Brace yourself.

For the first time in a while, I’m making some time to write something somewhat meaningful here.

It’s strange. Although these past couple of weeks have had me busier than ever (lots of driving back and forth between Greensboro and Creedmoor and working really hard to get up to speed at work, plus focussing a little bit more on church stuff), I seem to be experiencing more clarity than I have in a while.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just ’cause of the John Mayer song. Actually, I hope not. (Isn’t the point of that song that as soon as you realize that you’re having a moment of clarity it’s too late, because that realization will take away the clarity?)

But I digress…

To be honest, it’s not nearly that complicated. I think the bottom line is that I’ve had at least 2 1/2 hours a day to sit in a car and think and listen to some fantastic teaching from guys like Mark Driscoll and Francis Chan. And at least equally importantly, God has been doing some amazing things in Stephanie’s life too. She might not even realize it, but she’s more beautiful than ever — in every way. I feel more encouraged and supported than ever, and that makes more difference than any woman will ever understand.

So, all that rambling because I want to ask for some feedback. I had a rare moment this week when a Bible story became completely new to me — the meaning and value for my life right now came through in a way it never has before.

In our ‘Spiritual Gifts’ Bible study that our men’s group is studying through at work, the author makes a point using the life of Moses, and he focusses specifically on the story from early in Moses’ life where he kills the Egyptian. The author challenged me to consider the question: “Why did Moses kill the Egyptian?”

It seems like a simple enough question, but the answer is powerful for me: I think Moses killed him because he was beginning to get a grip on God’s calling for his life. God put in Moses’ heart a burden for His people. Moses felt God’s compassion and righteous anger towards the conditions of the Israelites.

And before he probably realized that God had put this in his heart, and certainly before he consulted God about it, he did something rash and chalked it up to passion.

The result: a man died, and Moses spent 40 years hiding out in the wilderness.

And I got to thinking: Did it really have to be that way? If Moses had realized that his passion came from God, and asked God for direction on how to act, and then waited, could it have played out better? What if God was ready and willing to lead the people out in 1 year? What if those 40 extra years of toil and death that God’s people experienced weren’t necessary?

But then again, God is sovereign. Someone in our discussion put it this way: What if God planned for everything to happen just the way it did? What if He wanted Moses to go out to the wilderness so that He could mold him into the redeemer of His people that He wanted him to be?

This definitely seems reasonable. Think about all the people who spent time in the wilderness before God really fulfilled His calling in their lives. There’s Moses, David, Paul, John the Baptist… even Jesus it seems to some extent.

So all that leaves me in a funny place because I have such an overwhelming passion for God’s church. I seriously feel the Gospel like fire in my bones and everything in me screams to give my whole life to see the world changed by the Gospel. I want to spend my life being poured out for the Bride of Christ in America until She is a true reflection of Him, and truly cares about His bride around the world. And I try to wrap my head around the story about Moses, and how God seems to send His servants into long seasons of waiting where He prepares them, and I try to think about how that applies to me, and I just don’t know what to take away.

In the sermon I listened to this morning from Francis Chan, he said that in Uganda alone (I think — that part wasn’t clear), 43,000 children are orphaned every day, and 29,000 orphans die every day.

Every day.

Part of me fights God about that.

“What can You teach me in 5 or 10 years that is worth so many wasted lives?”

I know. It’s an audacious question to ask the Creator. I ask it respectfully. I know that I have so much to learn that I don’t even know how much I have to learn.

But what’s the balance in the meantime? How do I stir up the passions God has put in me and take full advantage of what’s available for me to do in THIS season, while simultaneously resting in God’s sovereignty and just waiting for His leadership?

I guess I already know what I would tell someone if they asked me those questions… but all the same, what do you think?

I spent some time looking at the Scripture this morning for the first time in several days. It’s so easy to let that piece of my day get away when I get busy. Somehow the logic goes, “I have to work 10 hours today so I need my extra sleep so that I can have a good attitude and be a good witness to the people I’ll work with.”

And there’s some wisdom in that. But not when it’s the usual case. My soul can’t survive long without meditating on God. No one’s can, I believe.

This morning, I decided to wait until I got to work to get into the Word, so that the drive in could wake me up a little bit. When I got here, I realized that I don’t have my Bible, so I used BibleGateway instead. I haven’t used that site for much in a while, but they have really made it useful!

So this morning, I was read Acts 11, and a line really jumped off the page. The context is that Peter is getting a bunch of crap from the religious people because he spent time with, and ate with non-Jews. Basically, these were the bloggers/watchdogs/jealous wannabe ministry guys who chose to criticize Peter for what God did through him because they were jealous that He didn’t use them instead. (The amount of time that is spent each week writing blog posts criticizing Mark Driscoll really comes to mind here)

In verse 17, Peter is in the middle of giving his defense, and he asks, “Who was I that I could stand in God’s way?”

Let that question sink in for a minute.

Let me tell you what it means to me.

“God I really want to be a good husband and I want to lead Stephanie well and I want to do better with our finances and I want to love better and I want to make our home a restful sanctuary and I want to keep making progress towards being in full-time ministry some day…”

“And God I don’t like my job but my heart really goes out to the people here and I want to see them come to know you and I don’t know how to balance all this very well and they make me work these long hours and how are they going to know how much I don’t like it if I’m always smiling and loving them and when are You going to give me a job where I can do what I love all day and…”

“And God I love my family and there are so many who are still far from you and I want to be really intentional about reaching them and I want to see a church planted in Henderson and I want see awesome things happen in my own church and… and and…”

pause

(picture large, beautiful Lion with a gentle grin)

Who am I that I could stand in God’s way?

Thoughts?

So, you might have noticed that you didn’t see much shaking on ZackRiesland.com this week…

There’s a reason for that. The short explanation is that I worked about 10 hours of overtime. If you’re interesting in what’s been going on in my head this week, or if you’re a fan of dilbert, or if you’re just bored, then please, read on…

This all started with the new year. Even though I haven’t listed it with my official ‘resolutions’, I have committed to work harder when I’m at work. I believe that I was giving more than enough before, but I think I was approaching work with the wrong attitude — or the wrong perspective.

I think I basically felt like my job was something I had to go do in order to pay the bills, but it was sort of ‘external’ to the rest of my life. I put on my ‘I want to be like Jesus’ hat when I woke up in the morning, but seemed to take it off early in the work day — presumably so that I would have the strength to put it back on after I left.

Over the course of the year, I think God really convicted me that this is really hypocritical, and a waste of the most obvious ministry He had given me: the one where I spend at least 40 hours a week.

So I committed going into ‘08 that I would work as hard as I could, and try to let my work AND my attitude reflect Christ, and trust God to give me enough energy and joy to come home and still love Stephanie well.

So it’s three weeks in… and I’m struggling.

Wednesday afternoon, my team leader asked me to meet with him for a minute. Our conversation went something like this,

Him: “Zack, as you can see from these numbers, we’re not going to meet our commitments for this week.”

Me: “Commitments for this week? I thought we only made monthly commitments.”

Him: “Well, we do, but I broke our monthly commitments down into weekly ones, so that we can make sure we meet our monthly ones.”

Me: “Oh. So what are our commitments for this week?”

Him: “This stuff.”

Me: “Gee. I wish I had known that, ’cause I don’t think me or the rest of the team have been going on that understanding.”

Him: “Yeah. I know. The team seems to follow your direction, which is why I need you to get everyone excited about meeting the commitments for this week.”

Me: “This amount of work isn’t reasonable for one week. You make it sound like we’re falling behind, but we’re working really hard and really efficiently. It’s just not a reasonable amount of work.”

Him: “Well, it would be nice if we lived in a perfect world, but we don’t. This has to get done this week. It won’t always be this way.”

Me: “Well. There are two days left, and it looks like we have at least three days of work to do.”

Him: “Exactly. So how will you motivate the team to get the work done?”

(awkward silence)

Him: “For example, you could work extra today and tomorrow and Friday, or you could work this weekend… you have options.”

You get the idea… I left pretty frustrated, especially considering that I already had a few hours of overtime in at that point.

Then it got worse…

I came home, and let’s just say that Stephanie was very unhappy about the prospect of me working over the weekend. And then I found out that she had plans for a “Lady’s Night Out” Friday night. So I thought, ‘win-win’. I’ll just work really late Friday and then I hopefully won’t have to work over the weekend.

So Friday, I’m at the office, and I get called in to another meeting.

Them: “Zack, we heard that you’re not planning to work this weekend.”

Me: “No. But I’m hopefully going to get everything done tonight.”

Them: “You have a lot of work to do.”

Me: “I know. I’ll stay as late as I need to. My wife needs me this weekend.”

Them: “We’ve decided that you wouldn’t have this problem if you worked more hours throughout the week. We’ve determined that you will need to work at least 52 hours next week to get all your work done. How do you plan to split that up over 5 days so that we don’t have this problem again?”

So yesterday morning I left the house at 8:30 am and I got home from work at 11:30 pm. No lunch break. No dinner break. And not even a pat on the back. I got reprimanded.

And the sucker punch of it all is that I think this is the thanks I get for demonstrating what I can do when I work really hard.

So that’s the week I’ve had, and the week I’m looking forward to next week.

I know this is from the Lord, and that there’s plenty to learn in this.

I keep thinking about the scripture that says ‘If someone bids you to go one mile with them, go two.’ Jesus said this at a time when the law allowed a Roman soldier to force a citizen to cary something for them for up to one mile. It didn’t matter whether the person was busy — if a soldier forced you to help, you had to drop everything and help.
I really think the point of Jesus’ teaching was, “When someone inconveniences you, assume that it’s from the Lord, and go along with it with a good attitude.”

It’s been really convicting these past couple of weeks to see how bad I can be at that.

The upside has been that Steph has been very supportive. She brought me french toast in bed this morning, and we went for a long walk, and… did other things that husbands and wives do.

Please pray for me this week. I really want to be a good witness through this….

Technorati Tags: introspection, life, work

So, if you know me personally, or if you even read this blog very regularly, you know that I have somewhat of a love-hate relationship with Rob Bell.

And right off the bat, let me tell you that I hate that, because self-righteous ‘christians’ who think it’s their goal in life to tear down everything their brothers build in the name of ‘constructive criticism’ drive me insane.

And to be totally honest, I’m somewhat of a hypocrite when it comes to this matter…

About a year ago, I read “Velvit Elvis”, and I like it so much that I read it again and then bought the audio from iTunes so I could make Stephanie listen to it :0)

(I wrote this about a year ago when I was thinking through the book)

The whole concept of interpreting what Jesus said through the grid of first century Judaism was amazing to me. And Rob really shed some light on some passages of scripture that never quite made sense.

I started listening to the Mars Hill Bible Church podcast. And for my birthday, I asked for the book ‘Sex God’, which I got and eagerly read…

This whole time, I had some questions I was holding out to find the answers to. But I felt like the good outweighed the bad, and I really wanted to give the guy the benefit of the doubt.

Then came the ‘Convergent’ conference at Southeastern seminary, and Mark Driscoll used his teaching time to speak about the ‘Emerging Church’, which I found really interesting. He singled out Rob along with a couple other teachers as ‘dangerous’. His explanation on why was fair and it caught my attention: It seems like the dude NEVER actually teaches the Gospel. And I got to thinking about it. And I started listening to Rob’s podcasts more carefully. And it’s my conclusion that after listening to a year’s worth of sermons, I still haven’t heard him teach about the cross one time! I have never been to Grand Rapids, and I don’t know what kind of systems/groups/processes they have in place there. But based solely on the Sunday morning teaching, it seems like you could have gone to Mars Hill Bible church for a whole year, been involved, paid attention, and never heard the Gospel articulated… (and I fully aknowledge that I’m really not qualified to make that assessment based on some podcasts…)

Hmmmm….

So, having said all that, there’s an article in Time magazine this week titled “The Hipper-Than-Thou Pastor”.

Some quotes from the article:

Polling by the evangelically oriented Barna research group shows that at least half of regular churchgoers ages 16 to 29 think their church is too judgmental, too political and too negative about homosexuality…

“He could be one of the most important 21st century Christian leaders,” says Bible professor and evangelical blogger Ben Witherington…

His stagecraft is legendary. To illustrate a passage from Leviticus on sacrifice, Bell brought on a live goat, which he released–underlining Jesus’ role as the last and greatest sin offering–intoning, “The goat has left the building.”

Hmmm… that last quote seems to come from a sermon that I missed…

Justin Taylor pointed to this story a couple days ago, and as of this morning, there are 44 comments, but the conversation there is awkward, because it seems like a couple of self-righteous religious people must be poised at their computers, waiting to explain to every Bell supported why they’re wrong….

The truth is, folks, that 11,000 people come to hear Rob preach every week. And even though I have my questions, I think I would much rather be a part of the community he’s helping to build that 99% of the churches within 30 miles of my house…

So what do we do with all this?

Thoughts?

If you didn’t catch any news since yesterday afternoon, a guy who was depressed, on antidepressants, recently fired, recently dumped, and recently kicked out of his parents house went into a mall in Omaha, Nebraska and shot about 40 rounds with a Russion rifle before he took his own life.

You can read about it here.

In April, something similar happened on the campus of Virginia Tech, and I wrote the following over at TheRieslands.com…

33 people killed. What really makes me chew on what happened at V.T. is that I wouldn’t be surprised if I know a half-dozen people who are two steps away from doing the same thing… and the only thing that stands between them and another tragedy is a false hope that they’ll get better.

Why is that a false hope? Because we don’t get better. Jesus doesn’t make us better. If that seems confusing, then let me clarify something:

Jesus did not come to make bad people good or good people better. Jesus came and died to make dead people alive (see Ephesians 2). And He rose again to live through us. We don’t get better… we just learn how to better let Jesus live through us, because our self — our flesh — is hopeless (see all of Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians)

What does this mean, then, for us? How should what happened in Blacksburg yesterday effect us?

I suggest two things:

1 - Let us recognize that we live in a reality where everything we do has an impact on eternity. C.S. Lewis said it very well:
“…remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day
be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be tempted to worship, or else a
horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.”
The guy who bags your groceries at Food Lion tonight might be one step away from giving up on himself and everyone else… or one step away from going down a path that will impact the world for the glory and fame of Jesus. Treat him like you believe that.

2 – Let us encourage one another – particularly brothers and sisters in Christ – correctly… and effectively.
It’s a subtle difference, but think about how our country — and the Church — would be different if, instead of encouraging each other with a focus on living a holy life and managing our sin (which only leads to hiding our sin)… imagine what it would be like if we put all our energy and passion into encouraging each other to simply focus on God’s greatness, and passionately seek to let Him live through us. Not hide our issues, but expose them and let them be an evidence of how God can use such foulness…
My friend Shannon has some good words about this over in his neck of the blog woods
I guess what I’m saying is that sometimes the most loving thing we could probably do for a brother is to humbly choose not to hide or disguise our shortcomings, but wear it openly as an evidence of how much junk God is transforming for His glory. Then, when we have all that extra energy that we didn’t waste trying to save a sinking ship of our flesh, we can use it to do what Jesus really called us to. As Tim Hughes puts it in his song ‘God of Justice‘,

We must go
Live to feed the hungry
Stand beside the broken
We must go
Stepping forward
Keep us from just singing
Move us into action
We must go…

Any thoughts?

PS – After thinking this over for a few minutes, I think there is a third reaction that this should stir up. It should stir our hearts to cry, “Come soon Jesus!”.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus! And while You tarry, keep us free from the sin of this world. Oh, make our little lives count for the glory of Your name and for the fame of Your Father. Rivet our attention on Your cross, and fuse our affections to Yourself. Waken our compassion for all who suffer, especially those who are rushing toward everlasting misery because of unbelief. So open our mouths and open our hands and open our wallets while we have breath, and make us the most radically loving people on earth, for the joy of all peoples and the renown of Your name, Amen. -Stolen from John Piper’s “Life as a Vapor”

Sometimes I agree with Steven Furtick, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I’m probably just jealous of him… the dude is 2 years older than me and he’s leading a congregation of close to 3,000 these days.

I will give him credit for updating his blog every single weekday though. And two days ago, his post was right on point.

He writes about spreading rumors, and how damaging it can be. He says he keeps a personal policy of never passing on news about someone else if it’s negative. That’s hard core.

Here’s an excerpt:

Ever since I gave my life to Christ as a 16 year old, I tried to remain devoutly committed to the sacred practice of keeping my mouth shut when presented with the opportunity to say something negative about someone God is using.
Even when the criticism is valid (because even the most anointed people stumble and fall), I see no value in spreading the criticism like gangrene.

This is particularly significant to me lately, because in the last year, I’ve really seen the power of rumors to tear down men of God.

A few weeks ago, we had lunch with some folks from the church we used to serve at, and they told us that a leader of the church announced in a service that we had to step back because we were on the verge of divorce.

Ummm…. no. Not a chance. If you wanted to separate me from my wife, you’d have to kill me. I mean it…

Two days ago I heard a rumor about a leader from that same church. I didn’t even blink. Whether it’s true or not, and it probably isn’t, it’s none of my business…

I don’t know who Shawn Bashor is, but I found this really interesting and provoking post on his site (a link of a link of a link kind of thing).

I’ve been having many similar thoughts and questions, although my conclusions are basically the exact opposite of his.

When I get a ton of free time some day, I’d like to write about it.

A previous post that I wrote about a Caedmon’s Call song called ‘Expectations’ is related as well…

When I heard that Caedmon’s Call would be releasing a new album with Derek Webb back in the saddle, I was very excited. I’ve been a huge fan of Caedmon’s for a long time now, and when DW went off to do his own thing, I think most people would agree that the whole dynamic of the band changed quite a bit.

I remember going to a ‘commissioning’ service for the Webb-less band several years ago at Providence Baptist Church. They were heading overseas for several weeks to dive into culture and make music with people of many other nationalities. The idea of the project would be an album that would inspire young 20-somethings and college students to go overseas and get involved in the world.

When “Share the Well” finally hit the stores about a year later, I couldn’t afford to go get it, but I was anxious to hear it. Within a couple of months, I had two different friends just give me their copy. I don’t remember the details, but the conversation was something like,

me: Oh really, you don’t like it?

them (akward look on the face): It’s just… not what I was expecting.

To this day, I’m not sure whether I ever listened to the album all the way through.

So here it is, 2007, and a new project with my favorite song writer in the world is back at it, and let me tell you, this album more than exceeds my expectations.

Musically, it’s great, which is to be expected. I appreciate that it’s a little bit raw and leans towards the acoustic end of the spectrum.

But lyrically, there are a couple of real gems, which gets me to the title of this post: expectations.

When I sat down to write this post, I was planning to pick appart the language of the song and make some observations about where I think it comes from. I think it launches a really worthwhile discussion about the Church. But while googling for the lyrics, I found an interview where the band beat me to the punch. I’ll copy some of it here, but the whole interview with Trevin Wax at trevinwax.wordpress.com is good stuff….

‘Expectations’ really threw me for a loop when I first heard it. I’m sitting there in my car, listening through the album for the first time, and this really folksy kind of rhythm comes on, and then I hear Derek’s voice (always a good thing):

That boy had the highest of expectations
And he heard that Jesus would fill him up

And I’m thinking, “Interesting… another song left over from Share The Well… must be talking about some kid in Africa hearing the Gospel.”

I was wrong.

Song continues:

But maybe something was lost in the language
If this was full, then why bother?

This was not the way it looked on the billboard
Smiling family beaming down on the interstate

So at this point, I’m pretty struck, and wondering where they’re going with this song. It continues:

You know that we all try to blame someone
But our dreams won’t rise up from their sleep
And the reaching of the steeple felt like one more
Expensive ad for something cheap

To be honest, sitting there after a first listen, I was pretty bummed. I was thinking, “What the heck? Are they saying the Gospel is cheap?”

But then I started really thinking about it…

They could be writing about my Dad. They could be writing about guys I shared the Gospel with overseas. They could be writing about 85% of the homeless people I’ve spent time talking to. Maybe they’re on to something after all…

Which brings me back to the interview. Here’s what Guarett Buell of the band has to say about it, and I think I agree (emphasis mine):

This is to me the main observation on modern Christianity. It, to me, really sums up in words how that observation looks through the microscope. Failed expectations of a Savior in the light of “Christ gone corporate” modern church. It seems as if the aim of our church in this day is to be better than Six Flags with a bigger IMax screen. With salvation quotas and razzle dazzle services and the well seen perfect poise of a smiling family in a perfect world of a photography studio with no problems in life at all.

The focus is off of the real Jesus and how He works in our hearts, knowing full well what lies beneath the “show” of our finest threads. Christianity has got to become more about loving the unlovable and feeding the hungry than entertaining the kids with video games and multi million dollar gyms.

Churches need to let their members live amongst the real world, be involved in society but not sheltered from it. How else are we to be salt and light if we don’t ever wander into it and don’t know anyone there if we did? Churches should support their members not limit them, realizing we are all fallen and will fall again. But when times are tough the church should hold their members when they are down, truly listen to their cries and above all, have empathy because chances are, they are just like you.

What do you think?

Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington is taking questions (see the video below) that he’ll use as topics for 9 sermons and a book, beginning in January, 2008.

You can go to askanything.marshillchurch.org to view, submit, and vote on questions.

I asked the following questions (there’s a really short length limit, so I didn’t get to word them exactly the way I wanted):

What are your thoughts about the level of criticism between believers, and particularly church leaders? What’s the balance between a desire for Truth and a bad picture of Jesus we paint to the world?

What do you think about the term ‘christian’? Do you think that it has become too stigmatized, and if so, is it worth redeeming or should we change our language?

About 16 months ago, I began my relationship with Abundant Life Fellowship.
Though some would say that it was luck or chance that I even heard of the church, I know that it was God’s providence, and looking back to June of 2006, I see His fingerprints all over the time since then.

When I found out about Abundant Life and started spending time with Pastor Ted and hearing him talk about his heart and vision for the fellowship, I got really excited. Having been overseas for the previous year, I had a lot of new thoughts about what ‘church’ should be like. The thought of coming back to the tradition heavy, religious ‘south’, and leaving the small, Acts 2-esque experience of a third world was discouraging to me. After spending some time with the folks from Abundant Life, I was truly blown away by the uniqueness and effectiveness of the whole experience. This is a fellowship that is personal, committed, involved, vulnerable, and free in many ways that other groups are not.

After enduring four years of high school in Oxford without a good church home, and praying the whole time that God would raise up a good church where I could grow and see lives changed, it was amazing to have the opportunity to be involved with the very answer to that prayer.

I dove in head-first. I had lists of all the stuff I wanted to do and to plan. I started listening to a lot of teaching about church planting and youth ministry. I began spending my Tuesday nights getting ready to teach the youth on Wednesday. I got to church an hour early on Wednesday nights so that some of the youth could come learn how to play instruments, and even though it was off in the distance, I saw the possibility to have an awesome worship team of teenagers who could bless people all over Granville county. It was a really fun and exciting kick-start back into ministry after being overseas and away from everything for a year.

So of course the question is, “What changed?”

The answer is, “Everything.”

Though I didn’t know it from the beginning, this season of time with Abundant Life was only a temporary learning experience for me. From the very beginning, God has lead me away from settling in at this stage of life. Once I began serving the church, I prayed and prayed for a job that would be compatible — something near the church that was only part-time. Weeks went by and I got deeper in debt, and the only opportunities were full-time positions far away. So I bit the bullet and took a job in Durham — 50 hours less to work with.

My family situation got more intense. I came home to a world of changes in my family, and lots of opportunity to serve them, given that I make time for it.

Then God gave me Stephanie, and soon I had very little time to invest in the church.
Even with all the commitments and changes, I tried to force the time to do everything I wanted with the church. Even while courting my wife 200 miles away, I planned events and used our ‘date time’ to do ‘church stuff’.

Even after she had moved to Creedmoor and was living alone in an apartment, and trying to cooperate with her mom and plan a huge wedding, I was still busy and asked her to be busy with me.

Even after we were married and bought a house with grass that needed cutting and boxes that needed to be un-packed, I asked her to wait for me while I took the youth to camp.
‘Righteousness’ is the act of valuing1 rightly. My pride has led me to treat my church responsibilities unrighteously. I communicated to everyone around me that ‘my ministry’ is more important than anything else. I taught my wife that I love her and appreciate her, but she’ll have to take my word for it because I have these other important obligations. I watched my sister get married to someone who I couldn’t make the time to disciple.

On top of all this, we have really suffered for lack of fellowship our age. We rarely get to spend time with other young married couples, and it has really made our adjustment to married life stressful. Even when Stephanie asked me if we could start going to events at other churches to meet people, I asked her to ‘grin and bear it’ a little longer. I asked her to sacrifice her own walk with the Lord so that I could feel like something special.

So our decision to move on has been a long time coming, and it has nothing to do with Abundant Life. Really, more than anything, we need to be free from responsibility for a season so that we can give unlimited attention to our marriage — to each other.

Through hard times of prayer together and apart, and even weeping at the high cost of this decision, we have learned a lot. In fact, I am certain that God planned this season in our life to teach us. In the past year and half I have become almost certain that I want to devote my life to building the Church — in America and abroad, and I have also become confident that I’m not ready to that. I have a lot to learn. We have a lot to learn. And thanks to our time here at Abundant Life, we have a better understanding of what we have to learn.

They say that 80% of pastors don’t make it. I believe that God, in His grace, is forcing the brakes in our lives so that we will make it, in His time.

So we’re going to take a break. Take some trips. Get some rest. And then, prayerfully, we’re going to look at the possibility of me going to school for an extended season of learning.

We love the youth here. It has been a heart-breaking decision to step back from teaching them, and learning from them. And we hope that God will give us creative ways to stay involved in your lives…