THE CLOSING DOOR

Upon my return from India the church in my parents’ town thanked me for my resume and said no. Mia and I had a great meeting with the American Baptist Church in Michigan. We also flew out to California to interview at the school and the for the staff position. Both of those doors closed.

My dear friend, John Armstrong, was encouraging me to look into the Reformed Church of America. He sent my resume to one of his good friends at the RCA headquarters which was only about five minutes from our house. We made contact and Mia and I went over there for several interviews. It seemed promising but nothing was moving very fast.

In the meantime, the leadership team at Shiloh had begun to really take stock. We were desperately looking for a place to rent/buy. Slowly but surely we were coming to recognize that we were running out of time. We were within a couple of months of having to leave our school meeting place and we had nowhere to go. We had followed up on a number of possibilities but none of them panned out. I was coming face to face with the possibility of having to leave the ministry for secular work or try to continue pastoring while working full time. I began to look for secular jobs.

Before I knew it, it was May. The ABC church was very interested. Mia and I had been praying and we had a list of six things we felt the Lord had allowed us to ask for. Sadly, the ABC church only met two of them! One night I was praying and I felt led to pray this: “Lord, there is only one church that is interested in me but it doesn’t meet the six things you said we could ask for. If that is where you want me, I’ll go and I’ll go happily and I’ll work hard and love and pastor those people with all my heart. But I just don’t feel a peace about it. I know you are almighty and you can change things with a phone call out of the blue. If you want me somewhere else, bring that phone call!”

The next morning, the phone rang.