Five years ago last night, a group gathered in our living room to pray for what would become Grace Fellowship. At that point, Grace did not yet exist. Me, Mandy and John Colburn and April Smitherman were the team. Redeemer Community Church in Avondale had paved the runway (a huge understatement).
That night, mainly, we asked the Lord Jesus to build a church. That was the strategy: to ask. We asked for three other things, too, but that was the simplest of them. And from there, it started to happen. Folks began to sense a call to it, they became like “living stones” that were being assembled into a temple, like body parts being joined together, so that we could “grow up into the head” —Christ. We began the slow road, “the long obedience,” of doing our best to take our place as a faithful presence for Jesus in our city. Taking our place among so many other churches, trying to be the same. It’s another talk for another day, but we didn’t know that fairly unprecedented gusts of cultural winds would begin blowing roughly the same time. We didn’t need to know that, apparently.
We weren’t bored with our previous jobs in ministry. We didn’t think we could do it better than everyone else. We knew, and would discuss the fact, that we couldn’t. We did, however, have a hunch that a particular glory could be received by the Lord Jesus through it, that the manifold wisdom of God might be displayed in a fresh way. We have not been disappointed.
Strangely, every piece might not have been what we “wanted” if left totally up to us. This is how Jesus tends to build churches. In his words, “I will build my church.” My dear friend and Grace member Will Sorrell asks it like this, “Who would have thought we’d not get the church we might have “wanted,” but the church we needed, which has become the church we didn’t even know how to hope for?”
I could, and maybe should one day, list leadership mistakes I’ve made along the way. In the words of a song lyric, “I have made mistakes, and I’ll continue to make them.” But the strength of Jesus is most reliably available in those weak places, and the gifts of others, added to the mix, can absorb much and create safe landing places for a young pastor.
It has not been all triumph. There have been many sorrows and many for me personally. Not only because life is hard and the aches and pains in the life of faith are many, but because pastors can wound others, even accidentally. Because what is life-giving for some, is hard to connect to for others. Because patience is not quite the virtue of our age (and I’m speaking to myself here), and belonging to a church requires much patient endurance. Because we are in a time of great mistrust—often rightfully so—of leaders and authority and institutions. This is painful, especially when you are on the receiving end of that mistrust.
I’ve also been mindful of how much perseverance is required in local church life, too. Receiving the gift of the body of Christ requires showing up, in person, again and again, and again, again. This strikes me as especially true when it comes to receiving the graces of the Sunday worship gathering. The cumulative effect over time is where the wonder is to be found. It’s hasn’t been one Sunday, but all of them, that have yielded such good things for us.
I’m currently on sabbatical. I’ve been graciously given a few months to rest and recalibrate and reflect, to turn the page on the first five years, in order to prepare for the next five. I think for today I want to say that I have never believed more strongly the things I believe about what makes a church a church and what makes a pastor and pastor. I’m deeply grateful for Grace’s elder leadership team—they are some of my dearest friends on earth. Also, our ministry staff, home group leaders, volunteers of all kinds, the other churches in our city who have generously supported us and come to our aid over and over. It is these folks’ faithful endurance that has been the means of God’s grace to make Grace, Grace. To paraphrase the Apostle Paul, “What do we have that we did not receive?” For John Colburn— whose sacrifices have put me in a position to flourish—I’m particularly thankful. For Jeff Heine—who maybe more than anyone humanly speaking—is responsible for me having been folded into this plan.
And above all, I cherish deeply the ways that the Lord Jesus, by the power of his Spirit, has his own ways, often ever so subtle, of satisfying our souls, of never-failing us, of always shepherding us the right way.