Communication should be clear and specific; Vision and plan are different. Don’t lose plan of how vision will be accomplished; People desire to be connected and respond when invited to relationship; Leadership experiences often must be denied for the sake of family, and that in itself a leadership experience; Listen to your leadership intuition. If you have a degree of unrest in your heart, it must be explored and handled; Act quickly to right a wrong; We don’t have the luxury of just being, we have to pass that along.My old senior pastor, Jerry Gray, called this evening as my friends and I were on the way home from David's Bridal. I quickly filled him in on the past week's events, and after some very enthusiastic congratulations, we got to catching up (we haven't talked in a month and a half or so). Jerry and I have an interesting relationship. He is half my mentor, half my colleague, and then he's also just my friend. All of the quotes above were taken from Jerry during a staff meeting in 2002 where each staff member had to list lessons they'd learned during the previous year. I'm still learning from him years later. I dearly miss learning from him, in fact. He was an OUTSTANDING senior pastor (is an outstanding senior pastor, even though that's not his job right now).
We talked only briefly because I was in the car with other people (had I not been, we would likely have talked for two hours, which is saying something because I hate talking on the phone). One of the things he asked me, of course, was if I had a job yet. I told him no, and he asked how I felt about that. I told him it was awful. He said, "Yes, I'd imagine so, and I'd imagine that it's very difficult to find a job not being able to drive." "Yes." He asked how long it has been since I've not been working - almost three full months now. I told him that this has been such a different experience for me, because I've just never been able to not get a job. In my field, I just GET jobs. I mean, I have job offers now in ministry. Good ones, too. I'm not like a dynamo or anything like that, but there are these pastors, both those I've worked for in the past, and those who just know me through people who know me or who know "my work," and they want me. As soon as they found out I was resigning, they were emailing and calling and offering me jobs. Real offers, too, not just talk. But the thing is this - and it's what people don't understand... BUT Jerry did. He understood it as soon as I said it, and I could have CRIED the moment he started his vocal fillers of agreement, I just had to hold it back:
I'm done being a youth pastor for as long as I can't drive. And I'm done working in local church ministry. I CANNOT do that anymore. That field is closed to me. The work of the ministry - The EFFECTIVE work of local church ministry?! It can't be done without being able to drive. It requires spontaneity. There are some who will say, "No, No...there are ways to work around it." But there is not. I remember the look on Tom's face when I first was told that I couldn't drive for TWO months, and I told him that I (emphasis on ME, and it's important to know that) would resign if something happened to where I wouldn't be able to drive for an entire year. I didn't even know at the time if that could even happen! I just told him that it wouldn't be acceptable to ME for that to happen, because I knew that it would hamper the effectiveness of the ministry. And he said, "Well, we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. Hopefully we won't come to it, but that certainly would be a different situation than the one under which we hired you, and we would do our best to work it out, but let's just pray that God heals you and works this out," or something like that. The reality is that I (emphasis on ME) knew that the ministry needed a driving pastor. It's not in the job description - it's just implied. It's part of the spontaneous nature of the job.
And now - this thing that is part of what God has called me to do - is sort of over. And Jerry got it. Without debating me out of it - without trying to make me feel better about it - without anything. He just does what he does and FACED THE HARD FACTS and led through it, even if it was just a 10 minute phone call. He just said, "Oh yeah, you're absolutely right, Angie. I've seen you at your best, and you are totally spontaneous with your kids and volunteers, and I'll bet it would kill your spirit to not be able to get out with them. I'll bet those months were awful for you. Does it feel like your ministry has been taken away from you along with the keys?"
Yeah. It does. I had a dream the other night where all of my student ministries from the past were together in front of me, in some sort of distress, but I couldn't get to them in time, because I had to walk to them, and cars were passing me everywhere, and I was thinking, "Oh! If I could just get in the car and go to them." I knew when I woke up that I was just and only having a sad and obviously sad moment about this issue. (I even thought it was funny that if I was going to have to dream about this, that I couldn't have a more abstract dream! Such a simpleton).
And the last part of this terribly long post is this: I know that I was supposed to resign; don't confuse this for regret. I know that I am to be married, and I know that I am, that we are to go back to the middle eastern country from which Robert just returned home, so it's not like I think that I am without a "calling" now that I can't do local church ministry here anymore. These future things are as much a part of what I am called to do as the things I have just finished doing. In that country, I'm not even going to be driving, so it won't matter once we're there - it seems like providence in fact. But the marriage hasn't started yet, and the ministry there hasn't started yet and it seems like there is nothing I can do here to even get my fingers on it, and I still don't have a job to replace the one I left. And so all I have to do is wait.
And NO. Today, the waiting is not good.
