death of a dream

May the words of my mouth
      and the meditation of my heart
   be pleasing to you,
      O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

I was writing the other day about the death of a dream. I have had a couple of dreams die in my life and it is a very unpleasant and heart-breaking thing.

One was when I had to close the church plant I had begun. It became infected when a man I had invested a lot of time and trust in turned out to be a liar.

The other is now.

I have always wanted to be the kind of pastor God would have me be, to serve him and his church, and to love them. My hope has always been that they would love me the way I loved them. I fed them, both spiritually and physically.

As it turned out, they wanted neither of what I had to offer: spiritual food or physical food. Nothing I cooked was what they wanted to eat and nothing much I said pleased them either.

I guess the dream was too much to hope for. In the denomination I started in – the Churches of Christ, Non-Instrumental – I knew a lot of ministers who quit. For one thing, the denomination devalued its ministers, considering them to be hired hands. And the ministers, for the most part, bought into that foolishness.

So when they quit, when they got burned out or used up, they quit preaching completely. They would sell insurance, or cars, or real estate. Something out of ministry completely.

The church viewed no sense of call or divine mandate on the part of the minister. He was just employed by the church and at the church’s discretion. A group of men told him what to do and his job was to both do what they said and to keep them happy in their roles as lay leaders.

They removed from their ministers all of the divine joy a pastor can get. And the ministers suffered.

When I left that denomination, one reason was that I had begun to realize that God had called me, not a church. I was called by God. That was a severe removal from what they believed. Not only had I removed myself from believing in the corporate theology – musical instruments in worship being wrong, baptism being the point of salvation – I had removed myself from their very ecclesiastical structure.

But I guess I never really fit in anywhere else. I have pastored large churches and tiny ones. I have done well financially and have gone broke. Right now I am broke. My service to this church and Pentecostalism in general has busted me financially and I doubt I will ever recover from that financial hit. I don’t have enough years left to recover from it.

I have been like Paul when he said in Philippians 4:12: I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. We have been pretty well-off (not rich but with more than enough) and we have been poor (right now). My little wife has had to put up with it all.

Of course, he adds in verse 13: For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.

There is the key to being happy wherever you are.

But at the same time, we have not been happy here. We have never felt the call to come to Lincoln, we just came because it was open. And we have suffered for that.

Ella told me today that she was so full of anxiety the day we moved here. She said that she hated it. But she didn’t tell me. I really should never have come. There has been little more than pain here.

And one thing that has come of it – the major and heart-breaking thing – is the death of my dream. I think I am through with ministry. It is early for me to retire, especially since I have no retirement, but I think I will.

I will pursue other things, but the job market for a 62 year old has-been preacher is rather limited.

It keeps me awake at night and makes me come in late to write. I suppose that the writing is the only thing that has come out of this that I like.

I will probably never had another dream to pursue.