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M. Craig Barnes was formerly pastor of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C and is now professor of leadership and ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and pastor of the Shady Side Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. Barnes has written several books including When God Interrupts, Sacred Thirst: Meeting God in the Desert of Our Longings, Yearning, Hustling God, and his latest book Searching for Home: Spirituality for Restless Souls.

Barnes is editor-at-large for Christianity Today's sister publication, Leadership journal, where he frequently contributes. He also wrote "Easter in an Age of Terror" two years ago for Christianity Today.

I get the sense that restlessness is something that you've done a lot of thinking about and working through in your own life.

I'd have a hard time telling you where home is for me. Most pastors I know would because we don't tend to spend 40 years in one parish any longer. My family moved from Washington two years ago, and our 23-year-old daughter was just finishing college, so where would she say home is? Her parents aren't in D.C. anymore. We were in D.C. for 10 years, but originally she was born some place else. She certainly doesn't think of Pittsburgh as home. When I was writing the book I interviewed a lot of her friends, her 20-something-year-old friends asking them where home is. I had to spend a lot of time explaining the concept. They didn't even know what I really meant by it.

You talk about Peter Berger's research regarding what happens with these nomadic souls. You talk about the alienation that happens, the loss of self that has occurred. Talk with us about the alienation that is happening with nomadic souls.

Throughout history, home is what tells you who you are and what your mission is. Even if you didn't like that identity necessarily, at least you knew what it was. It was something that you could rebel against. But it was your home—and not just the house you grew up in but the community around you—the familial identity that gave you a sense of identity.

Now we tell our kids you've got to go out and figure out for yourselves who you are. Family is the last place that young people look to for identity. So the sense is you have to leave home to discover who you are. Now identity is something that you have to construct. People try to make this construction through their choices. What college do you choose? What major do you choose? Then you go out and you get a job. You don't like this job because this job is defining you, then you get another job. If you don't like marriage, you get another marriage. If you don't like the life you have, you can get a whole other life just by making different choices, which is a completely different understanding of how a life is constructed than we've ever seen in history until this moment, that you're on your own to put life together. And a lot of people are burning out trying to construct their own lives. I mean, no matter how many choices they make they can't seem to get it right.

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April (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48