The Origins of Dept. 61
Dept. 61 made its first appearance in a short story I wrote for my personal blog in 2014. I didn’t realize it at the time, but in writing a piece of allegorical fiction, I’d written something into existence that I couldn’t shake. You can still read that post here if you like: Taking Position
Dept. 61 left the realm of creative fiction and vague dreaming and began taking actual shape in 2020 with a journal entry where I poured out the desires of my heart to God. Years of thoughts and processing came together, and for the first time, all that God had been stirring in me was gathered and verbalized in one place. I still return to this entry when I need to be reminded of my why:
-I want to do what you want me to do.
-I want to do what you want to do together with me.
-I want a front row view of what you're doing.
-I want to operate outside of the boxes and pigeonholes that seek to define and confine me.
-I want to facilitate encounters with you that draw others closer to your heart and empower them to step into who you say they are.
-I want to live deeply entrenched in wonder and awe of you, and help others experience that also.
-I want to reframe relationship with you beyond modern western church culture and language.
-I want to establish a culture of love, honor, blessing, creativity, and wonder wherever I go, as I go, and I want that culture to be a consistently unifying thread in the body of Christ.
-I want to empower others to go deeper and further with you, without continuing dependence on me.
-I don't want to be limited to one place, one people group, one topic, one niche, one mode of operation.
-I want to raise up others to step into places and positions of your power and authority for the times, places, and seasons they live in.
-I want to release an anointing for the unlimited creativity of heaven to impact the limited realities of earth.
-I want to transform culture.
-I want to demonstrate and help others take hold of supernatural realities so that earth's "impossible" becomes heaven's "it is finished".
-I want to carry and release joy and delight in God.
-I want to hear your heartbeat and move in accordance with it, no matter the expectations of those around me.