I am continuing to write out some personal reflections and the missions’ history that my wife and I have experienced over these 4 decades of ministry. Today is part 8 of this story.
After the merger of Palisades and Calvary and the significant partnership with Don Turner that I wrote about last week, there were in the days to follow some adjustments for sure. From 2003 at the merger until around 2008/2009 there were some wonderful victories, but we as a church I believe were trying to find ourselves and what God had in mind. There were plenty of both small and larger changes, and that included some personnel changes. Some because of the merger of leadership teams, and some just the natural changes that any church goes through over time. As with all abbreviated stories there is far, far more to this, but in short, we faced the following challenges:
- We had a staff team that was quite large at the merger and we were all trying to find our new way forward. Two significant and well-loved team members on this team felt led to leave this team and that was difficult and required some adjustments.
- Our plan to build a ‘church building’ on the 356th property was not quite coming together as planned.
- Church finances were just not keeping up with the expectations and expenditures.
- And we were having to deal with the economic crisis in the country in 2007-2008 that seemed to affect everything at LifeWay.
- But it is important to add that Don and I had continued to work very closely together and the Elder team was wonderful as we faced the changing landscape.
Worship Leading:
My long-time friend and co-worker Stan who had been the worship/music leader at our church for more than a decade stepped away from this role. This created an obvious gap in leadership for our church and it was very personal for me as well. We began what most would consider a normal search for someone to fill that role for us at LifeWay. We did a traditional ‘job hunt’ for the person to take this role. I had never been through anything like that before because our past tradition was to fill all roles with people whom God had raised up from within our church. The search committee did its job and interviewed many applicants which included several who came in person to work with our music team. But none of these attempts seemed to bring us anywhere. Added to this was a financial crisis both nationally and within our church was looming, and we weren’t sure how we could afford what we felt we needed. In my case, I had always been a guitar player and singer and for years participated on the worship team in various roles. So, after coming to several dead ends in our search I just felt I should take this over. We couldn’t afford anyone anyway and I was a pastor I felt that I needed to step up and at least become an interim leader in this role. When I was in Jr High a neighbor friend and school mate Jerry taught me how play some guitar chords. My guitar playing history and lessons came from Jerry teaching me chords, along with endless playing along to James Taylor and John Denver music, AND when I become a youth director in Texas it was a natural tool for me (Youth Directors should always learn to play guitar with students around the campfire and at camp!). So, I became the interim worship leader, and I continued this officially for about 16 years at LifeWay. Of course, I still absolutely love leading the team to this day when I can. It is truly one of my great loves. Between Phil Stubblefield, Mark Neidlinger, Ted Kramer, Rick Krekel and the whole team, I became more and more comfortable at being the team leader and have led our church in worship with a great sense of joy and personal fulfillment even to this day.
Global Missions Passion & the International Mission Board:
It’s important to recall that while these years from 2005-2008 were indeed challenging, at the same time we were absolutely continuing our growing involvement in Bryansk, Russia. This partnership with the Campground Yolochka, Russia kids camps, and even pastor/leadership conferences were actually thriving. We were also bringing in other churches to partner in this work. And then not just Russia, but we were legitimately trying to be supportive of the difficult Unreached People Group in SE Asia that Calvary had brought table.
But as I have said, our church was facing a financial crisis, leadership changes, and some significant challenges and financial obstacles with our building plans during these years. It was through our relationship with the PSBA, our regional association that is led by Ron Shepard, that Ron & I along with Don Turner and a few other regional church leaders attended a training event in Richmond Virginia that was hosted by the Baptist International Mission Board. This relatively small event was put together for only 8 of us from the NW but was one of the most impactful events I had ever attended. We had grown in awareness for Gospel work in the world, but we were not totally sure what to do about it. One special story from our few days in Richmond helps bring clarity to this passion. The subject for the few days in Richmond had been focused on how to develop a ‘virtual strategic coordinator’ strategy when adopting mission work anywhere in the world. This new strategy would have us concentrate our global mission efforts to a couple specific places in the world over a much longer time frame. This would contrast with the normal and more common approach of scattered missions which treats mission work and mission trips like a global travel catalogue. Scattered missions would take you to visit many different countries of the world, but you would never remain too long, rarely build long term relationships, and never really make a long term investment in any of them. After a session with the President of the IMB (Jerry Rankin at that time) the IMB leader told our group that an elderly lady was going to take us on a global prayer walk. I had no idea what that meant and I have to say that I even had a feeling that we were about to waste our time.
This elderly white-haired lady met our group of well-educated church pastors/leaders (yes, there was some arrogance at least with me) at the door of a modest room. She instructed us to walk from display poster to display poster around the simple room and pray for these people and locations. The posters themselves were quite simple, much like you would find in a grade school classroom. On each poster was a series of photos of people and locations around the world. My initial reaction was that they were far too simple, almost childish, for such a major mission board. The IMB is the largest mission agency in the world and surely, they could upgrade their global prayer walk. But as I worked my way from poster to poster, village to village, person to person, country to country, my heart began to be deeply burdened. I was praying for real people around the world who were ignorant of the Gospel because they had not had an opportunity to hear. When I reached the last poster, it was a photo of a foot path that trailed off into the woods and disappeared. No people, just an empty path. But it was the prayer request that I will never forget. The instructions said…
“This trail leads down to a village a few miles away and at residents of that village have never had the opportunity to hear the eternal life message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Pray that God would send a worker into that harvest field.”
I was deeply humbled and repented of my initial arrogance and reaction. I am still terribly moved by that prayer. That day and that simple Global Prayer Walk was one of the most profound experiences I have ever had in my calling. It has shaped me, and I truly believe has been one of the most significant steps that has launched LifeWay into what we currently do in the world. It has shaped our church into being a missions giving and missions sending church.
This missions heart will be next week’s history article.
