That Nagging Feeling!

Soon after I became a pastor, I found myself questioning how I was spending my time. I was amazed at the percent of my week that was spent in meetings, committees, and discussions of church “business.” It was clear to me that the church would have a hard time functioning without getting the business portion worked out, but somehow it always left me with that nagging feeling. Jesus would not “do church” this way. As a novice pastor I just had to trust those who had been doing this much longer than me that this was the way to do it. I had to push that nagging feeling down and keep moving forward.

The nagging feeling would return from time to time. It got worse as I rose up in the ranks of the leadership and was myself the one who was running committees, meetings and insisting that others attend to the business of the church. I secretly resented devoting so much of my time to church business and not spending more time with people. I found myself very jealous of other pastors who managed to be out with people serving, caring, mentoring, and using their pastoral gifts. In my heart I would say, “that is how Jesus would do church!”

During a desert period of our lives, my wife and I found ourselves attending a smaller church that functioned like a large house church. It felt like I had come home. It had everything I believed the church should have. Relationships were key, the people were the church – not the building, people were using their gifts to serve each other, they were listening to the Holy Spirit and following His lead, there was a clear sense that Jesus was leading and they were journeying with Him.

At this point the Lord was clearly speaking to us about our next ministry assignment. It seemed that our choices were to become a teaching pastor in a traditional church model or to begin a movement of reproducing house churches. One choice came with a nice salary, benefit package and great group of people…the other came with no guaranteed salary or benefits, a great group of people but a call from Jesus to follow him on a new pioneering journey. We chose the latter. Now that old nagging feeling is gone but it is often replace by new nagging feelings. Things like “what was I thinking?”…”were we crazy?”…”Do we know what we are doing?” But ultimately we know we are on a journey with Jesus and we wouldn’t have it any other way.