A special theme section on how to have an inviting and healthy biblical community. Winter 1999

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I was mad. And the more I thought about it, the madder I got.

I had attended a seminar entitled "Ministry in the Small Church." I had pastored small churches, but this was my first study of the concept. Now, heading home from the conference, I was mad—at the denomination, at the seminary, at my superintendent, even at myself.

I was mad because I wasn't at all ready to hear what I heard. I wasn't prepared to see myself as a career small-church pastor, enduring low status among colleagues, locked into a lifetime of poverty.

The financial pinch was the toughest. I'd been on food stamps for two years, the kids were being fed by wic and free lunches at school. I had cashed in my life insurance policy, and when the old Toyota died, it was replaced by a bicycle. I didn't know how much longer we could survive. This was not what I expected.

Until entering the ministry, my experience was in mid- to large-size churches, full of educated, professional people. After college I moved to the city and became an advertising executive—house in the suburbs, sports car in the garage, dinner out three nights a week, and vacations in Tahiti. I admit it, I was a yuppie.

When I responded to God's call, it was one thing to leave behind the house, the car, the exotic vacations; I still figured that God would have me lead a church full of people like me.

Until that conference, I had always thought of myself as a Big Church Pastor on temporary assignment, just passin' through, paying my dues, awaiting discovery and the call to the big leagues. I was slapped in the face by the realization that many pastors, and just possibly I, would never get a call to the big leagues.

We were worshiping in a hundred-year-old building and ...

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