Listed - under contract - Sold!

Yesterday I posted that Sharron and I are still in God's Waiting Room.  Now we are amazed by the moving of God in our life and we are simply asking - God, what are You doing?

Two weeks ago we came off a very emotional weekend as we said farewell to our friends and family of North Raleigh Church of the Nazarene.  On Wednesday of that week we met with Carol Small and our home went on live on the MLS site at noon.  Within 24 hours we had over 14 viewings scheduled and by Saturday we had several attractive offers.  On that day we signed a contract for a cash offer and our home was listed as "Under Contract".

Yesterday Sharron and I met with our realtor Carol at an attorney's office as we closed on the sale of our house. Now, the house we live in belongs to another and we have secured "renter's insurance" for the next 2 months.

We are praying and crying out to God to trust Him unwavering and know that He has a plan for us.

Thank you for your prayers as we seek God's face about our future.



This is not our first time in God's Waiting Room.  As I sit at our kitchen table and I write this post I am reminded of another time we stepped out in complete trust and audacious faith to see God's faithfulness.  God just reminded me of a song that encouraged my soul then - and now.....

Still in God's Waiting Room

WAIT is a word we hate…at least I do.

I get frustrated waiting on fast food or waiting behind the slow car in the fast lane. Aren’t we all in a rush to get to the next place or the next thing?

My cell phone battery malfunctions at the worst of times. “I just had 34% battery life and now it’s dead!” Waiting for the phone to recharge only takes a few minutes but feels like eons. “Come on!”

We live in one of the most individualistic cultures in the world, which means we want what we want — and we want it now, and it better be quick and easy.

Waiting on God

An impatient mindset often carries over into my spiritual life.

I have a need.

I pray.

I want the answer yesterday.

“Come on, Lord!”

One of the most oft quoted verses in the Bible is Isaiah 40:31 – “They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength…”

What does it mean to “wait” on God?

3 Things I’ve Learned About God’s Timing

1. God is NEVER in a Hurry

I’ve come to believe a lot of things about God – He is compassionate, holy, gracious, righteous, forgiving, merciful and loving…AND He is never in a hurry.

* God allowed over 4,000 years between the promise in Genesis of a Savior and the first Christmas.

* God waited 400 years before answering the Jews’ cries for deliverance from slavery in Egypt.

* God allowed another 40 years of wilderness wanderings after their Exodus.

* Jesus said He is coming again SOON and its been almost 2,000 years since the promise was made.   Just how long is soon?

God is not in a hurry and that’s good for you.

2. God is never late.

A man named Lazarus, who was described as “Jesus’ friend,” was deathly sick.

He and his family had watched Jesus perform miracles for people in need and now that he was dying they called for Jesus to help.

He showed up four days after Lazarus’ funeral. He was late.

Lazarus’ family was heartbroken. His sisters said, “If you had been here he would  have lived.”

What did Jesus do? When he showed up he raised up Lazarus from the grave. Lazarus lived. 

The family’s woes turned to wow’s.

Late? By whose timing?

3. God works just in time.

This can be an annoying aspect of God’s patterns but it is true.

When Corrie Ten Boom was a little girl, she went to my father and said, “Daddy, I am afraid that I will never be strong enough to be a martyr for Jesus Christ.”

“Tell me,” said her father, “When we take a train trip to Amsterdam, when do I give you the money for the ticket? Three weeks before?”

“No, Daddy, you give me the money for the ticket just before we get on the train.”

“That is right,” my father said, “and so it is with God’s strength. Our Father in heaven knows when you will need the strength. He will supply all you need—just in time.”

How to WAIT While God Works

Waiting on God is not being passive.

The word for “wait” can correctly be interpreted as “hope.”

A hopeful person is expectant. A pregnant woman is said to be “expecting a baby.” She has to wait for nine months but while she waits she gets busy moving in the direction of her expectation.

That’s what “waiting on God” is like…a matter of time and timing…and in faith working towards what you expect to happen.

God is faithful and often when I doubt - God reminds me that sometimes I just have to get out of the way, as He whispers in spirit - I've Got This! 

Enjoying retirement - need a new and different look?

JOHN PAUL FILO/CBS

David Letterman made America laugh for 33 years as a late-night host, but the real challenge as he closed out his legendary tenure on Wednesday May 20, 2015 was holding back a tear or two.  

Letterman, 68, bid his final "Thank you and good night" to viewers after nearly 22 years behind the desk of CBS's Late Show. The 16-time Emmy winner's final show after 6,028 broadcasts was a star-studded extravaganza that still managed to be touching – after all, Letterman has seen incredible highs and lows during the decades that have cemented his reputation as a late-night pioneer. 

AKM-GSI

As the one-year anniversary of his final Late Show appearance approaches, David Letterman is sporting a decidedly different look.

The 68-year-old now has a bald head to go with his retirement beard. Emphasizing his white facial hair, Letterman showed off the new 'do while out walking in St. Bart's on March 22, 2016.

Letterman, who hosted the late night show for an impressive 33 years, was casual in a Ball State T-shirt and yellow swim trunks while he walked along the beach in the celebrity hot spot.

The star hasn't struggled to embrace retirement, he told the Whitefish Review in December.

"I can remember the first day that Stephen Colbert took over – put his new show on the air," Letterman told the Montana-based journal. "I thought I would have some trouble, some emotional trouble, or some feeling of displacement, but I realized, hey, that's not my problem anymore. And I have felt much better."

He added of his decades on television, "I haven't missed it, the way I thought I might."

"[I don't] care that much about television anymore," Letterman shared. "It was just silliness."

And what does he say of his new, Santa Claus-inspired aesthetic? 

"I've kind of developed a real creepy look with it that I'm sort of enjoying," Letterman shared. "I can tell that people are off-put by it. And the more people implore me to shave, the stronger my resolve is to not shave."

The Day after Easter

Easter Monday, also known as Bright Monday, Renewal Monday, Wet Monday, and Dingus Day, is the Monday immediately after Easter Sunday. It is observed by many Christian groups, but primarily by the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions. It marks the beginning of Easter Week (Roman Catholic) / Bright Week (Eastern Orthodox).

Different cultures observe Easter Monday very differently. For some, Easter Monday is a solemn remembrance of Christ’s death and resurrection marked by an outdoor procession. For others, there are Easter egg-rolling competitions. For still others, siblings and/or spouses wake each other up by pouring buckets of water on each other (hence the name “Wet Monday”). And others celebrate with a large gathering and a polka festival (Dingus Day).

Some of these observances have more Christian symbolism in them than others, but none of them are explicitly biblical. The Bible does not say anything about what happened on Easter Monday, the day after Jesus’ resurrection. The Bible does not instruct followers of Jesus Christ to observe Easter Monday, so there is no obligation to celebrate it. As with many holidays, there is nothing wrong with observing some cultural traditions, but it is important to not allow traditions to detract from the message of the gospel.

Make this a day to reflect and act upon the transformation power of Jesus Christ! 

Resurrection Sunday 2016!

One detail in the Easter story has always intrigued me. Why did Jesus keep the scars from His crucifixion? Presumably He could have had any resurrected body He wanted, and yet He chose one identifiable mainly by scars that could be seen and touched. Why?

I believe the story of Easter would be incomplete without those scars on the hands, the feet, and the side of Jesus (John 20:27). Human beings dream of pearly straight teeth and wrinkle-free skin and ideal body shapes. We dream of an unnatural state: the perfect body. But for Jesus, being confined in a skeleton and human skin was the unnatural state. The scars are a permanent reminder of His days of confinement and suffering on our planet.

From the perspective of heaven, those scars represent the most horrible event that has ever happened in the history of the universe. Even that event, though, turned into a memory. Because of Easter, we can hope that the tears we shed, the struggles we endure, the emotional pain, the heartache over lost friends and loved ones—all these will become memories, like Jesus’ scars. Scars never completely go away, but neither do they hurt any longer. Someday we will have re-created bodies and a re-created heaven and earth (Rev. 21:4). We will have a new start, an Easter start.

Thank You, Lord, for the hope that the resurrection of Jesus brings—for now and for eternity. I put my trust in You today.

Christ’s resurrection is the guarantee of our own.

Why did Jesus have to die?

“That’s what Christ did definitively: suffered because of others’ sins, the Righteous One for the unrighteous ones. He went through it all — was put to death and then made alive — to bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18 MSG). 

Easter celebrates an event that proved Jesus was who he claimed to be. He was God in the flesh, and he came to Earth to save us. And that meant he had to die for us.

After a night of beatings and mocking, after being crowned with painful thorns, Jesus was crucified. Crucifixion is probably the most brutal and torturous death penalty ever devised by men. His hands were stretched out wide against the cross and nailed through the two bones in each wrist. As the nails went through this part of the flesh, they would strike the nerve that travels up the arm and cause excruciating pain.

If you hang this way for any period of time, the muscles around your chest cavity become paralyzed. You can breathe in but you can’t breathe out. Death on a cross is really a simple matter of suffocation, except the Romans didn’t want to make it that easy. They’d take a person’s knees and bend them a little bit and nail the feet to the cross.

So a man would hang there in absolute agony until the pain in his chest was about to explode, and then he would lift himself up on his nailed feet to grab a breath. When the pain in his feet grew unbearable, he’d let himself back down again until the pain in his lungs became unbearable. It was an incredibly torturous event.

Eventually, the soldiers would break the legs of the criminal to hasten death by suffocation.

In the case of Jesus, they didn’t have to break his legs, because he had already died. But just to make sure, they stuck a spear in his side. Water and blood came out of the chest cavity, which, doctors say, only happens if the heart rips. You can call it what you want, but Jesus died of a broken heart.

Why did Jesus have to die? Because he alone was able to pay for your sins. You deserved punishment, but Jesus paid the penalty for you: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (1 Peter 3:18a NIV).

On this Good Friday - That's My King!

On this Good Friday - I remind you:

Seven Ways Churches Should Die with Dignity

Death is not a popular topic.

I get it. It’s more encouraging to talk about birth, life, and growth.

But I want us to deal with the reality of dying churches in this article. And I hope we can move to a positive approach about these churches.

There are approximately 350,000 Protestant churches in the U.S. Many pundits estimate the number of closings to be about one percent, or 3,500 churches a year. For reasons I will discuss in a future post, I estimate the number to be closer to two percent, or 7,000 churches a year.

Let’s split the difference and say more than 5,000 churches die a year.

That’s 14 churches that die every day. And the number is likely to increase.

So what can we offer the leaders of dying churches? How can we help them help their churches die with dignity? I have seven suggestions.

1. Be willing to move from denial to acceptance. If your church has declined from 200 in attendance to 25 in the past five or ten years, it is likely to close soon. Don’t wait until it’s too late to be proactive.
2. Move from guilt to grace. Many members of dying churches feel shame and guilt for the state of their churches. It’s time to forget the past and move into the grace of God’s future. Wallowing in guilt precludes action. Celebrating in grace means moving forward.
3. Avoid merging with another struggling church. An unhealthy or dying church merging with a similar church does not equal a healthy church. At best, it prolongs the inevitability of death from taking place.
4. Consider a re-plant. Your church facilities are incredible assets God has given you. Many new churches are in desperate need of places to meet and worship. Consider giving your facilities to a church plant.
5. Consider a merger with a healthy church. But it cannot be a merger of equals. The church with the healthy DNA must become the steward of leadership, facilities, and direction. In other words, it will be more like an acquisition than a merger. And it is likely the formerly dying church would become another campus of the healthy church.
6. Celebrate the past and move to the future. Before your church transitions to either a replant or a merger, have a service of celebration. Thank God for the past, and look forward to His future.
7. All members should reclaim another church. Before the door shuts on the past, each member of the dying church should state his or her commitment to get involved in another congregation. Some may even choose to be a part of the new church meeting in their former facilities.

Christ’s Church will never die. But local congregations have definitive life cycles, including birth, growth, decline, and death. If your church is moving from decline towards death, be the type of church leader to help your church die with dignity.

For it is in the death of one church that another church can have a hope for a great and healthy future.

Source: Thom Rainer

The Christian's Most Effective Weapon

"Intercessory prayer is the Christian's most effective weapon. Nothing can withstand its power. It will do things when all else has failed. And the marvel is that we turn to other agencies in order to accomplish what only prayer can bring to pass. God has placed this mighty weapon in our hands, and He expects us to use it. How disappointed He must be when we lay it aside and substitute natural means for supernatural work."
                                                                                                                         -- Oswald Smith

Six Reasons Why Most Churches Are Lousy at Follow-up

Six Reasons Why Most Churches Are Lousy at Follow-up    by: Thom Rainer The church of 150 in attendance averaged two first-time guests a week, or 100 a year. How many joined the church? Only three. The church had no follow-up in place for guests. The church of 225 in attendance had a high attendance day of 360, with 75 guests attending that single day. How many of the 75 eventually joined the church? Only two. The church had no follow-up in place for guests. The church of 550 in attendance has had a Christmas event the past ten years that draws 1,500 people each year. That’s 15,000 in ten years. How many new members can the church trace to the Christmas event? Zero. None. Nada. The church had no follow-up in place for guests. So what’s going on? Why are so many of our churches lousy at follow-up?  I can point to at least six clear reasons. The church has no plan in place for follow-up. Follow-up does not just happen. A Great Commission church will know exactly what it’s supposed to do and who is supposed to do it every time a guest visits the church. Follow-up takes place outside the walls, a place of discomfort for many church members. A church’s follow-up ministry team needs to have the most outwardly focused members doing the ministry. Too many church members fear connecting with people outside the comfort of the walls of the church building. Follow-up ministry is not as splashy as other ministries. It often goes without encouragement or recognition. Follow-up ministry can become discouraging. Most of the time we focus on the five who expressed no desire to connect with our church rather than the one who did. We need to celebrate our follow-up ministries more. Follow-up ministry is not emphasized or recognized by leadership. That which is rewarded by leadership often gets the attention of the rest of the church. Not many leaders recognize or reward this ministry. Follow-up ministry is not even considered a ministry in many churches.Go to the websites of a number of churches. See how many of them mention some type of follow-up ministry as one of the ministries of the church. For many church members, that ministry simply does not appear to exist. If our churches and their leaders would begin to elevate the importance of follow-up ministries incrementally, we would likely see a disproportionately positive response. It’s an incredible opportunity most churches are missing. Let me hear from you.

God is moving in our life....

Today I am excited to report that when we prayerfully listed our house for sale last Wednesday, we knew God would prove Himself faithful but, WOW  God is moving mightily in our lives.

Within 24 hours we had several offers for our house.  We prayed over the 5 offers to consider until we decided upon a cash offer above the asking price.

Our goal is to go to "closing" before the close of the month and we plan to make a sizable donation to the church I have pastored for the past 9 years in appreciation for their assistance in purchasing the house when we first moved to Raleigh.





This past week Sharron and I met with the members of a church board for an initial interview.
 Last evening I received a phone call with the invitation to preach at this church on Sunday April 3rd.


When have accepted the invitation and sense the leading of the Holy Spirit and the moving of God in our lives.  Thank you for your prayers as we seek God's direction in the journey of ministry God has called us to.

When You Sense Your Church Is Dying

by: Eric C. Redmond

One of the most wonderful experiences believers can share is being part of a strong, growing church. What a joy it is to share in a congregation that has unity, love, holiness, a sense of the Spirit in worship, Christ-centered preaching, God-fearing leaders, members of all age groups and ministries towards all members, and a passion for reaching the lost. In contrast, it is burdensome to be part of a dying congregation: Worship is mundane, large age group segments are absent, there is strife among members and coldness toward visitors, and there is no purposeful preaching of the gospel to the lost or the baptized.

Having been part of both thriving and dying churches, I have witnessed believers make choices that have either blessed or harmed the recovery of their congregations. Here are some humble suggestions on how to live godly when you are facing a dying church.

First, review the basics of the gospel. At the core of the life of any church is its faithfulness “with one mind [to strive] side by side for the faith of the gospel” (Philippians 1:27). When this is lost, the church will die spiritually, even if it does not die numerically. Faithful congregations can avoid this, in part, by reviewing the gospel regularly at the Lord Supper and Baptism, and by studying through the doctrine of the church as a means of grounding members in the gospel. Using the historic confessions and catechisms in Sunday and weekly teaching is helpful to this.

Second, look for signs of self-interest. Important to being a healthy body is that each member “look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others,” and “outdo one another in showing honor” (Philippians 2:4; Romans 12:10). Church should be an experience in which each member is working hard to make everyone else feel like the Number 1 Person in the fellowship. Churches start a slow march to death when self-interest becomes the rule of the day. When you look at the ministries of your assembly and say, “There is nothing here for me,” or “I prefer the way things used to be,” you are not thinking of others; you are thinking only of yourself. A church in which many think of themselves rather than others will cease to be a church; it will become a dull party of everyone doing what is right in his own eyes (cf. Deuteronomy 12:8; Judges 17:6; 1 Corinthians 1:26). This attitude led to Israel’s downfall, and it corrupted the church of Corinth.

Third, be slow to depart. Stay in the dying situation together with all of the saints and “share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:3). Be a change agent and think of what your presence means for those who will stay. Expect a turn-around to take several years of faithfulness—and that only after corporate repentance, great prayer for the mercy of God, church-wide deepening in the gospel, and wholesale fighting against self-interest.

Jumping ship is the easy thing to do, requiring no dependency on the Spirit of God. All leaving takes is a choice to abandon those with whom we have shared in the mutual love of Christ and one another. Staying takes prayer, patience, meekness, faithful service with reduced resources, and faith in what is not immediately visible—all things that are works of the Spirit, and not works of the flesh.

Fourth, seeks ways to give sacrificially. One unkind act that comes with a godly façade is that if something is not going the way I think it ought to go at church, then I should withhold my giving in protest. The thought behind this act is that when others and I drain the church of financial resources, we can stop the direction of the ministry. It is couched in sayings like, “God doesn’t want me to give to support that,” or “I’ll just designate my giving to support missions.”

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I hope today you will be found in the House of the Lord!  It is imperative to join with others to sign together - pray together and hear the Word of the Lord!

It's simple:  Get up  - and go to church! (PR)

3 Observations of Church Revitalization

3 observations of church revitalization

 by Matthew Fretwell

Aubrey Malphurs affirmed that 80–85 percent of churches in America are either plateauing or in decline and barely 10–15 percent of pastors are equipped to turn them around.[1] David Olson identified that only 26 percent of Americans are evangelical.[2]

It is obvious that American Christianity is hemorrhaging. Revitalization is essential. While I am a huge proponent of church planting, I believe we drastically need to revitalize our churches. It’s not easy and there are many ways, but, as a revitalizing pastor, here are three observations of turnaround churches. 

The call of the Gospel

The Apostle Paul declared, “For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor. 9:16). The pulpit is not for politics, social agendas, or movements, but the expounding of God’s Word, revealing the gospel. Preachers who teach five reasons why you’re awesome, or four ways to overcome depression, are not gospel-centered.

Transformation can only occur when the convicting power of the Holy Spirit begins work and repentance is set forth. “Churches” presenting a false gospel may be growing in size, but they are not growing in spiritual formation and discipleship. Growth and revitalization are not about how big a church gets, but how many disciples it makes.

The captivating call of the gospel will bring a fire to a gospel-centered pastor’s bones—not yelling—but passion. John Wesley once declared, “Catch on fire for the gospel with passion and people will come from miles to watch you burn.”

Leadership, innovation, & change

All of these go together. While it should be obvious that lazy leaders cannot bring revitalization, the big issues are lack of innovation and change. In my assessment, innovation and change are key factors of church growth. One of the problems is the roadblock that halts innovation—fear of change.

Think of this: God never does what we expect him to do. Effective church leaders are visionaries, risk-takers, and faithful to God. Look at the plans that God delivered to Joshua (Joshua 6:3–7). Marching around a city and blowing trumpets doesn’t exactly sound like a great military strategy. Revitalizing churches must let innovative leaders lead.

While some statistics show that new pastors spur revitalization, I don’t believe it’s altogether necessary. Church growth comes from the Holy Spirit and the people, not the pastor. The problem is that most pastors of tenure will not receive the ability to lead through change, or may not be innovative. It also may be that there is effective leadership, but the church refuses change. Effective leadership, innovation, and change will stimulate revitalization.

Community participation

I don’t care how big a church becomes; community impact is important and expressive. Let’s be clear: The gospel and serving community should never be separated—they belong together. It’s not one or the other—it’s both.

Community impact is important because Christians are “ambassadors of Christ” who bring the ministry of reconciliation to the world (2 Cor. 5:18–20). Christians have a duty to serve one another and others (Gal. 6:10). Addiction, poverty, homelessness, and orphans—these are all biblical calls to serve. The call of the gospel impels us to go into our community and serve with love. As Charles Spurgeon asserted, “I will not believe that thou hast tasted of the honey of the gospel if thou can eat it all to thyself.”

Community impact is expressive. In other words, a church’s impact on its community reveals an outward focus of an inward heart. The way that a church shows love to its neighbors shows the way it loves Christ. Jesus said that if you serve the “least of these,” you have served Me (Matt. 25:40).

The big question: if your church were to close its doors tomorrow, would anyone in the community care, notice, or react?

For more information on revitalization, feel free to post comments.  

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[1] Aubrey Malphurs, Look Before You Lead: How to Discern and Shape Your Church Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2013), 200.

[2] David T. Olson, The American Church in Crisis: Groundbreaking Research Based On a National Database of Over 200,000 Churches (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008), 181.

Matthew Fretwell / Matt Fretwell is married, has three daughters, is an author, pastor, east coast director of New Breed Church Planting, and founder of Planting RVA, in Richmond, Va. Matt writes for Church Planter Magazine and is pursuing his doctorate at Southeastern.

It's Official - Home for Sale!

It is now official!  Following the decluttering of our home and the yard sale that followed.
Some light repairs took place, the pictures were taken. Now our house is listed for sale.

The transition of ministry takes another step.

You can read the MLS at the following link:

MLS: 2055127

There is an OPEN HOUSE scheduled for Sunday beginning at 1:00pm.

You and your friends are invited to check it out!

 Our home went live on the MLS on Wednesday morning and by late morning our realtor Carol Small contacted us that we had 8 viewings scheduled within the first 24 hours!  The next day we had multiple offers and are in the process on making a decision on the highest and best offer presented. 

Stop Compartmentalizing Your Life

Stop Compartmentalizing Your Life

By: David Finch

I offer this advice to pastors and Christian leaders. But it’s especially important to the lives of bivocational ministers/church planters for the Kingdom. 

Stop compartmentalizing your life.

I think ‘compartmentalizing’ is the default mechanism. When we get too busy, and we are juggling a new job, family, personal time and church leadership, we set about to organize and balance. We allot hours to job, to church, self-care time and to family.

This is a mistake for many reasons. One of these reasons is it cordons off church as a separate compartment from other areas in your life. Church now is a “job,” a task. And now anything that is organized with people of God becomes a task, a job, something to allot hours for. But I reject this. I believe church is a way of life. Everything you are living is church, including your family and your work. Once church becomes a task, you will start becoming resentful if it takes too much of your private self-care time or too much of your family time.

Once you separate your family time from church time, you train your family to see themselves as separate from the church. You start saying things like “I need to carve out some time for my family” whenever church life demands some of your gifts. You in essence train your family into “going to church.”

 And you are now on your way to training your family to be a self-enclosed nuclear therapeutic entity that you “go home” to in order to feel better about yourself. This is bad for your family and bad for you. Even worse, the church is now a service to help your family be more healthy, less dysfunctional. This will always lead, I contend, to your family being less healthy and more dysfunctional. 

(Read David Matzko McCarthy on the closed household versus the open household)

The strategy of compartmentalizing allows you to center your life in three or four centers instead of one. It will always make life more busy. It’s always harder to juggle three or four balls than one. You actually are now spending more time on the actual “juggling balancing” act. You inevitably will default into the one place you are feeling more loved or getting more self-affirmation from. You will be spending hours at work if you’re loving that, and avoiding family or church. Or defaulting to your family and avoiding church. Or perhaps you will spend all your time at church, and work or family or self are ignored. You will become angry when the church is not paying you more. All of this is recipe for disaster if you ask me.

Instead, I propose you stop all that. Stop compartmentalizing. Seek instead a regular rhythm. A way of living under one Lord for all of life. Where work, family, “alone time” and church life become part of one life in His Mission.

Learn to see that when you are with church people around a great meal with your family, you are actually spending rich time with your family as well. Practice being present with Christ and the presence of other people wherever you are and whomever you’re with. Let God work in it all. Learn to listen to the workings of God in all things.

This life of “presence” with God in His mission will (I suggest) transform your family, work, church and, yes, your alone time. You will become sensitized to when work has become an idol, family has become idol, your own quiet time has become an idol, and, yes, when church has become an idol. Your rhythms will be off. People around you will ask where have you been?

There are always seasons in all of this. Times when family needs more attention, work and church need more attention. And, yes, even when you need to get away and be alone for a prolonged period of time. But people around you, including the church, should know and understand. They will also feel it when you have overdone it and have made one particular area of your life an idol.

I suggest if you cannot do this as a pastor, you cannot and should not ask others to do it. Pastors expect everyday people with full-time jobs and families to give time to the church. They in essence are asking their people to compartmentalize their lives. And so the church in N. America has become just another compartment. We pastors get mad when people can’t serve the poor in a program because their family comes first or their job requires too many hours. I suggest we cannot ask the people we lead to do something different if we ourselves can’t do it. This is why bivocational pastoring is so healthy for the church.

I am sure this life of “one center under one Lord” looks differently for full-time clergy pastors than it does for bivocational pastors who plant communities. I think the same principles should apply even when church equals work for you. Nonetheless, I believe this is essential for bivocational pastors who plant communities with other bivocational pastors. If you don’t get this worked out in your life, I suggest major dysfunction in your life and in your church awaits.

What do you think? How have you worked this out in your life?   

David Fitch is a bi-vocational pastor at Life on the Vine and the B.R. Lindner Chair of Evangelical Theology at Northern Seminary.

More from David Fitch or visit David at http://reclaimingthemission.com