2011 Rearview

A day late due to spending the afternoon in the hospital with a sick friend.  Here is the letter I wrote to the church for our annual report this Sunday.

As I gaze at 2011 in the rearview mirror I can’t help but take a deep sigh of relief.  This has been a tumultuous year and one in which God has done huge renovations in my life.  While not every minute of that work has been fun, I am so thankful for the year just past and look forward to what lies ahead.

In my personal life and in my work at Bean’s Corner, it is important to me to feel that we are moving ahead, making progress.  This year that feeling was intensified as God seemed to press His foot on the accelerator of my life.  This spring and summer as I struggled with the hardest year ever of putting together Berea’s summer camp, God began teaching me in powerful ways the depths to which I needed to trust Him.  He convicted me of my worry and stress and challenged me to trust Him when I couldn’t see the outcome.  Excited by these lessons, I began, with Nate, a preaching series on peace.  In the midst of that I learned why God was teaching the lesson so insistently as we learned in August that my Dad had cancer.  Three weeks later He was gone and I realized just how deep my trust of God needs to be.  Then we learned that we were pregnant again after four years of trying and a few miscarriages.  Again God pushed me.  Do I trust Him?  I am still working hard to leave myself in His hands where there is no stress.

Through all these events, God had still more lessons to teach.  As this late fall and winter has unfolded, I have realized that from both a work-load and emotional-load perspective that I am not yet recovered from everything that has happened.  God has used that to further challenge me on how I respond emotionally to rough times and how honest I am with myself and others when I am weak and struggling.  As a leader, as well as a human, the tendency is to want to look good, to be “a good example,” and not admit or display weakness.  This fall that has not been possible.  God is teaching me that I am more of a leader and example when I allow my frailties and failures to be publicly displayed.  As Paul also had to learn the hard way, “When I am weak, then He is strong.”

So know that your senior pastor this fall has struggled and has failed in many areas.  I have been behind in getting things done.  I have done a poorer job of planning ahead then I normally need to do.  I have missed opportunities and not accomplished things that should have been accomplished.  I have had more down days than up.  Through all that God has been more than faithful.  He has used these months to teach me more and more about what it means for me to be His child and for me to be a picture of Him to our church.  He has relentlessly taught me the humility of honesty and transparency.  In that, I have come to find Him all the sweeter, my relationship with Him and with my brothers in Christ all the more intimate and powerful.  My experience of God has been much greater and through that I have seen Him work in more powerful ways.  It is a great reminder that no amount of ministry expertise or effort can affect anyone’s life in meaningful ways, but that Christ, when allowed to truly work through me, weak, broken, and humble, accomplishes enormous tasks and changes people in profound ways.

My test area for all this is in my home as I pastor my family and raise our children.  Being honest with them about the man I am and the God I have will hopefully have a greater impact on them than if I try to maintain some fictional image of the “perfect pastor.”  I hope that all of you, who also face times of struggle and weakness, will find the reality of God as powerful as I have.  I pray you experience Christ in new and intimate ways, and I know that as we are open, humble, and broken together, the power of the Spirit is going to flow through our church in ways that will knock our socks off!  We are already seeing tastes of the glories that God has prepared for us when we really open our lives to Him and allow His power rather than our agendas and egos to work in the church.

I can’t begin to describe the honor it is to serve at Bean’s Corner.  God is doing something unique and exciting in our midst and I can’t wait to see where it takes us.  This year has taught me just how hard and sometimes painful God’s work can be, but it has also taught me how badly I want Him to do that work in my life and in the life of our church.  I am so thankful for the friends I have in this church.  To have three other pastors to serve with and  have with them, not just a good professional relationship, but a family relationship.  Cliff, Mac, and Nate could not be more family to me if we had blood ties.  The powerful personal friendship I have with the men of the Deacon board, their willingness to correct and support, and to know when to do both, is a rare gift that many pastors do not enjoy.  The other friends and co-laborers that work, help and support; I couldn’t even begin to be a pastor and shepherd without them.

So thank you, dear brothers and sisters, for your patience and grace.  I will not promise to make myself better this year, but I will commit to trying even harder to die to self and allow Christ to rule my life and as your servant-shepherd, allow you to see the construction that God is doing on my heart so that you can be encouraged to allow Him to do the same in you.  Together we will grow in Him this year and we will see Him moving with power in our church!