Video Transcript: Moving On

This is lecture 16 of the practical ministry skills course, and we're talking today  about moving on. This is chapter 10 of the pastoring the nuts and bolts book.  Our key verse is, I planted the seed in your hearts and Apollos watered it, but it  was God who made it grow. I Corinthians 13:6, Paul is writing to the Corinthians. He was the planter of that church. He is the first one who came there and  preached the gospel. He got the church going. He put the seed there, but then  God moved him on to someplace else, and Apollos came in, and Apollos  followed Paul and watered the seed, helped the people grow, helped the people  learn and become disciples. Then the time came. It's not clear whether Apollos  was still pastor in Corinth at the time this was written, but he's not now, and  sometimes, somehow, the time came when Apollos had to leave and somebody  else came in. It's just something that happens. It's something that we often don't  want to think about, especially if we're the one that planted the church. You it,  but it happens. There will come a time, if you are leading a church, if you're  leading a ministry, there will come a time when, unless the whole thing just  closes down, then you need to move on. And if it does, just close down, you  have moved on anyway. So nothing stays the same. Let me tell you my own  experience, because I have quite a bit of experience at moving on from  churches, because, as I have mentioned before, the the ministry, the  denomination that I'm in, is one where the pastor or where The Bishop appoints  pastors and puts them in different different churches. And if you're in a long  ministry, a long career, then you're most likely going to be in a number of  different churches. So I planted the seed in your hearts, Paul says in Apollos  water. But it was God and God who made it grow, and that's the thing to  remember, is that God is the one. God is the one in charge, and it's his church,  and he knows what it needs and who it needs when, when I came out of  seminary, after being an engineer for a couple of years, called called the  seminary, got my seminary degree, Master of Divinity, and when I came out of  there, I was appointed to two small churches a few miles apart in the  countryside, the rural part of the state of Maryland on the east coast of the  United States, these two churches were established back in the days when  people traveled by horses and buggies. They were certainly close enough that  anyone could have driven a car very easily to either one, and if they were being  established, if a church was being established in that area, now, they certainly  would not have put it that close to another church of the same denomination, but they were there, and the practice in those cases was to have two small  churches that were close together. You let them split, hiring a pastor or the  bishop, appointed the appointed me there, and they both went in, paying  portions of my salary, and I split my time between them. I did a you had church  at one and worship service at one while the other one was having Sunday  school, and then went to the other one, and the first one had Sunday school and the second one had church. I was there for about two and a half years, and I 

enjoyed it. I loved it. They were great people. But then. And all of a sudden, the  district superintendent called and said, We need you to consider going. I'm not  sure he said, consider he may just said, we need you to go to this other church  

where they had appointed a pastor who was understood to be to have  recovered from cancer, and then this pastor had relapsed and died. And there  was a pastor living near the ones that I was serving that could take over for  them, but could not, for various reasons, be sent to this other one. So they said,  All right, you go to this other one and we'll let this other pastor take the two that  you've done. Now, I had poured my life, as the saying is, into those two little  churches. I had plans. I thought God had called me there. I thought there were  great things going to happen. I had just had this idea of how God was going to  grow and work this area. People were moving into the area, and it was all going  to be wonderful. And all of a sudden I had to shift from these people are my  responsibility, and I'm in charge of them, and I need to take care of them and  two okay the bishop is asking me to go to these other people. Now that doesn't  mean I'm abandoning the people in the first place. It means God working  through the bishop, as we faithfully believe, was saying I was needed over here, and I had to tell myself, Okay, two things. First, if God is calling me away from  these people, he's not going to leave them stranded. He's not going to leave  them helpless. He has somebody else for them. And one of the advantages of  the kind of appointment system where bishops appoint pastors is that churches  are not left for a long period of time without a pastor. There's good and bad to  those, but that's just what was going on in there, and helped me understand,  okay, these people are not going to be left helpless. God has somebody else for  them so they'll be taken care of. Second, I have a responsibility to these people  I'm serving. But at the same time, if God is calling me to this other church that  suddenly doesn't have a pastor because of the relapse of cancer, then do I not  have an equal responsibility, at least potentially, to those people so and see, in  this case, I didn't have a whole lot of choice, but in many cases and our setup at  that time, there was a choice. And I could have said no, but instead of saying no, this is where I belong. I had to pray and recognize that. Well, maybe God is  shifting my responsibility over here and he's going to take care of them. Maybe  it's time for Paul to leave and Apollos to come in. Paul's done the planting.  Maybe it's time for Apollos to come in and do some watering. So that was the  first church that I left. The second one, we had gotten into a place that the  second one was a fairly small church, but in a kind of a growing area, suburban  area, and we were there, I don't know, seven, eight years, I forget exactly,  anyway we start, it started to grow. It started to build up. I was able to start a  second service. Instead of this was back in the early 80s, and 1980s when  introducing guitar music and so on, was a new thing in the American church,  and I was able to start a new what they called contemporary music service, and  it started to grow, and people started to come in, and it seemed like it was 

Things were going great, and we were even talking about building a new, bigger  building. We had even called in an architect and gotten preliminary drawings,  and it just kind of exploded under me. I think what happened was that the  leadership of the older established congregation. They were happy to have  people coming in, but these people didn't turn into clones of themselves, and  they had other ideas. And then that was uncomfortable. But then when there  were enough of them that they began to get out voted in, in the board meetings  and so on, then that was too much for them, and so they no longer had the  power to stop this other stuff from going, but they still had enough power and  influence to kind of mess everything up. And it just it all fell apart, and it's a sad  thing and an interesting side light on that is that I had mentioned. Well, no, I'll  get into that later, in a later lecture. I forgot about that. But anyway, I had one  dear sweet little old lady telling me, God has appointed me to make sure that  you are removed as pastor of this church. So it's amazing how these kinds of  things can happen. And so it became clear that the vision of that church was  moving one way, where I felt God was moving me was moving a different way.  And the bishop, the district superintendent, felt that for the good of all  concerned, a pastoral change might be in order. And so I moved to another  church, and I was there for 10 years. And that was probably the happiest time of my ministry. That was when the kids, the children, really grew up most of the  time for that 10 years, and it was a wonderful time, but it wound up at the end  with a situation where a young, unmarried Sunday School teacher found herself  with child, And I asked her to step down from that position of leadership and no  longer be a Sunday school teacher, and her parents took became very angry at  that and stirred everybody up in the church, and the leaders of the church chose to try to appease the people who were complaining and who were upset, rather  than to stand by what I felt was the only appropriate and godly decision. But  they didn't stand by me. They chose to appease the other, the people who were  complaining, because, you know, they were, if you don't get if he doesn't leave  this church, we will the kind of thing. And so they tried to appease them. And  again, the denominational leadership decided that was time for me to move on  10 years was a long time in my denomination to be in one church anyway, so it's probably overdue for a move. And so I went to another church, and this one  was, on the face of it, all kinds of wonderful. And I really enjoyed my time there.  There was some great stuff that went there, but when I first went, it was  interesting. One of the first things that happened was they said, tell us your  vision for the church. They had had a long time pastor who had led them in the  idea that the pastor was the one who received the vision from the Lord and  passed it on to them, and they they wanted to know my vision. And so I didn't  have an immediate vision. I'd just gotten there. Didn't really know anything. So I  said, Give me some time. And I prayed, and I the LORD finally gave me what I  thought was a wonderful thing, and I presented it to them. It was a way of 

expanding the influence and and expanding the size without having to put out  money to build a new church and all kinds of stuff. And I, I presented it to them,  and I said, Okay, here's what I believe. Is the vision. And they said, No, that's not it. No, not that vision. So they already had something in mind that they wanted,  and I wasn't it a couple years after that, the long time, pastor who had been  there for a while never really left and led, or was implicit, at least in, let me put it  this way, a new church started down the road, and a bunch of people from This  church went there, and that pastor was a part of it, and some of the other  leaders, his proteges, were a part of it. I said the way that it was, here's how I  described it was two plants in the same pot, and sometimes If they're both going to grow. They can't stay in the same pot. You have to separate them out so they  don't get root bound. And so that's how I talked about it. I prayed blessings over  them as they left. And God did wonderful things after that. God showed up in  great ways after that, in our service. And then all of a sudden. I've never been  quite what, sure what happened, but some of the key leaders just all of a  sudden decided that I was the wrong person to be there, and they made things  miserable until the bishop came in and moved me again. So the I seem to have  that effect on congregations. I don't, don't know how, but, and I don't want to  scare you off of being a pastor, but these things happen. This is what happens in churches. Okay, sheep bite. If you're going to be a shepherd, know that sheep  bite. My last full time congregation was a very nice one, and I enjoyed it a lot,  until it just came time to it became obvious that it was time to consider a  retirement, because the Lord was giving me thoughts more to go toward a new  kind of a ministry, toward a writing ministry, rather than continuing in a local  church ministry. So you may or may not ever have to leave a congregation or a  ministry, as long as you are young and healthy enough to handle it, but at some  point, you will probably get too old for that to keep going on, and you have to  consider the thought of retirement. Some consider it earlier than others. The  lady says that was so much better than most of the other sermons you've given.  And the pastor's thinking to himself, only 1042 Sundays left until I can retire.  That was not my attitude. You know, it's not that I couldn't wait to retire, but I felt, for me, personally, I felt like God was getting me. It was steering me toward the  writing I had never maybe it's just my own approach to ministry. I know a lot of  ministers are able to write while they serve churches, but I never could kind of  find that split. So I felt like it was time to to start devoting myself to writing, and  at the same time, I was finding less and less enthusiasm for new things that God could do with this congregation, and I didn't feel like it was fair to them to  continue that. So I felt like it was time to retire. And eventually I did. The point I  want to make here is make sure if you were thinking about retiring, and you  probably have to remember this for 40 years, but when it comes time to think  about that. Make sure you're retiring to something, not from something. Don't  retire to get away from something. Retire to make more time to do something. 

The way I like to put it is that many people work, perhaps many of you work a  job to make the money that you can live on so that you can do your ministry. For me, the job that I worked to make the money was running a church, and now it  was time to leave that and do the ministry of writing. I was, I was, of course,  running the church. There was lots of good ministry that happened in those  years as well. But retire to something, not from something, don't leave a church.  Because you got angry. Don't don't leave a church because somebody hurt your pride. Don't leave a church thinking that they will run after you and beg you to  come back and make all kinds of promises, don't leave a church thinking that  you can better yourself. Take a step up in your career, if that's the only reason.  All of these are bad reasons to leave a church, and there are a lot of other bad  reasons to leave a church, the good reasons to leave a church are because God is calling you to something else. God is letting you know that he has something  else in store for you. It may involve as a byproduct, any of these other things, a  step up in your career, or more money, or getting away from an issue, or  whatever, but the only good reason to leave is if God is calling you. So how do  you discern whether God is calling you to leave, whether God wants you to  leave. Don't try to do it all by yourself. This is not one of those decisions that is  best made all by yourself, because in almost every case, there will be so much  conflict in your mind that you won't know, is this God calling me, or am I just  trying to convince myself that God's calling me so that I can do something I want to do or get away from something I don't like? These are the times when you  really need to not only pray, but pray and discuss with your spouse, if you're  blessed to have one with other people that mature Christians that you trust.  Maybe, perhaps it's wise in that case, if you're discussing with clergy  colleagues, if they are not in your same denomination, or at least not in your  chain of command, if you have that kind of a thing that could influence in case,  it's a situation where you don't want somebody in some other position to know  that you're thinking about it. You be careful about who you talk to that might get  back to use wisdom, but don't try and figure it out on your own. Pray about it,  submit it to others for for their thoughts when the time comes that you believe  that you are supposed to leave, it's very important how you do it. And basically  it's the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you if you  were a member of that congregation, a member of that ministry, how would you  want the pastor, the minister, the leader, to leave? How would you want them to  handle it? If you were the minister who was going to step in and follow that  person. How would you want them to leave the situation? So leave a blessing  behind. Always try to give a blessing. I saw a cartoon once of a and I think I  mentioned this in the book, I couldn't find the actual cartoon to put on here, but  it's a pastor at the pulpit, and through the window, you can see a taxi sitting  outside with the motor running, and the pastor has the suitcases sitting down  just behind the curtain where the congregation can't see it, and the pastor is 

saying, I've been wanting to say some things to you, do not take your last  sermon as a chance to unload and on everybody and complain and tell them all  why they're wrong and you're right and all these kinds of things. Don't do that.  Just just don't do that. It's not good for you. It's not for them. Not good for them.  Leave a blessing. Leave an attitude of blessing. Even in the difficult situations  where I was I knew that there were a lot of people that wanted me to leave.  Then afterwards, it's amazing how people will seem to forget that they did that,  and they'll contact you and be all friendly. And I kind of came up with a phrase of saying, you know, they don't say, Oh, we miss you and or give you know. And I'll  say, well, we miss, you know, give our love to and what I say is, give our love to  all the good people of such and such as church. And of course, they think that, I  mean all the people are the good people. I mean, there are some good people  there. Give our love to them, you know. And I'm sure all of them thought they  were being good. They were doing what they wanted to, but leave a blessing.  And on a very practical basis, figure out if you were a brand new person, not  knowing anything about this church or this ministry and coming in to take over,  what would make it easy for you to take over and get that Stuff ready. Put it in a  file that says, For the new leader, for the new pastor, for the new minister, and  put that stuff there. Don't tell them how you thought about certain individuals. Let them figure that out for themselves, because they may have totally different  relationships. Throw out the stuff you know they're not going to need so they  don't have to waste time going through it. Leave them what they'll need in an  easy way for them to get. Now, sometimes I hate to say this, a pastor has to be  removed, and because they've done something wrong. In my book, I have eight  suggested policy statements or eight things that need to be developed into a  policy. It's always better to develop a policy before you need it so that you're not  thinking about particular people and personalities and relationships don't come  into the issue, but figure out a way to make sure the church is protected from  loss or damage and may be brought on by the pastor's misconduct. Decide what kinds of transgressions warrant disciplinary action, decide what will constitute a  substantive accusation. There's no sense me reading that back to you. You  probably just read it, but I think it is important pray that it never has to be applied to you. Pray that you never have to sit on a committee or a board or a panel  helping deal with some other pastor. But pastors are human, and these things  happen. So the time will come unless you just the Lord takes you home while  you're still serving. The time will come when you'll have to figure out how to  leave a church, when to leave a church, and remember that God's got that like  he's got everything else. It can be a really difficult time, but he's got it, and I'll  see you next time.