How did we get here?

I’m writing during a week “in between” – finding myself between the dates of leaving one church, community, and home – and moving toward another home, community, and (Lord-willing) a church that He will call and form. How did we get here? And of all next steps, how did it come to this? What happened in my life that has lead to being willing to step away from a marvelous community – and into the unknown? Let me offer some general background before telling the story of four key moves.

I suppose the first thing you need to know is that I have always seen any kind of leadership as a “temporary assignment” where you are accountable to God and others. I like how Andy Crouch frames this: God’s first calling on every human life is to bear his image in the world, and the second “calling” is to him in faith — to bear that image renewed and restored in Jesus Christ as he is formed in us. After that, bets are off… there is unending variety of how humans express and live out the work God calls them do in any number of contingent ways. God loves and orders that variety! Here we bump up against the idea of a vocation – is there a specific work, task, or station I am called or committed to? That I am wired or prepared for? That someone around me calls me to do? Then do that well, to the best of your ability, for the good of your neighbor and the glory of God… for as long as God has you there.

In my case, my “calling” is to the office of a teaching elder in the EPC: a pastor who teaches, leads, and shepherds others in the church. Ever since 2016 I have put it this way: I want to “work within the church to teach and lead people to imagine and walk into life with God, in Christ, for his kingdom.” I have also come to believe that God’s call to me as a pastor should be pursued as a missionary endeavor – for the equipping of the church (specific people and place) for the good of their neighbors/community and the glory of God. Lesslie Newbigin’s writing has shaped me here and reverberates in my mind and imaginations. As a missionary-pastor in India who returned to the UK and found that his western culture had become non-Christian, he began to articulate the need for the church to have a new “missionary encounter” with our culture. This is absolutely necessary here and now: we keep our eye on those the Lord will call, and the church’s “work” is not for itself but those who are far from God or his church. 

There have been four pivotal seasons or moments that brought me to pick up the work of church planting. First, when our church gave me a sabbatical in the summer of 2021, I spent it as a kind of pilgrimage: seeking the Lord and asking him to show me how he wants to shape me for the future. I emerged from that summer with a few core convictions refined through some critical experiences: I was called to pastoral ministry within the church – not to teaching, not to leading some non-profit, not to coaching … my call was to bear witness to the gospel through the church. I wanted to shepherd people within the church through prayer and study, preaching and teaching, more face-to-face people-time as well as the work of administration. I set out to reframe my work accordingly with renewed intention.

Second – along the way I discovered some new desires and had opportunity to work in new directions. As we examined and rebuilt our family ministry, I enjoyed thinking through organization, structure, who does what, what gifts we need, and how our team could cultivate and develop them for the good of our church and community. I got more interested in the shape of discipleship for our whole church and how it affects kids and students. I started thinking more about how the gospel and our teaching is heard by our neighbors and impacting the average person showing up to our church. Through teaching the Main and Market Fellows in Chattanooga I got schooled in the questions people are asking and the theology and practices for renewing a vision for life and work. I got fired up in leading discussions with other pastors and friends about what the church in our time can be and should be, and the new directions available in prayerful renewal at the local and communal levels. Who would I need to become, and what might we do, in shaping our church community through initiatives and practices to respond to where God is leading us?

Third, I sensed a stirring toward asking God what assignment he had for me next. As my fellow pastors Scott and Joey had sabbaticals in 2022/23, I enjoyed learning parts of their work and found an appetite for more of it: l loved more freedom to help design worship services or do preaching and teaching. Around the same time, our youngest graduated from high school and Robin and I both felt some more freedom in place and time. (Our prayer for a long time had been that we could be allowed stability of place for our kids during those middle and high school years). I talked openly with my two fellow pastors about these and benefited from their wisdom and guidance as I proactively explored other opportunities, all of those were lead pastor roles at other churches. For a variety of reasons, those doors closed (or never opened) and I found myself wondering… did I miss the boat somewhere? Was I not looking up? Listening well? Did I have my head down for too long and my nose too pressed to the work in front of me? All this time I had remained engaged in the work I had a Signal Pres: I love the work of our family ministry, our team, and had lots of energy and dreams for the future. I just didn’t want “now” to be assumed by the past‘s push rather than attentive to the future’s pull. 

Fourth – and maybe the clearest part of this story – my phone rang last November: a friend and elder at a church on the north side of Charlotte called to ask what I was thinking about doing next, and would I consider looking at an opportunity to plant a new church through them? I was clearly wrestling with the first, but had almost no interest in the second. Though I’ve been engaged for years in helping with church planting through network leadership, or finances, or leadership structures, I never saw myself as one called to plant a church. But a number of things began to unfold. Over Christmas I read Roland Allen’s 1912 book on Paul’s missionary methods: when he wrote about how too many pastors were locked up in big centers of ministry when they are needed in the field of mission for the work of the gospel, I just cried. And as I visited these friends at this church in NC and talked to them over many slow months, I became convinced that I could do this work: it engaged many of the things I cared about, seemed gifted in, and loved to do. Over late spring I was surprised (and smiling) at the possibility I really was equipped and shaped for a work I was already convinced needed doing. I just needed to be convinced by God that this was his next call for me. That came through a wonderful four days in early July with Robin and the team and elders in NC. In his kindness, God make it abundantly clear to us that this was our next assignment. The “yes,” when it came time to give it, was easy: our desire has always been to follow that call, no matter where it leads. 

Onward.