I’m always a little uncomfortable during a “Pastor Appreciation Dinner”.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s very nice, and I am grateful for all the kind and affirming things you say to my wife and me, in person or in cards and notes. Pastor Lee Eclov says that a congregation feeds it’s pastor, as well as the pastor feeding the congregation. That is absolutely true, and your expressions of affirmation have fed my spirit, and my wife’s. So we’re both grateful. I am grateful.
But I’m always a little uncomfortable, too. After you have commended me for various things, I can’t help but think of this Scripture: “So likewise ye, when you shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.” (Luke 17:10 KJV)
And I sometimes wish I were really as good as some of you think I am.
Nevertheless, it was like bathing in grace to read all the kind things you said to me. And, apparently, you want to make us fat, too: we got so many gift cards to restaurants! For these gifts and others, we are also grateful.
But the gratitude extends far beyond your cards and comments. Let me repeat here what I said at the dinner:
After my relationship with the Lord Jesus, and my relationships with my wife and family, pastoring this church has been the greatest privelege, and the greatest challenge of my life. It has brought me some of my greatest heartbreaks, and some of my greatest joys.
Not long after I became you pastor, I was standing with some of the men, and one of them commented that my predecessor had been here nearly 27 years. And I responded, “Who knows? Maybe I’ll be here longer than that.” And Willard Winters looked at me and said, “Why, you’d be old as the hills by then!”
It was a valid point. I don’t think I’m “old as the hills” yet, but I’m well along the way.
I look at church history, over the past 20 centuries, and I look at our church’s history, since 1888. I look at the list of our church’s pastors from 1888 to the present, and I see that most of their pastorates lasted 3 or 4 years. Some were nearly 10 years, and pastoring one church for 27 years is a milestone in anybody’s book. The thing is, when I think of being your pastor now for 16 years, I remember that all pastorates have a beginning, and they all have an end.
No, this is not an announcement. I’ve told you before that some of my heroes in the ministry pastored one church for 30, 40 or even 50 years. (Some of you are groaning right now. Watch it, or I’ll use you for a sermon illustration.)
It’s just that it’s healthy for all of us to keep the perspective that our time together is limited. Given the averages, the fact that I’ve been here 16 years probably means that the time ahead of us is shorter than the time behind us. I sometimes tell married couples to remember that there will come a time when they will both go to a hospital, and only one of them will come home. Keeping that fact in the back of your mind helps keep everything else in good perspective. It helps keep you focused on what’s really important.
It is the fervent, sometimes desperate desire and cry of my heart that, whenever the time comes for me to no longer be the pastor of First Baptist Church of Linton, Indiana, I leave the church in a state of spiritual health and strength. My prayer is that God would build the house (Psalm 127:1) through His Word, by His Spirit, through the preaching of the Gospel and the teaching of the Scriptures. I pray that we might glorify God and lift up the Lord Jesus Christ together. I pray that we might love one another, and reach out in love to others, with the love and manner of the Lord Jesus.
My “vision” for what a church should be has always been pretty simple, and frankly, pretty “old-fashioned” these days: a place full of light, and life, where the Bible is read and taught and loved, and the Gospel is preached and sung with great gusto; where believers feel the love of Christian brothers and sisters, and where unbelievers wish they could be be on the inside of all this and experience it, too; a place where you have the freedom to express emotions, but where they don’t rule us; a place where prayer saturates our church life, not only at the end of our services, but all through the week; a place where we could point to things happening in people’s lives and families, that can’t be explained by any program, but are so obviously answers to prayer that God alone gets all the glory.
This has always been my vision of what a church should be. And from the perspective of knowing our time together is limited (it always has been), this is what I pray to see before my pastorate here is over.
Jesus told us, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) He also told us, “I will build My church” (Matthew 16:18). King Solomon wrote, “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” (Psalm 127:1) The only valid perspective is for us to be on our knees or on our faces before God, crying out to Him to glorify His name in building up this church.
And while you’re praying, don’t forget to thank Him for this church, too. For my part, I am exceedingly grateful to God for First Baptist Church of Linton.
Soli Deo Gloria!
Pastor David