The Thoughtful Pause, Installment 8, Magpies
May 26, 2009
- The Thoughtful Pause
We started it all with a vision. I suppose I should say that God began His vision in us when we met. She was a country girl working at a Christian camp. I was a young youth speaker just looking to fill a couple of weeks in the summer with any sort of ministry experience. Our roads converged. Actually, it would be more accurate to state that our lives collided. I couldn’t ignore her passion for Christ and she felt compelled to pray for me. We were designed for each other by a God who loves to refine his children.
After a somewhat rocky courtship, largely due to the fact that I wasn’t secure enough to handle a real relationship, I realized that the love Dawn had for me was as close to unconditional as I could expect from a mere mortal. I fell deeply in love. Love cast out fear and we were married in the summer of 1993.
As I stood on the porch of her parents’ house in the country and exchanged promises with her, our lives took on a unique focus. She had an unbridled love for the lost and I had a commitment to the vision God had planted in our hearts. We couldn’t help ourselves. We were inexorably linked to the heartland by virtue of the sun bathed corn tassels and the simple, bare honesty that drives this culture. Whenever we would drive through the countryside on our way from our city-ministry in East Lansing, Michigan, God ignited dreams of ministry. The consistent reoccurrence of ministry in a barn became our romantic venture. We saw it all, even back in those formative years of our marriage.
At the time, the ministry that we had been leading began to see God’s hand in it. We saw increases in numbers and felt an expansion of vision. Trinity Church was booming as well and soon, would outgrow its building. I cringe whenever I hear pastors bad-mouth the big churches. I know that from the time I arrived, until the time I left, almost seven years later, the primary concern from the position of both staff and leadership boards was always more impacting, connected and discipling ministry. The results of that commitment were evidenced in the numerical growth, the increasing numbers of people professing Christ in baptism and the super- sized discipleship classes. Frankly, it was awesome. There was an urgency to what we were doing.
That is not to say it was easy. I explain it in a story problem. If a pastor, moving seven miles an hour receives 6 complaints per year about the music from three people in a congregation of one hundred, how many disgruntled people claim he is of the devil when he is travelling seventy miles an hour in a congregation of two thousand?
Each decision to switch rooms, adjust times, or subtlety refocus ministry impacted hundreds to thousands of people. It was always a difficult load to bear. For the most part, people in our churches grasp only the parts of a ministry they think impacts them. In other words, they only respond to emotionally charged issues. Peoples’ first reaction to change is defense. They fight for what they have come to know as God’s direction. They defend things that are comfortable. They fight what is unknown. Each time the leadership prepared to move the flock, we prayerfully weighed every option and made only the decisions, which were confirmed by God through process or experience. It taught me patience and strategy. It also forced me to develop a thicker hide.
We humans have a peculiar down side. We always think that each of our own thoughts is both profound and inspired. When others disagree with our revelations and genius we fight for our ideas. Sometimes we are right and we need to fight. Many more times we should learn to listen. Wisdom, knows which is which. None-the-less God will use it all for his glory. He is as committed to molding us through opposition as he is to molding us through approval. He doesn’t waste any of it. That was certainly true of our experience in a big church.
When we transitioned out of our known ministry experience, and ventured out into the world of rural missions, we did so in part because of reckless optimism. We prayed. We asked our mentors and then we trusted our God.
We purchased a 105 acre farm in what can only be called, a God ordained provision. We had made arrangements to buy the farm on a land contract, which had a balloon of twenty five thousand dollars. I remember trusting that God would use my skills as a fundraiser to bring an abundance of cash into our coffers. Just to be sure though, and couched in a spirit of “jurisprudence” we hired a grant writing company to go after the billions of available dollars. We were careful as to the way we spent money. Six months, fifty-six grant proposals, endless campaigning trips for funding later, we had none of the needed funds to make the purchase. Some people questioned that God had called us to this vision. After all, if God is in it, wouldn’t it be easy. I wonder how a believer could read the word of God and come up with this hypothesis. The trip through the wilderness, the history of the Hebrews, the stories of Job, David, Joseph, Abraham, Moses, Jacob, Peter, Paul and Jesus himself ought to demonstrate what scripture clearly states. “Some of the wise will stumble, so that they may be refined, purified and made spotless until the time of the end, for it will still come at the appointed time.” Daniel 11:35 “The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, But the LORD tests hearts.” Proverbs 17:3
God uses the struggles that come as we obey His will and follow His call to refine and stir us. The more time we spend in service and obedience, the more God pours out on the disciple in terms of expectation. As we battle each day to find balance, exhibit the attributes of Christ and trust Him for the miraculous we find that He is in the active process of growing us. That makes me ask the obvious question. “What is God growing me into?”
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Doug, keep going, tell your story, their is background that you dont know abought that I would be happy to share with you at some point in time.
lou burke
Doug other people in ministry need to hear your story. Too many ministers are giving up and it is the sheep that suffer!
Lou, I’d love to sit down and take a few historical notes.
In regards to this, “If a pastor, moving seven miles an hour receives 6 complaints per year about the music from three people in a congregation of one hundred, how many disgruntled people claim he is of the devil when he is travelling seventy miles an hour in a congregation of two thousand?”, it is a sad reality what damage a congregation can do.
When I was in college I was leading the youth group at my church and ended up being congregation roadkill. I definitely wasn’t prepared for it, and I didn’t have the skin for it either.
It is a painful by-product of a “buyers’ market” in regards to ministry. The disciples encountered it right away as well. Sorry about the experience for you, the kids that lost in the wake and the congregation that thought they were in charge.
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