I’m excited, nervous, and sad all at the same time. And busy. I’ve decided to leave my awesome, comfortable, flexible, almost-7-year job/family of seven years (as an employee, my family will still be attending Lakeview) and jump into a scary, new position with a small-but-growing local IT service company. Why? Well, Lakeview is running smoothly overall, certainly better than I found it in 2003 when I was hired as the first paid IT staff. We’ve done managed switches and wireless networking, server virtualization (in a big way), a little desktop standardization (this is where I feel there’s the most room yet to grow, see Jason Powell’s reasons why standardization is important!), and a few other things that have increased efficiency and IT responsiveness that aren’t worth detailing here. Helpdesk requests still come in but not usually at a frenzied rate. Frankly, there’s always more to do, and always will be, and I enjoy the calm sometimes. And I love it.

But, I’m still pretty young, and it’s time to move on to an environment that will provide some new challenges and experience in a wide variety of settings. So I’m moving to a small company with a Christian owner that provides residential and small business IT services to the Indianapolis and surrounding communities. Based in Fishers, IN, I’ll be working out of a new satellite office on the West side of Indy, not far from Lakeview in fact, and I’ll be working primarily with larger clients, including several churches in the area. What the job will look like day to day I can’t tell you precisely yet, but that will certainly be part of the excitement! And I’m still going to be involved with the Church IT Roundtable online and in person to a large extent (it’s still relevant as I’ll still be serving churches!), which I’m very excited about, as I have many close friends in the CITRT and their expertise has proved invaluable (and I have hopefully reciprocated with valuable tidbits of my own from time to time).

I’m really going to miss all of the Lakeview family on a daily basis. The staff are basically like close friends and family; it’s where I’ve spent all of my adult life in fact (and some volunteer time for years before that). God gave me peace about moving to this new position and I know He’ll provide, but I already miss everyone and I’m not gone yet!

There are still some details to be worked out about the transition, so I’m sure I’ll have some more to post later, and I certainly appreciate any prayers. It looks like I am going to the Church IT Roundtable at Saddleback Church in California on March 11-12! If you work in Church IT or you support or volunteer with Church IT in some way, you should be there! The cost should be under $100 plus travel, though final details should be coming soon.

My first day on the new job is set for February 10th, 2010 (though a few current coworkers said they hoped when I said Feb. 10th it meant 2011! Nothing like feeling wanted!).