In the summer of 2005, I was almost three years into my third full-time pastorate. “Climbing the ladder” wasn’t my thing, but this wonderful church was the largest I had served, based on nickels and noses, and was in the middle of a big city in another state. I was preaching, pastoring, and casting vision, while leading a gifted staff … the whole nine yards. I was thinking that I would likely serve there for a couple of decades, after which I’d join the retired pastor, rubber-chicken speaking circuit.
Earlier in that ministry, I had checked the box of overseas missions by participating in a medical/evangelism project in Southeast Asia. I came home and continued pushing to reach my Jerusalem.
But subsequent months brought the unwelcome thought that God might be asking me to go back overseas — not for another short-term project, but for long-term service. Of course, that couldn’t be what He was saying. He had called and equipped me to preach and pastor. He had put me in that church! They needed me! I needed them!
Strangely, my wife began thinking that God was working on her, too. But surely, He wasn’t. He couldn’t. Our four children were coming up on their 10th, 8th, and 5th birthdays (the youngest are twins). He couldn’t be serious.
Whenever we would start chewing on the possibility, it was too hard to swallow, so we’d spit it out. But God kept serving the same dish of calling with a side of conviction.
While quietly wrestling with this gnawing conviction, I led a team of four from our church into a closed country for two weeks. We served on a small college campus in an out-of-the-way Asian city. Our role was to put on an English camp for interested students. By day we taught English while injecting as many gospel references as possible. By night we engaged in personal evangelism in private settings.
The day before we left, we discovered that there were a handful of underground believers on campus, one of whom was a professor. She wanted to meet with us, but time was short. On our last day, with our bus to the capital city leaving at 10 p.m., we met with her and several other Christians in a darkened apartment at 9 p.m. After brief introductions, they began asking questions — very basic questions. This went on for about 15 minutes. We began to fear missing our bus.
The highly educated professor asked questions that Christian children in our churches could answer. The most striking was the last one we had time for: “Did Jesus know He was going to die when He came into the world?” After telling her that He did know and that dying was His purpose in coming, she looked at me and said, “We need someone like you to come over here to help us.”
Macedonia was six time zones away, and this wasn’t a vision. And I was no Paul and never will be. But God piled conviction upon conviction, and about 14 months later, my wife, children and I moved to that closed country. What about the church I left? They had no trouble replacing me, and they grew faster after I left than when I was there.
Pastor friend, don’t think God couldn’t or wouldn’t call you to leave your pulpit to go to the nations. If He does, you and your church will be just fine … maybe even better off. God doesn’t always call people from pews. Sometimes He calls people from pulpits. Maybe it’s not here that you’re indispensable; maybe it’s there.