You will have to trust me, but this really happened
Our church had just planted its 5th church in its first 7 years of life. God had been very gracious to us. The church had grown. We gained experience and had seen God do some miraculous things. Most of the churches we had planted were growing by about 25% conversion growth and our own church continued to replace the people we sent away with new conversion and new growth that fueled a lot of excitement and joy in our congregation.
I was, if I recall accurately, about 41 or 42, when I was approached by a “head-hunter” from another denomination and offered a $1 million dollar budget to switch denominations and help start a church planting movement of churches like our own church (a multi-ethnic church planting-church and built on sound exposition of the Scripture and prayer). The denomination to which I was being invited had a very similar doctrinal statement to my own denomination (the Evangelical Free Church of America). The invitation was basically phrased with the following highly attractive features:
- I could plant anywhere in a four-state area.
- I could hire any staff that I thought appropriate to the task
- But the objective was to plant churches that would seek to be . . .
- Multi-ethnic in makeup
- Develop a church planting legacy – that is, plant churches that would plant other churches as part of their DNA.
- Plant churches that were committed to teaching the Bible expositionally.
- And that was it. No other strings attached.
I turned it down.
It was an easy decision.
Part of what made it easy was that I loved our church. I loved what it was. I loved what it was doing. I loved what it was becoming. And I loved what it was learning and what I was learning along with it. But most of all, I loved the people. They were the people whose stories I knew, who I had seen transformed by the gospel, had seen them grow from grace to grace, and to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ. They loved me and were kind to me and suffered with me as I learned how to be a pastor. We became family and it’s hard to leave a family you love.
But the larger reason for why it was easy to turn down such a generous and visionary offer was that I knew that God had called me to New Song Church and the Evangelical Free Church of America. And that was that. I would stay where I was and remain faithful in doing what God told me to do—plant and pastor a multi-ethnic church-planting church that would train other church planters to do the same.
I am thankful for those years and what God did through my bumbling ways. Those days are long-ago and far away now. I am in the last chapters of life. There is much sand in the bottom of the hour glass and the torch has been passed to younger, more energetic, and hopefully, better men, but the needs for the kind of churches that we worked hard to pray and plant into the landscape of America is as urgent as ever. Our nation, indeed, our world needs churches that will navigate racially divided public spaces with the grace of the gospel and the steely-strength of the Bible narrative. My prayer is still the same. That God would raise up men and women who will give themselves to the task. I hope you will join me and pray for the revival of the church in America.
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