After some particularly rough years in ministry as pastor of a church in Nashville, I had determined to resign my position. The church had experienced a congregational split the year before I arrived. The part of the church that now remained had fired the last pastor in a public meeting because they didn’t like his preaching or leadership style and about 100 families who disagreed with what was happening walked out with the pastor that day too. When I was asked to come lead the church, the search committee was up front about the incident and the challenges that remained. In my ignorance, I said, “how bad can it be?” and I accepted the position. I knew that this church was much more of a challenge when the “pastoral honeymoon” was over within 2 weeks, when normally they give the new guy a couple of months to settle in before hitting him with big problems. We navigated those relationship challenges between two families and it seemed like there was some reconciliation between the two. However, the next challenges were not far behind. I was soon exhausted from being a weekly pastoral referee, as well as, writing and preaching 3 sermons each week. It was an older congregation so there were many hospital visits, home visits and a funeral every few weeks. I also had a wife and four preschoolers who needed me at home. This went on for about 4 years until one particularly rough Wednesday night business meeting. I had no energy left to navigate the seemingly insurmountable challenges and determined I was going to resign the next day. When I returned home, my wife and I had gotten the kids to bed and sat down in our den to watch TV before heading to bed. It just so happened to be on a channel with a sermon by Charles Stanley. He was a pastor who had gone through many church challenges himself at the much larger, First Baptist Church of Atlanta. As Dr. Stanley was preaching, he stopped preaching from the passage he had chosen for that day, looked straight into the camera and said, “The Lord just told me that right now there is a pastor out there, who is about to resign from his church. I am telling you that if you do, you will be outside the will of God.” Then he returned to his sermon. I was floored! Anita would not have believed it unless she heard it too. We looked at each other and laughed and cried at God’s intervention at that moment. I stayed another year before resigning during an aggressive takeover by another pastor I had hired. While we were at that church, God had done some amazing things: dozens of people had been saved, the church had shown some growth again, the sanctuary was remodeled, and we started a summer day camp in an effort to reach the neighborhood kids, many of whom didn’t look like our homogeneous congregation. God had also used this church experience to humble me and knock some hard edges off of my prideful self.
The Apostle Paul tells us to offer ourselves as living sacrifices for God’s work. Paul knew that the way of the world was to self-protect. Paul tells us that those who belong to Jesus don’t think that way. He says living sacrificially opens our minds to knowing God’s will. He says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2) As God was working to renew my mind, He knew that I needed something so obvious that I couldn’t deny it was Him speaking to me. He had to speak to me through a pastor on television at the very moment I was about to step outside God’s will. Thank the Lord that He sometimes speaks to us even when we are too exhausted and hurting to realize we have not asked for His perspective on our situation.
Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!
