So, this month contains two commemorative dates that cause me to have more introspection than normal.
April 1, 2005 – I became a Pastor
April 19, 2009 – We held our first service as ReCAST Church (in a basement, in a home on the north side of Mattawan).
That means ReCAST will be 16 years old this month. And I have carried the title ‘pastor’ for 20 years! And those two realities continue to floor me. I never sought the title pastor and was terrified of public speaking in my youth. And, I had a high level of uncertainty about the future of ReCAST church over those early years.
My life has been defined over the past 20 years by a leaning on God that I can only define as FAITH. This faith has been stretched, defined, redefined, battered, nearly killed, exercised and resurrected . . . And all of this by the God who has walked with me.
I have learned so many things, but I will pare them down to five lessons I’ve learned as a church-planting pastor over the past 20/16 years.
1. His strength shines in our weakness.
My greatest fear . . . Has always been public speaking. And so God has put me in a role where my weakness is always before me. I didn’t come to pastoral ministry with an attitude of earning, working for, or even deserving the limelight. I came with a fear of the spotlight.
The byproduct of this over years of ministry has been a growing awe and wonder, week after week, when God gives me the strength to speak His Words with confidence and boldness!
Any Sunday that someone learns something through my message is one more evidence to me that God uses the weak things of this world to do His work. When someone says, ‘good message’, I look to God and just wink. I know He has not overcome my weakness, but glorified Himself IN my weakness.
2. People surprise me.
I heard a unattributed quote when I was younger that said something like ‘ministry would be so much easier without all these people!’ I’ve always thought that sounded particularly jaded and cynical. And I consider myself fortunate to have avoided the pitfall of this quote.
Over 20 years I have met many of the people! The angry ones. The kind ones. The fearful ones. The pretentious ones. The meek ones. The suicidal ones. The terminally ill ones. The happily married ones and the bitterly divorced ones. And I love the medium of my pastoral arts. Painters paint on canvas. Sculptors use marble and stone. And pastors work in the medium of people. And I have grown in my appreciation of real people. People who I won’t name here for their sake, but the names are on the tip of my tongue and the pains and pleasures of knowing them has wet my pillows with tears some nights.
I have been witness to heroic acts of love. I have walked through the dark waters of death. I have celebrated marriages and births. I have a working understanding of what it means that humans are made in the Image of God, because I have seen His reflection . . . In real life.
3. Doldrums are real.
I have experienced stretches of this past 20 years that felt like being lost in the desert. A human is not made to only give. And yet most pastors are only trained in that direction. I adopted early on the notion that I need to always be on my game. Show no weakness. Give the most. Serve the longest. Be there first and be the last one to leave.
And there was a season about 10 years ago, when I was one more hard discussion away from leaving for a middle management position . . . Anywhere. Ironically, Covid was NOT the doldrums for me. I learned how to navigate hard places before COVID ever hit.
God used the work of a particular pastor/church-planter to draw me up out of the doldrums and blow new wind in my sails. ‘The Pastor’ by Eugene Peterson is a book that will always need to be given some credit for any ministry through me post 2015. That book called me back from the ledge and helped to stabilize me in a tumultuous time of internal weariness.
4. ‘A long obedience in the same direction’ is worth it.
This phrase from Eugene Peterson was used by God to normalize the mundane, routine nature of God’s work in ministry. I wanted mountain tops. He called me to walk in the valleys too. I wanted to sprint. He called me to a long-distance race. I wanted adrenaline and big change. He wants me to specialize in incremental small changes over time.
God changed me. He has taken me from a spastic, capricious, impulsive young man and made me into a less spastic, more stable, less impulsive middle-aged man. And this understanding of a call to a ‘long obedience in the same direction’ has been my centering thought for the past decade.
[As a side note, if there is anyone reading this with artistic skills, I am seriously wanting a tattoo that conveys the phrase ‘a long obedience in the same direction’ with both text and image. I am open to art suggestions.]
5. He Does It
I am ashamed to say that I didn’t even know what success looked like when I started out. It would be good if a baker knows what a pie is before they set out to bake one. It would be good if an engineer who is designing a saw knows what a saw looks like before they set out. But I must confess now 20 years later, what would’ve caused a huge lack of confidence in those following me in those early years: I didn’t rightly know what a successful church-plant would look like.
And yet it MUST be this way for a church planter. Because my vocation has been one of following God, remaining nimble and flexible to the Spirit’s leading. By “the Spirit’s leading”, I don’t mean to give any impression that I meet in a secret room with God and he tells me what to do next. It’s much more earthly and much more mundane than that. His leading has been PEOPLE who wandered into the church. His leading has been preaching books of the Bible verse by verse and chapter by chapter. His leading has been growth in me, growth in the church, growth in my patience, and growth in others around me.
This collaboration between Spirit and pastor has not been even. It has been Him. It has been the work of God in beginnings, means, and ends! All of it of Him. All it from Him. All of it for Him. All of it. 20 years of pastoral ministry, and the most true statement over any good that has come of it: HE does it. He has done it. He continues to do it. And He will keep doing it after nobody remembers my name.
