I recently published an article with Lifeway Research on Bi-Vocational Ministry (5 Things Bi-Vocational Pastors Wish You Knew) and will be writing some occasional posts here in the coming months considering the concept of bi-vo ministry. Some will be prescriptive, some observational, some personal narrative. This is the first of the latter.
Underserved Opportunities
There is a real sense in which most of my ministry “background” is story-after-story of undeserved opportunities.
I grew up in church. Sunday morning worship, Sunday School, VBS, the works. But my parents, mainly my mom, were anti youth group. So I wasn’t allowed to attend youth group until my senior year. But shortly after I started attending, the youth leader broke the boys and girls into different groups and then had students leading the groups. As a church-kid and a know-it-all, I kind of naturally fell into leading the guys group.
During those same years, our youth group was part of a number that worked together to put together monthly meetings that we called Worship Worship Revolution (WWR, for short), which was something like a 3 hour long “youth service” with music, testimonies, often some sort of skit, and a message. I say youth service, but we actually had a pretty broad swath in attendance, as older church-folks are often (rightly) excited to see young people taking their faith seriously. The first time I ever preached was at one of these services. I was 17. I think my text was something out of John 17, and I was up there for maybe five minutes. Mercifully, to my knowledge, there is no recording of this.
The next summer, those same youth groups came together to put together a “worship-tour,” heading to five small towns across our area for three days each. The days were filled with door-to-door evangelism, field games played with kids in the community, prayer walks, and community service projects. Then, in the evening, we would host a community meal and hold one of those long, WWR-style, worship services, usually inside of the large, green, army-surplus tent we had bought. And on the second night of those three night stops I would preach the sermon. They were bad. Some were really bad.
Part of this was due to what I was attempting—I had not joined on the trip “full-time.” I was still working my job, mostly in the mornings, with the Postal Service in my hometown of Plummer. Most of the ministry sites for this tour were from 1-3 hours away from Plummer, so I would work, then drive up to the ministry site, be there until 10 or 11pm, and then drive home in order to get up at 5am for work the next day. I was averaging 3-4 hours of sleep, and probably (definitely) was not operating at peak cognitive function.
I also had no idea what I was doing. I’d never taken a class on how to read the Bible, or study the Bible, or any other text for that matter. I’d never even had an English course in my “homeschooling.” I certainly had never taken a speech class or had any instruction on how to fashion any idea into an essay, let alone a public talk, let alone a sermon. I mostly was just standing up and talking until I figured I should probably be done.
I also was not walking with the Lord in any serious way during this time. I was reading my Bible, because it was interesting. And I knew what it said was true. But I was operating toward God with a fairly strong sense of entitlement and anger, which is another story for another day, but at a principial level it’s worth noting that poor spirituality often makes for poor and lifeless preaching.
But after that tour, and some emotional turmoil that terminated in an evening where I skipped out on bible study to go “hang out at the lake” with some friends, and the following morning in which I was fighting both a hangover and an intense sense of disgrace, the Lord started to turn my internal life. This is the period which I typically think of as Him grabbing me by the scruff of the neck, and holding my face to the mirror so that I could actually see my sinfulness and self-centeredness.
It was not long after this that doors of opportunity started to open in even more ridiculous (speaking retrospectively) ways. In September of the year, Wayne (the founder/director of South Lake Youth Ministries) approached me about taking leadership of those WWR meetings. I agreed, though I had basically zero idea what I was doing. I could usually find people to fill all the slots, except for the preaching part. Unless Wayne agreed to do it, I would basically be left with no other options than to do it myself. So, at age 19, I began preaching at least once a month.
I remember—very vividly—the sense of panic I would sometimes have as the evening would be approaching and I would sit down with my NKJV MacArthur Study Bible in the pastor’s office and just look blankly at the page: what was I ever going to talk about? And then I would write two or three ideas on a post-it note and walk up to the pulpit that night, and stand there and talk for 45 minutes or an hour. Again, praise the Lord there are no recordings. It had to have been awful.
And here’s the thing: I knew it had to be awful, because I was clueless as to what I was doing. But then strangest thing began to happen with semi-regularity: people would comment that they were helped by the sermon, sometimes even with that oh-so-rare gift for a preacher—specific details about what was now more clear or understandable to them, or what phrase or concept was encouraging or challenging. So I was still clueless, and clearly not good by any objective means. But God, in his mercy, was using it. And I started to wonder what that meant.
That wonder would grow over the following year until an unexpected door opened.
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