Revival and Renewal

Four years ago, I wrote a blog on this website describing my new position at Village Church of Lincolnshire as Associate Pastor. Looking back at that time, we so clearly saw God’s hand leading us to VCL, opening doors in amazing and surprising ways. I didn’t know what was on the horizon, but I knew that God would work it all together for our good and his glory. 

For a while, God has been prodding me to make a change. I resisted, in part because I love the gift that is VCL so deeply. Yet even so, I could feel God’s hand on my back, I saw God loosening the roots, and I felt the call to a new pasture. We responded to this prodding by prayerfully putting out applications for Senior Pastor positions. That’s when a new call began to come into view. 

Last Sunday, I found myself preaching to a new flock, inviting them to consider me as their Senior Pastor. Through both the miraculous and the mundane, God had made it clear to Danielle and me that this was the church he wanted us to serve. As we drove to the church that morning in Lena, Illinois, we didn’t see the suburbs and nail-salons, the Starbucks and Walgreens that we pass every week. Instead, we saw rolling hills, a mingling of fog and mist and the glistening of the spring dew. Long, straight roads and small towns, old trees and grazing cattle. 

God moved that morning. I preached. We answered questions. We shared in the communion meal together. And then the church voted, and we were called as their new Senior Pastor. We rejoiced together at God’s goodness. The Spirit felt close. It was as though I could see God the Gardener, shovel in hand, planting us anew.

So now, four years later, we are moving on. My last Sunday at VCL will be June 18^th, and I begin at the Evangelical Free Church in Lena on June 25^th as Senior Pastor.

 As I think of the coming transplant, of my old soil and the new, I am humbled, a bit sad, and excited. I am humbled that I got to grow in so rich a soil as VCL, and that God has led us to so fertile a land as Lena. I am humbled and honored to have been a pastor at VCL, to have been entrusted with the youth and children, to have taught and preached to open ears and eager hearts. I am humbled that God has let me be a part of their lives. 

But I am also sad. I remember my old days working on grounds crews. When we would go about rooting up a bush and getting it ready for a new home, it was inevitable that some roots were so deep that they would have to be cut, that they would stay in their old home forever. So too there are parts of me that I leave at VCL: I’ll never be that sheepish new guy again; I’ll never be able to “go back” to how it was. I won’t be able to take my precious sheep with me. Those memories and those people are like jewels to me, and they will remain in my heart forever.  I pray that the roots I leave behind might nourish the soil that is Village Church for years to come. 

But I am also excited. When I say to Jesus “I love you,” he responds to me: “feed my sheep.” For a while I have heard God saying to me, “Go into the land that I will show you,” and so I’ve walked in the darkness, relying on my God to show me the way (Isaiah 50:10). My calling has crystalized: I am called to preach, teach, and shepherd. My wheelhouse is the pulpit and the sheepfold. That God has led me to a new flock excites me. As I’ve prayed for them, I’ve felt God giving me a deep love for these folks. I have new challenges, new seasons of stretching, and new horizons of faith ahead. I couldn’t have learned how to be a pastor anywhere better than VCL. But now a new flock needs me. I go, shepherd’s crook in hand, always in, by, and for Jesus my Lord. 

The Lord God has given me 
the tongue of those who are taught, 
that I may know how
to sustain with a word him who is weary. 
Morning by morning he awakens; 
he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. 

Isaiah 50:4