Never Forgotten

Last night at the membership banquet I was reminded how faithful God is. He always seems to reward my perseverance and He always, sooner or later, puts people in my life that inspire me to remain faithful. This is a story of the son of a man who went into the ministry with a burgeoning faith in God and overly high expectations of his fellow man. It is also a story of a God who never forgets His children.

Through it all, I learned this simple truth. God is good. People are not. People are not able to be good except with God living in them. People also need to yield to God's will, and even "good Christian" people are not always willing to do that.

Nearly all of us at Christ Church of Metro Atlanta can say we have experienced a church split and survived with our faith intact. We watched or heard about Christians failing to do the right thing. We know that some did some pretty rotten things to our pastor and to the cause of Christ, but we didn't let that shake us from our Firm Foundation. I believe it is no accident at all that God has placed me in this place at this time with you people. My story continues...

Between the ages of 7 and 12, I watched my dad go from being a businessman / lay preacher to a seminary student / full-time pastor, and after two years of that, he served as a senior pastor with a couple of more churches before he got out of the ministry altogether. I was too young to really assess what happened, but suffice it to say in each case there were building projects, rapid growth, and the core members felt slighted somehow and organized resistance and eventually brought in strangers to vote out the pastor.

During these 6 years our family moved 6 times. I attended 3rd grade in 3 different schools, and I attended 7th grade also in 3 different schools and in both grades we moved from one state to another. This high number of moves took its toll on my whole family. I'm the 5th of 6 children. When a man loses his job, his whole family suffers. But when a man is in ministry, each member of his family is a public figure. Each one is by default, a partner with him in that ministry. The wife and children of a pastor are not shielded from the awful feelings of disappointment, betrayal and rejection when their father is asked to leave a congregation. In our case, my mother was a stay at home mom, and we were broke. Our house was the parsonage, too. So each time my father's job was gone, we lost home, neighborhood, school and school friends, church and church friends. Basically we had to say goodbye to everything that was familiar to us. This is very stressful, to say the least. I think the anger, the guilt and shame my dad felt was too much to bear. He left the ministry and went back into business. His faith recovered after some years, but I think he still carries the scars on his heart from that time. When your heart has gone from hope to despair there is an ongoing healing process that must happen in order to truly hope again.

In a weird way I am happy that I have been through the past 2 years with the people of Christ Church of Metro Atlanta. Why? Because God allowed me to live long enough to experience a whole group of people, lead by faithful men, sticking it out through the tough times similar to the ones I grew up with. My prayer is that we will hold unswervingly to the faith that we profess. Jesus has rewarded us for our faithfulness. We have crossed the Jordan river.

Now the hardships are certainly not going to disappear. Remember, God is good. People are not. People are only able to be good by submitting to the indwelling Holy Spirit. We still live in a fallen world. Hardships and difficult people will still plague us, even in the church, because we are not all willing all the time to do what God wants us to do. And sometimes we are busy trying to get God to back up our plans instead of the other way around.

So let's don't get complacent. Let's keep on keeping on...and for those of you who have been hurt by "church people" in the past, I hope you know that it is part of the Christian life. Jesus promised that in this world we will have trouble and even persecution if we are truly following Him. All 12 of the disciples deserted Jesus, and He still went to the cross on their behalf...and yours...and mine. Think about it.

Thank you, Jesus.