start one, just because I believe in the value it has, and can bring into any community. I’ve found a church / denomination that fits me well, and I’ve grown and changed to fit it even better then when I first got there.

I am a friend. I have a lot of friends, all of whom I value very highly. My friends and family are probably the two most important things to me on this world (import distinction here, God is not “on this world” IMO). I value my roommates relationships even when they are being assholes, don’t do their dishes for two weeks, or are taking the pins out of my door hinges. I value my relationship with my best friend Dirk. I never thought we would be best friends, he used to annoy this piss out of me sometimes in high school and even when we first started living together. But besides family he has been there the longest, and we’ve grown together. It is amazing what God has in mind sometimes for your relationships even when you think otherwise. I am friends with new people (new meaning the last year or so) from church. I have made several good friends. James, Jeff, Bob, just to name a few, and I have met several really cool people that I consider friends, though I don’t know them really well. I like that I have made new friends, when you move out of the dorms it becomes harder to meet people if you don’t join a group of people for some kind of club or religious activity. Some part of me wonders how my friends who knew me before I started making friends at church think of me and the changes over the last couple of years. Another part of me doesn’t care at all because I know they will still be my friends, because friends grow together and change together, and that is how it goes. If they weren’t willing to do that, they wouldn’t be my friends anymore.

I am a small group leader. This is part of my ministry right now. I’m not good at it, I’m fairly certain I am making a lot of mistakes and setting some bad examples for people, but hey, people come back to group and they grow and God changes their life. So God must be doing something good through me. I don’t really like the title “Small Group Leader,” I don’t really like titles in general. But for lack of anything better to say about what I do in the small group I guess I have to stick with it. I sorta like the title “Bad Example” which is a functional statement of my effectiveness, but I thought it would be funny trying to expand on it until it turns into “Blind, Deaf, and Dumb Bad Example trying to herd Cats,” but that probably doesn’t sum it up that well either.

I am a church planter. This a new title that has just been added to my name. I don’t know exactly what it means yet to be a church planter, other then I’m crazy enough to follow a guy to another state and city that I’ve barely visited let alone ever thought about living in. According to Jeff being a Vineyard church planter takes a certain kind of person, and having gone to a church planting conference with him I can concur, but I’m still not sure exactly what that says about me.

I am a man who deals with my own downfalls and sins every day. I am a man who empathizes with this guy who struggles with the pitfalls of his sin. I also liked his second and third articles, even though I haven’t finished the third acrticle yet he has had some great thoughts and a great testimony.

I am an athelete. That’s right I put “am” an athelete. I currently don’t play any sports on a regular basis, but I could if I had more time, and I will again before too long. I enjoy inline skating, snowboarding, soccer, football, wrestling, and just running around acting like an idiot for the sake of scoring another point.

I am a computer enthusiast. I like screwing around with computers. It’s fun, I get a kick out of some programming, and some hardware stuff. I just love messing with those things.

I am an electrical engineer. I put my job / degree last, because while it is important and makes up some of who I am, I would rather be described by my relationships and my leisure activities instead of my job. Because I am an electrical engineer I know more about sound, waves, electricity, and semi-conductors then the average guy. I also think very logically, and have improved my problem solving skills because of my degree, that is what they train you to do more than anything here.

That was long, but it was good for me I think. I like some of this stuff I see, and if I think of anything else I might add it for the sake of having it here. Well, as best I can tell, that is me. I don’t know what else to say about myself, except I could explain my history a little better. And at some point I might write more about my family, and my spiritual background, but this is long enough to last a while I think.