March 2, 2010

  • It's All Good

    Several have asked and I've been wanting to share a little more details about the events leading up to our move. 

    A little background information: 

    The chief is a preacher.  He received the call when he was a young 19.  I was present when he preached his first sermon.  (I was 16.)  He was a youth pastor when we married.  Later, he pastored the same church where we met in youth group, where he preached his first sermon, and where we were married.  He served as their bivocational pastor for five years.  For the last three years we have been serving in a dynamic ministry as volunteers.  It's been an excellent experience for us.  We've thrived in the creative environment of that ministry. We ♥ Pastor Jeff and Peggy. 

    Beginning the process: 

    Last March I felt God speak into my heart that we should list our house on the market.  It was a terrible time to sell a house.  I prayed and asked God that if it was really him speaking then let it be the Chief's idea.  A couple week's later, late at night the Chief and I were snuggled up on the couch watching a movie and he says, "Have you ever thought about doing something just totally crazy?"  I came back with, "Like what?"  To which he responded, "I don't know, like selling our house."  So we started the process of listing our house on the market. 

    During that time, the Chief shared with our Pastor that he felt God was leading us into fulltime ministry within the year.  Our Pastor had some friends from out of state that had come to visit.  They spent some time at our church with the Pastor praying for the ministry.  At the end of this prayer time, one of the friends asked if there was a Brian serving in the church?  We've never met these friends.  Our pastor shared with them a little about us.  Amazingly, this friend then gave a prophecy over us which confirmed all that we felt God leading us to do and encouraged us to go forward with our plans.  We've still never met these friends. 

    We listed our house on the market in July. We started working on our resume and checking out pastorfinder.com and churchstaffing.com.  We sent our resume to several churches.  Interviewed with a lot of them. 

    Brian submitted his resume for a church in Hampton, SC.  Lighthouse Church.  Soon after, we received an email from them saying that they were overwhelmed with the number of resumes.  They would not be accepting any more.  I recall the cutoff being around 250 resumes.  We had no idea if we were even in the first 250 resumes received. 

    We later received an email from Swedish Ralf that our resume was in fact one of the resumes they received and we had made the initial "cut".  This was sometime in August.  In the weeks after that we were given an extensive list of questions to answer.  Tough questions. 

    Then?  Waiting.  Waiting.  Waiting.

    To be continued... (click here to read the rest)