It’s hard for me to believe, but I have been the Pastor of First Baptist Church of Linton for fifteen years. You voted on me Wednesday, August 6th, 1997. (Coincidentally, August 6th is my brother Steve’s birthday. He’s older than fifteen. Not as old as me , though.) I still remember the phone call from the Chairman of Deacons. He said, “Well, you’re our Pastor now!” Five words that changed directions for my family and me.
I still remember how I felt the first time Rae Anne and I drove into the parking lot. I’d been contacted to fill the pulpit for a Sunday night, and I thought I was driving to the old building, downtown. (I’d been there once; Virginia Franklin had arranged for me to sing at one of your Sweetheart banquets. I sang in your old church basement. You told me you liked it, but I never got invited back.) When we pulled into the parking lot, we were both speechless. Entering the double doors, my first three thoughts were: 1)“Wow!” (more or less); 2)”Oh, God, you wouldn’t make me pastor a church like this, would You?”; and 3)”Go comb your hair before anybody sees you!” And yet I experienced that night for the first time how hungry you are for God’s Word, and how grateful you are when somebody tries to teach and preach it to you.
I remember learning about the incredibly sorrowful and difficult time you had just come through. It grieved me, and it concerned me. When, to my dismay, you began expressing interest in calling me as your pastor, I really didn’t know what to do. On the one hand, I wanted to come and be your pastor.
On the other hand, we were settled in Terre Haute. We had just bought our first house, which we loved. My wife had a wonderful teaching position in the school system there. And our daughter was midway through high school, and it would mean uprooting her, taking her away from her friends, and asking her to start all over in a new town.
And the church was still experiencing “aftershocks” from the troubled time you had just endured. Long experience tells pastors that usually the first man to come to a church after a time of trouble, doesn’t end up staying long. It was a little like the chicken suggesting to the pig, “Let’s make the farmer breakfast.” And the pig says, “I don’t know: for you, that’s a contribution. For me, it’s a sacrifice!” I thought it was entirely possible that I could ask my family to give up our house, my wife’s job and my daughter’s school in order to move to Linton, only to have to move again in six months or so.
But I really wanted to come…despite it being three times the size of any church I had ever pastored, with the potential for three times as many people problems. With my eyes wide open, and no illusions, I really wanted to come.
So I wrestled with the decision. I needed a job: our son had just been accepted to a university, and I enjoy eating. Sleepless nights, anxious thoughts, and a real lack of peace were what I experienced during that time.
What finally brought me peace was the idea of “first things first”: God established the family first; the church came centuries later. And I’d always been taught that if I lost my family, I would lose my ministry. The thought of just staying put to protect my family gave me an immediate sense of relief.
So I told the Chairman of Deacons that I wasn’t willing to move, but that I would help you by filling the pulpit for as long as you needed. I still remember the disappointment on his face. (I could tell he was disappointed because he said, “Well, I’m disappointed.” I’m sharp that way.)
On what my wife and I assumed was our last Wednesday night service with you, I remember looking around at the sanctuary during the singing, and thinking: “This is really neat. I’ll always be able to drive by here and say, ‘I got to preach there about a dozen times or so!’” So we were both puzzled when the Deacons asked if we could meet with them after the service. We looked at each each other, and I said, “What is this, the de-briefing?”
We were totally unprepared when the deacons told us, “We’re ready to move forward with the process of calling you as our Pastor. With your permission, that’s what we’ll do.” And I said, “But I told you we weren’t willing to move!” And one of the deacons responded, “Hey, if we can commute to work, we figure you can, too!” And that was that. We were, as the English would say, gobsmacked.
Then the Chairman said, “I predict we’ll be running 300 in 6 months!” I said, “Oh, don’t say that!” Another deacon looked at me and said, “Here’s the man who’s going to fix everything!” I said, “Only Jesus can do that!” A member of the congregation, standing in the sanctuary of our church, told me: “Preacher, you’ll never fill it up!” Then he left and went to another church. (Some folks just have the gift of encouragement.)
When I came here, I thought to myself, “This is where a man could do his life’s work.” I still think that. But honestly, fifteen years further on, our story together has turned out to be a much different story from the way I would have written it.
For one thing, we’ve said goodbye to too many people we love. I have done a total of 145 funerals since coming to Linton, all but a handful of them our own faithful church members. In the year 2004 alone, I did seventeen funerals. We had some weeks with two, or even three funerals.
We once had two in one day. That’s not the way I would have written our story.
There are inevitably conflicts to be dealt with in any church, and we have had our share in the last fifteen years. Sometimes you look back and think what you might have done differently. Sometimes you look back and know you couldn’t have done anything differently. Sometimes you look back and honestly don’t know what to think; some things will just have to wait to be sorted out at the Judgment Seat. But all of them, great or small, unnecessary or unavoidable, cost you something emotionally and leave you with a little weight of sadness. I think of those things, and that’s not the way I would have written our story.
And after fifteen years, that departing church member so far has been right (the old coot): we haven’t filled up this marvelous building God has given us. As we have worshiped together week after week, and I did one funeral after another, it has been a mighty battle to keep up our courage as our attendance went down rather than up. The truth is, we have had some wonderful people come to be part of our congregation, and they have joined up and joined in, and helped us to replace some of the dear brothers and sisters who are now in Heaven. Thank God for every one!
But as your Pastor, I find myself wanting to say to the church: “I’m sorry we haven’t grown.” I’m sorry we weren’t running 300 within six months. I’m sorry the building isn’t full. I’m sorry we all can’t drive by that ornery old coot’s house and blow raspberries out the window.
You don’t know how much I have second-guessed myself, pondering what I’ve been doing, and asking myself what I’ve been doing wrong. You don’t know how many times I have looked into my own heart and asked if there was something wrong with me. And I read, and go to seminars, and pray, and confess, and talk to other preachers. And every time I get to go to some other church, to hear some other preacher, I always watch like a hawk to see if I’m leaving anything out, doing anything wrong, or leaving something undone. And they always seem to be doing more-or-less what I’m doing; the churches always seem to be doing more-or-less what we’re doing. (I keep looking for the hidden lever in the pulpits of those other churches, the secret switch that makes it all work; but I’ve never found one.)
So I ask God to help me be faithful.
Steve Brown said that when he was first in the ministry, he was convinced God was going to give him a ministry like Billy Graham’s. But that didn’t happen. God had other plans for Steve’s ministry. He says that the most he seems to be able to do is stand beside the door and try to encourage people to come inside. I sure relate to that. I don’t have the gift of being an evangelist, either; but God told pastors to “do the work of an evangelist” (2 Timothy 4:5). It’s part of a pastor’s task, even if it is not his gift. So I, too, try to stand beside the door and encourage people to come inside.
Our story isn’t done yet. Only God knows what’s coming in the next chapter. But the longer I live and the more years I minister, the more completely I am convinced that “except the LORD build the house, they labor in vain that build it” (Psalm 127:1); and that Jesus wasn’t joking when He said, “for without Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)
John MacArthur used to teach pastors that any church could grow like Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, which he has pastored for forty years. But over time , he has come to see the sovereign hand of God in bringing together a set of circumstances for Grace Church, advantages that most other churches don’t have. Now he says that pastors and churches honor God by being faithful in less-than-ideal circumstances, as much as when it all comes together and you have great “success.” (I wish he’d written that book first!)
So, the only thing to do is be faithful. We must be faithful: individually, doing what we’re gifted and drawn and sometimes called to do; and collectively, doing the best we can with what we’ve got, to do and be the church together, like Jesus told us to do. English pastor Rico Tice says: “We preach Christ; God opens blind eyes.” Amen!
Let’s trust God to write the Story the way He sees fit. We’re going to like the ending, even if the story’s different from what we thought it would be.
I wonder what He’s got for us in the next chapter?
Soli Deo Gloria!
Pastor David