ministry: where dreams go to die…. and find new life

Ok…

This post is LONG overdue. I’ve sat down a number of times times to write it.

Once, I finished it, was getting it ready to be proofread, and then walked away.

A few times I couldn’t even start.

Usually, I got a few Ideas down and then gave up.

It’s been hard to write, because for me this is a story of death. Ok, that’s maybe a tad dramatic. No one actually died. But I started my journey with you all with a plan, a passion, a dream… And along the way that dream was taken from me. And, in a way, the last year of my life has been about laying that dream to rest.

I know that a few of you know a thing or two about the death of dreams. You have gone through similar journeys, some of them much more intense than mine.

You know…

Dead dreams come with real heartbreak.

They require real grief.

They leave real scars.

I wanted to write this immediately. To write to you all in the midst of my heartbreak. Because it seems that seldom are people brave enough to reach out and share their grief while they are crushed by it.

It turns out, I am not that brave.

Because hearing God say NO.

            NO – to PA

                        NO – to our church planting vision

                                    NO – to this version of myself that I was beginning to believe in

Hearing that – and continuing on – took all the courage I had. So, I had nothing left to speak honestly and caringly in the midst of my heartbreak.

I wish I could have.

Because our lives are so full of heartbreak.

They are full of dead dreams.

And IN CHRIST, this grief is even more true… because we have been called by the Man of Sorrows to follow him into heartbreak – into death – over and over again.

And it seems like that is the most pastoral position a person can be in… so I wanted to speak from it… but the words never came.

I am finally writing to you today… because God has done what he promises to do, and that has given me the strength at long last.

Because IN CHRIST we experience death after death… following him to the cross.

            But IN CHRIST we experience NEW LIFE… following him out of the empty tomb.

And this is the story I get to share with you today… how God lead us through this death of our dream… into a new and better life that was being prepared for us.

We launched this website in April of last year. We had just signed on to go help plant churches in Western PA, and this was going to be a gathering place for folks who wanted to support us in that work.

And we were excited to plant churches.

            Churches who embraced the LOVE of CHRIST as their core principle.

                        Churches of compassion and honesty

                                    Churches full of GRACE

But we were told NO… and then we were told NO to church planting in any form.

            And we had to watch that dream die.

But then… unexpectedly, and through unlikely circumstances… God rose up a new dream out of the ashes of our old one.

And a couple of weeks ago, I accepted a call to pastor Grace Presbyterians Church in Mount Vernon, WA.

If you had talked to us last April… the idea of leading an established church would have felt like the polar opposite of what we felt called to do.

I was going to BUILD churches - But GOD said that he had already built a church for me to serve.

I was going to gather people around the unique and profound LOVE of CHRIST - But GOD said that he had already gathered a loving people for me to serve.

I was going to make sure that these new churches were founded and rooted in Grace - But God showed me a church where his GRACE was already the heart of all they do… and he blessed me by calling me to serve them.

And here is what I have learned:

Ministry is the place where dreams go to die… because GOD has more for us than we could dream up ourselves.

I had the dream of planting churches - God gave me a better dream – God gave me GRACE.