More Stories from: New Life Church…
I hope I have painted a picture (a bit) of what it was like at New Life Church in Columbia. It was exciting and full of energy. People were getting saved and radically set free. There was a “Presence” of the Holy Spirit in our midst. People from all over were flocking to our meetings. We hosted speakers and Ministers from around the country. It was an exciting time. Then people started to get “tired.”
Those of us who were in the “production” side of New Life were getting physically tired, exhausted, actually. There became a sort of unhealthy self-focus. It was difficult to get folks to staff the nursery or teach Sunday School or participate in small groups. The meetings were so great, everyone wanted to be there all the time. The few people who would do child care or clean the building or make the “mundane” stuff happen were getting worked to death. The prayer team was exhausted. The elders were exhausted. The staff was exhausted. Our kids were small at the time so Amy and I were already exhausted.
Amy and I were already working with the small groups and I had come along side another guy who was attempting to get them going. I was training the Small Group leaders in group dynamics, crisis counseling, and rudimentary care-type skills. I was spending an increasing amount of time at church practicing, playing or leading worship and I was spending more and more time with my own small group and meeting with and developing other leaders. My job at King’s Daughters’ did not cut back. There was also soccer and baseball and swimming and sons and Amy. It was a hectic time.
The New Life Leadership knew we needed to function as a body and not just an event center, so all the group leaders, elders and staff were whisked away for a weekend retreat at a beautiful rural retreat center. Leaders from Belmont Church in Nashville (Doug and Dabney Mann) where also at the retreat to do some teaching and to pray and prophesy over us. It was a great time and there was singing and good food and great teaching and conversation. Several of us had teaching sessions on how we could improve in our areas of service and care. We were looking for ways to get people connected and committed. Near the end of our time Doug and Dabney started praying and prophesying over each couple. That’s when things got a little weird.
Doug and Dabney didn’t know any of us at all. Even though Amy and I had actually gone to church with them in Nashville for five years, we had never met them (Belmont was huge.) So when they started praying and saying things, insightful things, we all knew God had clued them in on us.
The couple in front of us was middle-aged and just good folk. They were kind and simple with everything they did. They were rural types and related well to people out in the county. Dabney started praying for them and then said this, “I see what you are doing as…going out. You are ministering and your ministry is…going out…like on trucks on the interstate. Your ministry is being carried across the country on semi-trucks.” Now, what Dabney didn’t know was that this couple went to a truck stop every Sunday and directed church services in one of the side rooms. They prayed for truckers and kept in contact with them. There is a lot of drug abuse and prostitution hovering around over the road trucking and they really had a heart for truckers. We had helped get a small resource library out at the truck stop and tried to encourage the couple best we could. But Bob and Betty had begun to question their own effort. They wondered if it was all worth it, but not after Dabney confirmed that they were doing something effective and worthwhile.
Amy and I were next, and I was nervous. I silently started to pray, LordpleaseforgivemeofanysinsImayhaveneglectedtomentionand….. I tried to get all “confessed-up” so Dabney wouldn’t drop a bomb on me (which wouldn’t have happened anyway…it was just my unbelief.)
When Amy and I stepped up for our “turn,” in unison, Doug and Dabney looked at us, looked at each other, then gave us the “just-a-second” hand gesture and turned to the side with there heads together, whispering. Oh great, I was thinking, What have I done? Nothing too heinous. I did eat some of the Children’s Church Teddy Grams. Could that be it? When Dabney turned around she said this directly to me, “You have a picket fence in front of you. It is about a foot tall. It is painted a beautiful white color and there are little shrubs and flowers around it. It is tastefully landscaped. It’s lovely…but it is still a fence. You need to kick it over. You try to do some good things that are ministry, but you are trying to dress it up and not fully commit. You will never be everything you were meant to be…” and then she hesitated, “…until you are in full-time ministry as your vocation.” I was shocked, but everyone around me was nodding their heads like, “Duh!”
It put Amy and I down a path...
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