Boot Camp Chronicles; Preface
At approximately 7:00 am on Friday, August 19th, 2005 I kissed Lynn goodbye, got in my truck, and drove 11 hours to Augusta, GA to begin a new life; in which Lynn would join me 60 days later after preparing the house to sell and preparing the children's ministry she was leading for transition. The previous Sunday I preached my final message at the church we planted three years earlier and afterward many of us went to my parents farm where I baptized a husband and wife and we all shared a final picnic together.
As I began down the highway on that Friday morning I was an emtional wreck. I was moving us to Augusta so I could financially support us with a job in a field to which I never thought I would return. I knew in my heart that God had called me to the church planting ministry, but as Illinois disappeared in my rearview mirror I had serious doubts that I would ever again plant another church. I was emotionally and spiritually spent and with every mile-marker I passed I tried to conjur up a vision for another church plant. Six-hundred mile-markers later I had experienced six-hundred failed attempts to reignite that passion, that dream.
The following months took me through an emotional and spiritual battle to understand some of the difficult things we had experienced in our church-planting journey. There was a lot of good that happened. Several people were born into the Kingdom during those years, several new friendships were formed, and several people who were previously doing life alone found a spiritual community. But there was also so much that happened that ripped apart my passion for ministry.
I'll refrain from speaking in detail about those painful moments out of respect for our friends from the church who read this blog. But there were so many "whys" during those years that I've struggled to understand these past months. There were many mistakes I made as a pastor that I had to learn from. There were many people I needed to forgive in order to free myself from the grip of bitterness. I am still struggling to forgive some.
Recently I have once again begun to feel the passion and dream the dreams that I feared were lost forever. Today there is coming alive in me a beautiful picture of what God desires to do through us here in Augusta. A picture of our ministry here is emerging with a clarity that even surpasses the clarity of our dream five years ago. And there is also awakening in me a better understanding of all that we went through in Illinois.
Someone once said that church planters believe that God is going to use us to get the church plant done, when in fact, God uses the church plant to get us done (or something like that). I've come to understand that our 3 years in Illinois was my "Basic Training."
A few minutes before I came up to the reading room to write this I looked up
"Basic Training" on Wikipedia. This statement about the purpose of basic training (also called "boot camp") captured me:
Some systems of training seek to totally break down the individual and remold that person to the desired behaviour.If you've ever been through basic training in the military (which I haven't) you remember how intentional your drill seargent was in creating punishing circumstances for you to endure. Everyone comes into the military with their own opinions, ideas, attitudes and behaviors and the purpose of boot camp is to totally tear that person down and then rebuild them into a person that will function as part of a unit (body) and have far greater potential for victory on the battlefield.
Planting our first church was my boot camp. I shared with a new pastor friend of mine the other day that when I began the first days of our ministry I knew everything there was to know about church planting. I read all the books. I learned all the strategies. I daily talked with a nationwide network of church planters. I had been mentored in a year-long full-time internship. There was nothing more for me to learn. But then 2 1/2 years in I realized, "I don't know the first thing about planting a church!" Oh, like I said earlier, a lot of good happened...but only by the grace of God. I was being torn apart in the process; to the point of a complete emotional collapse in March, 2005. And today, I understand that it was God who was tearing me apart for the purpose of remolding me into a man who in the next chapter of ministry would have far greater potential for victory on the battlefield.
I believe that the clarity with which Lynn and I are seeing the vision for our next church plant is the direct result of God's process of tearing me down and rebuilding me during our years in Illinois. In the coming days I'll continue this series of posts that I'm calling "Boot Camp Chronicles" and therin I will share some of the painful lessons I learned during our 3 year season of basic training.
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