Transitions

The life of a career associate pastor can get real interesting when the senior pastor you are working for, and with, decides to do something else. It seems that this is a signal for the proverbial "chicken with it's head cut off" syndrome to begin. Suddenly, formally level headed leaders don't seem to know what to do, people in the congregation start wringing their hands in anticipation of the 'worst case scenario", and people begin to act like God didn't know that any of this was coming.

In the church I serve, we've just been through this process. It went amazingly well. Today we are officially installing our new senior pastor, 22 months after our former senior pastor announced his retirement. You can read his reflections on this day, http://www.jaredstoner.blogspot.com/. This is the fifth transition that I have made, and this is by far the best one. In the other situations, either we looked down the road and saw that it was not going where we wanted to go, or other people looked down the road and decided they didn't want us along for the ride. For now, my book boxes are still in storage and I'm planning for 2009.

One of my all time favorite Hillsong songs is Show Me Your Ways
Show me Your ways that I may walk with You,
Show me Your ways, I put my hope in You;
The cry of my heart is to love You more, to live with the touch of Your hand,
Stronger each day, show me Your ways.