You don’t become people’s pastor on Sundays. You draw them on Sundays and you even keep them by putting on a creative, God honoring serviced BUT you don’t become the pastor of your people by what takes place on Sunday. I am learning that.

You become people’s pastor by being there when they need you. We have drawn great crowds since the day we started. God has blessed but now 20 months in, people are looking to me as their pastor. I have built trust, I have been there, and now they are coming to me. They aren’t just coming to me but also our staff and our leadership. It is a good feeling to know you have made a difference in people’s life.

I have been at the hospital all day with an awesome young couple who were due to have a baby Tuesday only to find out today that baby had passed away. She had to still give birth today and it was without a doubt the hardst thing I have ever been through in my life. It broke my heart and I never want to experience it again BUT I’m glad that we have built enough trust among our people that they let us be there for them.

I often joke that I don’t do very good with the pastoring/shepherding aspect of running a church. However God has been giving me grace and heart for these type of things like never before. I truly love the people I get to pastor. They are a rough bunch, and I’ve been told by other pastors that they wouldn’t want my crowd but they are MY crowd and I am glad and I thank God daily I get to pastor them.

When we came to Canton, we asked God to allow us to stay here for the rest of our lives…Almost two years later that is still my prayer.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 29th, 2006 at 8:00 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.