The Pastor's Soul Volume 2: Pastoral Grit

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MY SON MARK HAD PRACTICED gymnastics for several years and he was ready to learn a double back flip on the trampoline. His coach buckled a spotting belt around Mark's waist and clipped on two ropes that stretched upward to two pulleys on ceiling beams some thirty feet apart and then rejoined and dropped back down to the spotter. If Mark was about to fall on his head, the coach would pull on the rope and suspend him in the air. Mark practiced doubles safely for several weeks in the spotting belt and proudly reported to me how well he was doing.

Then one Saturday he came home with bruises on his head and hip and a disquieting story. In the middle of a double flip, when Mark's coach pulled on the ropes, one of them came unclipped from the steel ring on the belt. Since the remaining rope ran to a ceiling pulley many feet to the side of the trampoline, Mark swung pendulum-like sideways off the trampoline, where he met a wall.

Until this episode, Mark had placed complete confidence in the spotting belt. Suddenly he did not know what to expect from it.

The same sort of thing has happened to me a few times in my ministry. Based on my interpretation and application of Scripture, I thought I knew what I could expect from God. Then something came unclipped, and I swung in a direction I did not anticipate, leaving me disillusioned and sometimes pondering whether I should quit.

One of these times came in 1994. After serving as associate editor at LEADERSHIP for three years, I had ventured into free-lance writing and itinerant preaching. Financially, this was an extremely risky move. I could not predict from week to week what my honorariums would be, if any. I paid my own health and life insurance, and I had a wife and four sons to house, ...

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