When people hear I was the pastor of Brentwood Baptist Church for thirty-two years, they want to know how I stayed so long in one place.
The honest answer is “I don’t know.” I got up and went to work and there was stuff to do. We did that stuff and then, I did the same thing the day after that and before I knew it, thirty-two years had gone by.
The next question I’m asked is “was there a moment when you knew this would be a different kind of experience?” and the answer is “yes, there was!”
It happened the day I stopped trying to fix the church.
Let me tell you what I mean…
I had grown up with and been trained in the idea the pastor brings the vision to the church. The pastor goes off to some mountain, God gives Him a vision and the pastor comes back to the church declaring, “Thus saith the Lord…”
That’s bogus.
Here’s what I learned…
God places the vision — the identity and calling of that church within the church when the church is born. The calling of the pastor is to call out that divine destiny in the lives of the congregation. The pastor doesn’t bring anything to church — but under the leadership of the Spirit, points to what God has already placed in the church’s DNA.
For me, it happened when I returned from several days in spiritual retreat and I begin to seek out why God had placed Brentwood Baptist Church at this place at this time? What was God thinking? What did He want when He gave birth to Brentwood Baptist Church?
Here’s what I also found out…
Brentwood Baptist Church was the child of a number of risk takers. We had a long history of doing things against the conventional wisdom of the day. For instance, BBC was one of the first churches to build a gym before they built their sanctuary. In the early seventies, there wasn’t any place for children to play in the Brentwood area. The church saw this and built a gym that became a community center during the week and a sanctuary on Sunday.
The church started a ministry to the deaf when there were no deaf people attending the church. When eight deaf people started showing up, the church started Deaf Church. The result of this step of faith was a deaf church, the only sanctuary in the world to support the worship of the deaf, a deaf theological training center, plus a Bible translation in American Sign Language.
Not bad!
Now here’s where it gets exciting…
I begin to teach that every member was gifted and called to a specific ministry. We began to encourage people to pray about how God had created them and to pay attention to what dreams God had placed in their hearts.
This invitation began to transform everything.
Discipleship was emphasized because if we’re going serve Jesus, we have to understand both who He was and what He taught. Worship brightened because people came to church celebrating what they had seen Him do and anticipating what He would do in the weeks ahead.
And all of this was in the church before I ever got there!
All I did was point it out. God had a reason when He gave birth to your church. Find that reason and everything else will fall into place.
Fascinating,, praise God you and the Holy Spirit were in tune with each other, and look at the glorious results.