Thirty Years Later…

I’m a PK. My dad was a bivocational pastor most of his adult life. I came along LATE in mom and dad’s life. I’ve heard a rumor that when they learned I was on the way, mamma cried for a day and daddy cried for a month. *grin* My siblings can recall a time when dad didn’t go to church that much, but mom was faithful to take them. That was before my time. By the time I arrived, dad was pastoring Corinth Baptist Church in Brockman Hill, a suburb of Bodcaw, Arkansas, where the cattle population is greater than the people population.

Being a PK in a small country church meant that I was at EVERYTHING, including revival meetings. I became a Christian at a young age, when I was around 8 years old. That would have been 1986ish. In the summer of 1993, I began to sense that God might be placing a call on my life to preach.

I shared this with my grandmother, who did what she always did when a need presented itself: she prayed for me. She would later tell me that she wasn’t one bit surprised, since she had been praying for some time that God would call me to preach. But on that night, when I told her I thought God might be calling me to preach, she didn’t try to nudge me in any direction other than up. She prayed over me and for me, that I would have a clear understanding about this calling.

The only other people I shared this with were my mom and dad. Mom, ever the quiet one, didn’t say much. Dad, being a pastor himself, had one piece of advice. “If you can do anything else with your life other than preach, do it. Don’t surrender to preach unless you absolutely must.” At first, I was a tad confused with the advice. On face value, it seemed like he was almost discouraging me from surrendering to ministry. I later came to realize what he meant and the wisdom behind his words. He was telling me that if God was indeed calling me to do this, I would not be able to rest unless I surrendered to it or find satisfaction in anything else. Therefore, if I could go along with my life and it NOT bother me that I wasn’t in ministry, then I probably wasn’t called to ministry in the first place.

Before the week of revival meetings was over that summer, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was called to preach. But I was going to take my dad’s advice. I would put off surrendering for as long as I could. I would like to say it was for noble and spiritual purposes that I embraced this delay, but it wasn’t. I was (and still am) an introvert. I was one of the most shy kids you’d ever meet. I literally hid behind my daddy when someone I didn’t know, or someone I didn’t want to talk to, approached. And I was just shy of turning 15 years old. The last time I checked, preaching wasn’t among the cool activities that adolescents embraced.

So, I put off waving the proverbial white flag of surrender to the Lord’s clear call on my life to preach. I did that all through August and September, and when October 1993 rolled around, I was still determined to delay and maybe even defy this calling from the Lord.

I always sat with my grandmother on Sunday mornings and was allowed to sit on the back pew with the few other teens in attendance on Sunday nights. My grandmother would later testify to something that I had no idea was taking place at the time it was happening. She noticed my grip on the pew many Sunday mornings during the invitation, and that my knuckles would often turn white as I gripped hard to avoid letting go and walking down the aisle to let my church family know God was calling me to preach and that it was time for me to surrender to that call.

I finally let go on October 10, 1993, during the invitation, while on the back pew at Corinth Baptist Church. The walk couldn’t have been more than 30 feet, but it felt like 3000 feet. I told my dad that I could no longer put this off, and that it was time to surrender to the call to preach. They took the step of licensing me to the ministry that night, and I preached my first sermon the following Sunday.

Today marks the 30th anniversary of that evening that is forever etched in my mind. My family did some stealthy work in interviewing some folks from a few churches I’ve pastored over those 30 years. Anna, Jake’s girlfriend who we think might keep him around for a while, did a great job in putting the video together. I share their work below, not for my accolades, but simply because I’m impressed at their ability to put this together and pull off the surprise.

Several of you have congratulated me for this occasion, but in all honesty – and I sincerely mean this – there’s not one bit of credit or congratulations that I deserve. The story of the past 30 years isn’t about my perceived ability or talent. It’s not about any educational milestones. It’s not even about the “highpoints” of the journey at the various churches I’ve been privileged to pastor. It truly is about God’s faithfulness despite my blunders, inabilities, shortcomings, and sin. I have been faithless, but he has been faithful. That would make a great Bible verse. Paul should have done something with that idea.

“If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.” (2 Timothy 2:13)

I don’t know what the next 30 years will hold, but I know that God will be faithful, even when I’m faithless. I’ll rest in that today, and  if the Lord allows me 30 years plus 1 day, I’ll rest in it tomorrow.