Musings of a Prodigal Son - Part 2 The Pastorate

If my memory is correct, the Church called me to be their Pastor in August 1991 . I wish I could say that the years to follow were marked only by God’s strength and not my own but they were not. I have often had a problem of trying to take responsibility for things that were not my responsibility and neglecting the things that were. My time in the Pastorate was no different. I can honestly say that I always had good motives and wanted the right things but from hind sight I often ministered from my own strength and not His (God’s). There was also a prime mission field at my home that I neglected to cultivate and minister to. In the words of Jim Baker in his book, I Was Wrong, “I got so busy trying to build a fellowship that I forgot to fellowship.” Many times, God blessed the church anyway. I can honestly say that I loved and continue to love deeply those people that God allowed me to serve. I often “strained at ministry”. I so wanted the power of God to come down and minister to the people. I really wanted good things for them and wanted them to “see Jesus.” But again, no matter what is going on, no matter how big or small a church is, there are some basic essentials that we never outgrow but rather should grow more into. It is really a basic practical law that God shows us again and again in his creation. That basic principle is this: Whoever we spend the most time with, we become closer to. Whatever we spend the most time doing, we get more adept at and learn more about. If we spend time with God, we learn more about and get closer to him. We also become more comfortable with his presence and recognize him in more places. An example: if a stranger stays in my home, I act differently than I do around my girls (daughters). My girls know me as the crazy guy who sings and dances crazy moves and laughs and cuts up. The stranger would not experience me that way because I would not be comfortable enough nor know them enough to be myself. If the stranger were a wise person and I spent enough time with them to know that, I would become comfortable learning from them as well. It is no different with God. I have often heard people talk about intimacy with God. Intimacy is being in such close proximity to someone both physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually that we become as comfortable with them as we are with ourselves. In fact, our identities begin to mingle until eventually the individual identities become indistinguishable. Hence couples that have been together many years in an intimate relationship can often finish each others sentences, know what the other is thinking, can often speak for one another. This is the type of relationship our Heavenly Father wants with each of his children. I truly wanted to know God more. I wanted the people I served to know Him more. The avenue for that would have been for me to know him more intimately so that when they saw and heard ME they were really seeing and hearing HIM.

I remember one of my professors in Bible College constantly stressing that our (those who were training to become Pastors) greatest mission field was in our home. He stated, “If your wife is not comfortable with you being a Pastor, get out of the Pastorate.” I remember thinking that if my wife was not comfortable being in the “ministry” then she is the one who needed to get right with God. From hind sight, I know what this professor was saying. He was saying that there must be unity in the home. The husband and wife (the one flesh) must share the same vision, be in accord with the living out of that vision, and that family unit must be the primary concern of any pastor. I have often heard Pastors say, “God first, family second, church third.” However, their ministries (including mine) was lived as “Church First, God Second, family third.” For many of you this may be a hard truth but it is a truth nonetheless.

Don’t get me wrong, my time as Pastor of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church was a good time in my life. I learned much but made many mistakes. I learned the truth about Christian Ministry. Often times, people look at Pastors and Christian workers as somehow getting an extra dose of Godly wisdom and insight. In reality, Pastors are just men and women just like the rest of us who have a purpose that may differ in kind but not differ in its human frailties. It has always comforted me that in the Bible, God seems to always show us great men and women at their best……and at their worst. In fact, some of the behaviors of the greatest men and women in God’s Word would result in them being “disqualified” for ministry in many churches and ministries today. An example: Abraham is considered the “Father of the Faithful”. The Bible says that Abraham believed God and it was counted unto his as righteousness. God Blessed Abraham and his seed. It is significant to me that on two different occasions (one after God made the promises to him to make his descendants as numerous as the stars in heaven) Abraham pretended that Sarah (his wife) was his sister and lied to Pharaoh of Egypt and another King (Abimelech) because he was afraid that they would kill him because Sarah was a beautiful woman and he thought that they would want her for a wife. As it turned out, they did want her as a wife and Abraham allowed it to happen. The Bible is also clear on the failings of many others: David, Peter, Paul, etc….A common theme seems to develop as the Bible progresses from beginning to end. That theme is this: “The heart (of man) is desperately wicked. Who can know it?” but…”For in the gospel (the gospel is that Jesus Christ died, rose again, and sits at the right hand of God to make intercession for us) the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

Back to my story, I wish I could say that my little family (my young wife, my very young daughter) was my priority at that time in my life. I missed out on so many things during those years with my wife and daughter. My wife and I grew apart, in part I believe due to my haste in sweeping us into what I believed to be God’s will for my life and in part due to the fact that she was often secondary to everything that I considered God’s priority (the church, Bible College). I take full responsibility for these things. Men…a word for some who may be reading this….. I believe that God has never relented on the fact, which the Bible seems clear about, that we are to be the leaders in our homes. This does not mean that we are “the boss" but that we should take the leadership of our family seriously and protect it from anything that might break it down. This includes much prayer and “soul searching’ for the direction and timing of leading our families and making decisions about what we expose our families to. It means listening to our wives and children along the way and taking into consideration their feelings and thoughts on decisions that affect the family. The destruction of the family is often very subtle and happens gradually as husband and wife cease to really communicate and begin to exist together. Intimacy decreases, identities diverge, and eventually there are two distinct individuals who discover that they have very little in common. Resentments begin to build. Resentments are frozen, often unexpressed anger and frustration over feeling misunderstood or unheard. Remember, just because we are doing what the church considers to be “good things” doesn’t mean we are doing the best things. I know I was so busy trying to keep my pulse on the health of the church that my family was slowly dying as a unit. I wish I had heeded more the passage of scripture that says, “husbands love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it.” But I did not. It is very true that strong families build strong churches. A note here: there are many families that stay together but are not strong families. There are some people who stay married over half a century who haven’t had true consistent intimacy for decades or even from the beginning. That is not what I am writing about here. I am writing about those families who foster the growth of the individual members of the family, allow honesty even at the expense of disappointment, and acceptance even in the midst of different viewpoints. A unit that allows a person to grow spiritually, mentally, and emotionally knowing that this process is not always linear but is often replete with regression and failures. Relationships and marriages where the intimacy is so great that vast changes can take place over time but the unit remains intact not because everyone feels obligated to stay but make a choice to be there because there is no better place.
The beginning of the pastorate was a steep learning curve for me. The years leading up to my "surrender" into Christian Ministry were marked by turmoil and anxiety. I remember having anxiety attacks so severely the two years prior to entering the ministry that I could not attend many classes in college or even sit in a complete church service. I remember that my brother ran "the sound room" at Calvary Baptist Church in the late 1980s. I remember taking my wife and baby to church there and having to lie down in the sound room next to my brother because the anxiety was making me physically sick. I say all of that to let you know that when I began attending church with my friend in 1990, I was still fighting this anxiety. I continued to pray about it. When Pleasant Hill called me as Pastor in August of 1991, I remember that I perspired so badly due to anxiety that it warranted some adjustments. Some wonderful men in the church modified the air conditioning system by putting a vent directly over the pulpit so that the air could blow directly down on me. This was due to the fact that I was perspiring so much that sweat was literally "dripping off my nose." (no matter how many times I attempted to wipe it off my face).
I also remember feeling the tremendous burden as many of the people that I was growing to love so deeply where becoming ill and some were dying. For a young man in his early 20s, I learned quickly that death often comes unexpectedly. But even when it was expected, it always brought with it pain to those who were closely affected by it. I would often tarry with people until death did indeed come. I never liked the phrase, "God has a purpose for everything" or "his will is always best", especially when it was shared with someone who was dying or someone was about to lose someone close to them. That is usually what people, and sometimes pastors, say when they don't know what else to say. Sometimes its better just to shut up and love people. I began to see that God's will and plans are different than ours and he sees things a whole lot different than we do. As James Dobson, the great Focus on the Family Leader once said, "Sometimes God doesn't make sense." I agree with that statement wholeheartedly. There is never a good way to say good-bye to anyone. I've heard well meaning people say, "I'm glad it wasn't a slow death" or "I'm glad they were ill so that it gave you time to adjust to the fact that they were dying." No matter how old or young someone is, there is usually someone who is going to hurt tremendously by their death. As a Pastor, I felt a heavy burden to somehow help those people with their grief. The difficult and often unspoken difficulty that many pastors face is the fact that they do not understand many of the things that happen to those people they have been entrusted to pastor but sometimes feel obligated to act like they do. Honestly, it is sometimes hard to stand in front of many people and say that "God is Good" when you really don't "feel" like he is. You might know intellectually, emotionally, and even spiritually that he is good but those emotions of hurt and sadness can very quickly dampen your vision. This is where I sometimes feel there is an error in the way we conduct ourselves as Pastors and fellow Christians. A body of believers, all of which are struggling with one thing or another whether they realize it or not, should be able to be starkly honest about all their struggles with one another if what the Bible says is true. Bear with me a moment while I explain. The Bible makes a point of characterizing all of us as sinners (those who miss the mark or as we say in the country - "did wrong"). The Bible also says that Christ died for us. The Bible says that by believing on Him (Christ), we shall be saved (from what???? mainly separation from God in whatever form that takes both now and hereafter). The Bible also says that he makes intercession for us. Hence the verse, which I believe is a key to successful living, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgiveness us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9) Confess to who? Him? (he already knows). Rather to each other. We should be reminded each time we struggle and confess our struggles that Christ accepts and cleanses us. This should come from those around us. That way when I confess my struggle, the person is the back of the room where I am making my confession (who just happens to also be struggling with the same thing) has the freedom to expose it so that the healing balm of Christ's forgiveness can manifest itself through his body the church. My experience has been that we want everyone to know our successes, not our failures. I'm not writing about exposing yourself (confessing your sins) only to have everyone say that Christ will forgive you and being proud of themselves for helping you out. We tend to want to keep confession private. We're afraid if we expose it, it will not make us look good. What will look good to one who is struggling, however, is to know someone who exposed the same thing they are struggling with is able to receive prayer and healing from the body of Christ. Take a look at the Bible:  Jesus exposed sin but did not shame the one who committed it. We're afraid to expose sin because we often equate the sinner and the sin as being one and the same. They are not. You make mistakes in Christ but you are not a mistake. Forgiveness says, I made a mistake and I am exposing it so that it haunts me no more." Shame says, I am a mistake and I must hide it so that no one really knows who I am. Shame makes you "heavy". Forgiveness makes you "light". (take my yoke upon you for my load is easy and my burden is light-Jesus.)