I think I’ve got it!

I’m slow. I hoped old age would help me learn quicker, catch on faster. But not so much. I was trained in a wonderful learning environment in the seminary where I studied. I have read volumes on various subjects such as theology, end times, post modern church, church planting and church growth. I read about how to have a “sticky church”, a cool church, an outside-the-box church. I came to my old hometown expecting the worse and my expectations were met. Few showed up for this “new kind of church”. Even fewer stayed. Slowly, I mean glacier speed, people started to stay. A couple of them got it. Most came clueless and stayed that way. I guess maybe I was and am the right pastor for the clueless, or as our t-shirts announce, the “slightly irregular folks”.

The pressure seemed to be to get more people and more money. You have “saved” more people if you have lots and lots of people in your church. And of course you need more money to “do the Lord’s work”. Why was I such a failure? My denomination hadn’t even recognized us as a real church after six years. I guess I can’t blame them. One week we have 75 people in church, the next 20, and we come closer to the latter most weeks. And don’t even get me started about the money. Then I realized what I was doing. As the author of Ecclesiastes says, “13 I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men! 14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”

I gave up. I called my overseer and said this is it. This is all we will ever need to be, a family, a church, a people of God albeit slightly irregular. I am a pastor, maybe an old pastor but that’s my call. My wife and I are the father and mother of this family. We hope someday to be the grandparents with others taking over, but until then we have one call. To love and serve the people God brings to us, whether they show up on Sunday or not, or give lots of money or not. There is no higher calling.