Rick Lee James explains why Voices in My Head may go on hiatus due to hospital chaplaincy hours, a summer integration project at Loyola, church responsibilities, and family commitments. He's released two songs that have gotten thousands of listens and asks listeners whether the podcast should continue, change format, or pause.
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Hey, welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I am your host Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad that you are here with me again this week in what I know is going to be a short episode, but I hope it will be worth your time. I'm sorry, I just haven't been able to do the podcast in the way that I would like. I've even wondered if maybe it's time to hang up the podcast, at least for a while, and I know this summer has been just very difficult to keep the podcast going because of my summer integration project through Loyola. And now they've increased my hours at the hospital, plus we don't have a pastor at my church, so there's extra responsibilities there as well. Plus having a wife and son and dogs and all the stuff that goes with that. So it's just been busy, and I've had some interviews scheduled. Some of them are going to be happening. One of them I've had to continually reschedule, unfortunately, just because both of our It's just been unreasonable for a lot of us. So I wanted to quickly drop another line. I know the last few weeks I've been posting sermons that I've been preaching at my church, and I have really enjoyed that. I forgot how much I really love the chance to speak whenever I am able to do that. I don't feel like my sermons fit the traditional sermon mold necessarily. I feel like I come at it more from a chaplain than a preacher these days, and I'm really personally a lot more in tune in my life with ancient practices of the Church, kind of mixed with emotional health, honestly. And I think they are a great pairing, honestly, the sacraments and emotional health. And they make a beautiful combination, they really do. And I think they make us more emotionally healthy in our spirituality. So the reason I wanted to jump on here today real quick is just to say that it may be a little while before I have more podcasts, but I have been releasing music. And you know what? The music has been doing really well. Like, I've released 2 songs in the last month. One of them I wrote at the Wesleyan Songwriting Summit, and I released it just a few days after the summit was over. I recorded a simple recording, just a guitar and my vocal in the studio, and thousands and thousands of listens on these and views on YouTube, and that's really unusual for me to get those kind of listens. So thank you everybody for listening. I don't know what is going to be happening in this next season, but as busy as I am, I still would love to try to make it work to come to your church or your venue and do some concerts in the not too distant future. I'm taking one class this semester, and I just don't know what God has in store on the road ahead. I'm trying to learn never to limit God and say what I will or won't do. So I don't know where he's leading and where the Lord in divine wisdom might be taking me next on this journey. It seems like it always has something to do with music, but the ministry often takes different shape. I've been a youth pastor in the past and that turned into a youth and music pastor. I've been a hospital chaplain and then it turns out even in this chaplaincy work I'm doing a lot of music and it just led to some different places. So I don't want to say what I'm— what God has in store, honestly. But I did want to check in with you all and say I haven't forgotten about the podcast. I'm not sure what shape it's going to take in the future, but thank you for listening and subscribing. If any of you are interested in having me come to do an event, whether it be a speaking event where I could talk about, you know, being present and emotionally healthy spirituality, things like that— not to steal the title from the wonderful book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, which is amazing and I love— but I do kind of have that approach in what I speak about these days. So all that is to say, rick@rickleejames.com is my email. My website is rickleejames.com. Www.rickleejames.com. Everything online, if you look up Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all of it is @RickLeeJames. You can reach me through multiple places. Reach out, kind of let me know what you are feeling about things. Are you finding that the podcast is beneficial? Is it something you want me to keep doing? You hope to still hear interviews? Because it takes a lot of work to get the interviews together and the questions and to read books and listen to music and do all the things that go into a good interview. Or what do you feel? Has it gone its way? You know, has, has, uh, gosh, probably 13 years of doing this, is that enough? I mean, so just let me know your thoughts. I want to know what the next direction is, and whatever it is, I know it's not the— the end of one thing is often the beginning of something else. So I really want to know from you what you think about the future of Voices in My Head, the Rick Lee James podcast. I don't want to keep meandering along if it's something that is not helpful and maybe even needed in your life. So thanks so much for listening. God bless you, and as always, thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.
