Bowing Down

Well, I hope I don’t have to go through that again any time soon.

Hearing the announcement come from my pastor’s mouth made everything finally seem real.  I struggled through a few words of love and hope to the congregation, then walked around with watery eyes as person after person expressed love and encouragement to me.  Believe-it-or-not, the hardest people to tell were not the adults–it was the children in junior church.  These were some of my charges; I am as much their pastor as my senior pastor is to our adult church family.  Their sweet, innocent faces, obviously not understanding the whole reality of what I was saying brought a choke to my throat.  I have loved ministering to children in our church the last several years.  We have studied so much of the Word of God together.  Many of them have been saved and baptized in the last year.  I felt like a father saying goodbye to them.

While we do not know right now where God will lead our family, it was encouraging to hear so many of our friends affirm our decision.  They were so kind in their words.  God says that in an abundance of counselors there is safety.  I do have a sense of safety in our decision to pursue a senior pastorate, despite the unknown before us.  Our life of faith is again as active as it should always be.

Now we turn to a period of divided focus: finishing well here and finding our new ministry home.  I’ve put the resumes out and people are reading them.  Now we’ll wait and see what God will do.

Pray for us.