“Lists Of Tens” (Part Three)



Here is another very practical consideration – to assess your biggest, most important choices or events that have influenced your life or shaped your attitudes or needs.

I will list the ones I shared, at the risk of boring you with my life; but with the positive idea of giving you an example for your list; and also giving me another opportunity to thank God for frequent rescues; and to be conscious of areas of need every day.

I’m going to do these in chronological order:

1. The influence of our grandmother.

Her name was Rosa, and I like to think that in the day God gives out Most Valuable Player, the audience will be on the edge of their seats thinking it might be Billy Graham or Mother Theresa – I know this is just a story so don’t get particular – and the crowd will be astonished when our Lord just says Rosa Engel.  She was so very faithful to the text but also to the duty but also to the poor but also to others in need.  A rather out-of-shape and homely woman, with plain dress and frugal habits, she loved.

Because of our parents’ divorce and the hard work of my mother, Mama did a lot of the cooking and read the Bible to us regularly.  She prayed almost every day that my brother Bob and sister Nan and I would all go into the ministry someday.

She was at church when the doors opened – count her a legalist if that defines it for you – but she was full of grace and truth at least to the extent that a normal person can be.

She crossed racial lines and cultural lines way before people wrote about it or there was a return to the Biblical care.

I watched and learned a little bit at least.

2. Divorce of our parents.

That’s a huge issue for any of us who have experienced it.  My dad and mom met at a conservative Christian college and quit to get married – you couldn’t come back for the sophomore year with rings on your fingers.  They were a prince and a princess for a while, and so was their marriage a storybook one.  But Dad quit a good job on the railroad to invest in Tucker car, lost everything when it went under, and thus began a financial downfall that also was accompanied with communication weaknesses and finally divorce.

I remember a number of times coming downstairs from being asleep to step between my mother and father when they were slapping each other – and they were two of the nicest people you could ever meet.

From this I have learned how I hate divorce, how I run from confrontation unless I catch myself, and how I do not even argue very well if it starts to get too pointed.

I had to learn to say I love you, for I had never heard the words much, though my mother and father both showed their love to us.

3. Rededication to the Lord

Indeed I trusted Christ as a small child, and I even remember kneeling beside my bunk bed – the lower part! – with my grandmother to turn my trust to Christ.  But it was a bit of a new day when, before my senior year in high school, I emotionally and spiritually dedicated myself to be more open in my faith, to obey the Lord, and to thank Him daily for His grace.  I actually remember doing that next to the lake called Winona where I had just been at a national conference for youth, and been involved in a preaching contest, and gotten serious about my heart.

I have struggled many times since, but do believe that there can be a strong time in life when one dedicates his heart to the Lord to obey in every way.

In many ways we should present our bodies every day, I know.  But I also believe that all of us know if they really want to be obedient to the Lord and if they want to be strong for Him.

4. Going out for football and running for student body president.

I hope you’ll take this one right.  Actually I hope you’ll take all of these right.

Harry, my mother’s good friend, urged me to try football my senior year in high school.  I had been quickly eliminated in seventh grade and that ruined my confidence and I never went out again.

I also had just been urged by friends to run for president of student body, and they helped me to campaign and make it.

Both of these were pretty human issues that gave me confidence in life and gave me nerve and got me up front and got me admitting my need for courage.

5. Death of my sister.

Nan was only 14, was a cheerleader at our junior high, and a wonderful and vivacious girl.

She died in an accident at my father’s on Father’s Day, and I was at the church when I got the phone call that she had been hurt and was in a coma at the hospital.

This left me angry with God.  The explanations that some “commentators” give in person are very inadequate.  One woman said to my grieving mother next to the casket, “Perhaps God took her because she might have grown up to be a prostitute.”  Even as a 17-year-old I had enough nerve to ask her to please stop that and keep moving.

The question for the rest of my life became this: Can I trust the sovereignty of God even when such horrors happen?

And this area of how the church treats those in grief became an area of “holy discontent” and one that I worked hard at at both churches where I pastored.

On the divorce issue, the church waved goodbye; on the grief issue, many did not know how to deal with it.

What are your areas of “holy discontent”?

6. Working at age 19 for Lambert Huffman Publishers.

I got a job as a proofreader, assisting the managing editor, Ken Anderson, a very well known writer and maker of Christian films.  He was a wonderful man who could not abide the tedious work of editing and administration, for he was so creative.  So when he slid over to do films full-time, I got his job at age 19.

I had a crash course in learning to write and edit and work 40-50 hours a week while going to college and then seminary.

I sometimes marvel at God’s shepherding in our lives, and don’t know what is His active involvement and what is His protective shepherding, but I do know how to give thanks.

It was seven years of learning to edit in a tight way and write and say things quicker.  Now I’ve got to go on to the next point to show I learned that.

7. Marry Jeanine.

I have asked several times in large groups if God ever spoke to them to tell them whom to marry.  Only two times have individuals, raised their hands and said yes.  Obviously the next question for these men was if God spoke to a woman in the same way.  In one case, yes.

Enough of that.  I’m just saying that for me it was hard work to figure out, and for Jeanine probably even harder.

I do believe God shepherds us as we seek to do what’s right, and that this was good for me, and that I got the better deal.

Both churches where we have served would say she was a wonderful complement to me, and I would say especially in the areas of prayer and hospitality and encouragement to others.

I’ve often felt deeply for some in the pastorate after I met their spouses, though most have had the same gift from God that I have had.

This is a huge part of what makes us who we are.

8. The death of my mother.

This was in her mid-40s, when the cancer returned, and raised again the question of God’s sovereignty and some anger and troubling questions.  I still don’t have the answers, but I did learn to trust Him.

Psalm 31:14, 15 became a pillow to sleep on and a rock to stand on – see if you can trust God that way for your own life.

She never quite got over the death of my sister – and I understand that now that I’ve been a parent.  She did come back to the Lord to walk with Him and therefore there was calm assurance in her heart and in ours about heaven.

But certainly there was deep grief and questions.

Sometimes I wish it would not have happened of course.  But I also sometimes believe that some pastors who have never had grief or a tough time like this will never bend themselves to understand the grief of other and identify with losers or people in pain.  They can, but some do not.

I’m going to get vocational with these last few – I went to serve two years with a pastor in Wooster, OH.  It was an agreed two years as Jeanine and I were deciding about whether to go to Africa or to stay with pastoring.

9. Wooster, as associate and youth pastor.

I especially learned pastoral care and the duties of the shepherd.  Senior Pastor Kenn Ashman was one of the best in those areas, obsessive about hard work and church life, and wonderful to learn from.  Ever since then I have urged people to take internships after seminary, or at least a staff position like this so they are not suddenly standing in a pulpit or chairing a church.

I also learned how at age 26 to publically support someone who is 30 years older than that and someone who is very different than me in methodology.  I still abhor the fact that many young cannot differ with their seniors in a private way only, and will sometimes do it in a way that even hurts church unity.

10. Ashland – 15 years.

I learned to love and was loved.  The church grew and proved that even in a small town – 20,000 plus the college – there can be growth and some influence and help to other churches and other people.

We started Adult Bible Fellowships there, a system of Sunday school that can be used in the church building or in homes and includes care and can be identified as “the best way to pastor a church of over 100.”  We also started a lot of ministries for grief and divorce and other areas for the town.  What a great experience.  Thank you, God.

What have you learned from your experiences?

11. I’m cheating here by not stopping at #10: Akron, The Chapel.

I got to serve for 26 years – okay, 25.7 – in a large church that kept growing and was able to start other churches and go to two campuses and do a lot in the city.  It was especially rewarding to try to help other churches in the area.

I often have said that no other pastor could have had a better relationship with the church and the leading board of the church.  So a lot of this is just sheer gratitude and thankfulness for the emphasis on grace that seemed to help many people.

Clearly we cannot help what has happened to us, and we cannot change our past decisions.  But we can for sure learn from where we have been, and what we have decided.  In many ways we are the products of that past.  While I cannot use my experiences as a child of divorce to excuse my aversion to arguing or verbal skirmish, I can realize my need and pray for strength here, and work harder in an area of weakness.

We can also look back at God’s shepherding grace in our lives, often ways He protected us or guided when we did not realize it at all.

And, when possible, we can do better with the next choice; or be stronger for the next test.

May it be so.

By the way:

We did this on our pastoral staff, asking each pastor or director to think through and present the ten most important or influential choices or events in their lives.  Then at each staff meeting, one presented their “big ten” in about five minutes.  It was a good help in getting to know and appreciate each other.  In some cases, to be amazed at what someone had endured.  Often, to give thanks with them for how God the Shepherd had prepared them for their present assignment in the church.

Make your own list carefully, to be reminded how you got to be what you have become.