“How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God.” How hard it is to do things the way God wants to lead you instead of the way that makes you look good and feel comfortable.
The Misunderstanding of Christianity (Part 2: The Struggles of a Misfit Pastor)
While in seminary in Memphis, I preached on Sunday mornings at a tiny Presbyterian church in Truman, Arkansas. Ablaze with love for Jesus, I enthusiastically talked about Him. They politely and passively listened. Not much else happened.
Once I earned a 3-year MDiv. degree from seminary and was going through the process of being ordained a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, I was eager to go and make disciples. I was ready to take the Jesus Movement to a church as a full-time minister.
First up was the Clarksville First Cumberland Presbyterian Church in the city of Clarksville, TN. They hired me to be their assistant pastor. It was very dry and formal and had two pulpits. The head pastor preached out of one. I made announcements, read a Bible passage, and led a responsive reading out of the other. During the week, the pastor spent most of his time in his office. I visited people in the hospital and in their homes. Sometimes they would let me pray with them.
After nine months, I was thrilled to be hired by the small Mayfield Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Mayfield, KY, at the time a town of about 14,000 people. The church had an attendance of about 20 people. They were very friendly to me and liked to compliment my preaching. But I wanted more than compliments. I wanted them to get excited about Jesus.
I began to attend the Full Gospel Businessmen’s meeting in town and met the owner of the local radio station. He was as excited about Jesus as I was and began to attend the church. He asked me to visit his son who he thought was doing drugs. I did, and eventually his son and two of his son’s friends met Jesus and got on fire for Christ. They became Jesus Freaks in the town high school and began to attend the church,
The church started growing both spiritually and in numbers. Things were off to a good start. I even started taking the three high school students to Maranatha, a charismatic group of fired-up young adults that met in Paducah. Those three guys were growing stronger and stronger in the Lord.
The first year was great. The second year things began to slow down. The college guys got more interested in Maranatha than in the church.
The church had grown to about 60 on Sunday mornings. The original 20 weren’t fully comfortable with the growth. I was trying hard to get the people to testify and share during the Sunday service. The denomination didn’t like what was happening and was putting pressure on me to tone things down. I could tell that I was going to have to settle into routine religion or face a lot of conflict.
Two of my roommates from Melodyland School of Theology were pastoring small, charismatic churches, one in Carson City, NV and the other at Lake Tahoe, NV. They had a friend who was pastoring in Reno, NV. I was invited to be the volunteer assistant pastor in Reno, so off I went.
I loved the Spirit-filled praise and worship time in Reno. However, I wasn’t too fond of the way things shifted at sermon time. The people went from enthusiastic participants to mere spectators. I tried to encourage more interaction during my two years in Reno, but my suggestions were mostly ignored.
I finally took the strange job of managing a small retail lumber yard with two part-time employees and moved to Murfreesboro, TN. I started attending a mid-size nondenominational, noncharismatic church. I settled into the passive Sunday morning routine until M.A. Thomas, a visiting pastor from India who had started several thousand churches there, invited me to come and teach in one of his Bible schools for three months. (More on that in Part 3.)
My spiritual fire was recharged! When I got back to Tennessee, I decided to look for a way to get back into full-time ministry. I found a position as assistant pastor of a nondenominational church of about 200 people in Paducah, KY, called Gospel Mission Church. It was non-charismatic; I think my Holy Spirit fire was too much for them. I lasted about 3 years and was basically forced out.
Some former members of Gospel Mission Church had started their own church and asked me to be their pastor. I accepted, but for some reason they asked me to leave after a few months. I never really understood why.
Then a Pentecostal friend of mine and I started a church called “Christian Challenge Outreach.” I wrote a weekly column called “Christian Challenge” in a local newspaper. We thought the name might draw people to the new church. We decided to be co-pastors and to alternate preaching on Sunday mornings. We also tried to get people to testify and share during the service. We never grew to more than 15 or so people and had trouble paying the rent on the building, so after about six months we stopped.
I decided to give up on being a pastor and to become a motivational speaker instead. I thought that I could sneak Jesus into my speeches. So, I moved to Nashville and began to speak to professional associations and civic clubs. I started attending a charismatic church start-up and thought I would focus on a speaking career. But God had other plans. (More on that in Part 4)
Free Gas for Your Think Tank -- Short Reflections, Lasting Encouragement 