Comfort Zones

I had a brief conversation with my pastor on Friday. I am scheduled to speak during the sermon segment of our worship service today and he and I were discussing how the service would flow. The schedule for the service calls for the pastoral prayer segment to follow the sermon. So I suggested something we might do with the congregation that would give a context for the people to pray for the persecuted church.

Now, I should clarify that Pastor is very supportive of my work for the persecuted church. But the plan I proposed was something that pushed the limits a bit. It was different from how our fellowship usually does their prayer time. The details of my proposal are not needed for what I want to say here. Rather, I want to talk about his response and what God taught me through his response.

As I explained what I had in mind, I started to sense that he did not feel comfortable with what I proposed. So I checked on that. I said, "I think I sense that you are not comfortable with that idea."

He confirmed my suspicion and then said, "I don't think our people are mature enough for that yet."

Now I could go off on the issue of how long do we allow our people to remain immature. But that is not what God said to me at the time. Instead, I sensed God revealing to me that I needed to have more of the sensitivity that my pastor has. I needed (when I was pastoring) and certainly still need now (as I visit churches as a guest speaker) to be more sensitive to where the congregation is in their growth in Christ.

In the past when I was pastoring, I would get some exciting new idea in my head. I was certain it came from God (I still think that I was right--some of those times). So I would push ahead and convince the church board to follow through on this great new plan. I'm thinking of a couple situations in particular. We had a growing congregation and we needed to figure out how to accommodate the number of people that were coming to our fellowship. We simply did not have room for them all. So I proposed a plan that would allow the number of people to continue to increase. But the congregation was not ready for it. And the backlash has had lasting effects in my life.

I still don't know how I could/should have handled it differently. The growth was so rapid that we needed to do something quickly. But I should have worked with the leadership of the fellowship on a one-to-one basis before bringing the proposal to the whole church board. Instead, I just put the idea out there and expected them to go along with it. Well, they did for a while. But then the backlash hit. And I have reeled in reaction ever since.

This past Friday, in Pastor's brief response, I realized that the heart of a pastor involves a deep sensitivity to where the congregation is in their journey of growing into the likeness of Christ. I don't expect God will ever have me in a pastoral position again. But I do find myself increasingly speaking as a guest speaker for various churches. And I need to adopt my pastor's perspective in working with these various fellowships.

Thank you pastor for being sensitive to our fellowship's strengths and weaknesses.