Feeding Frenzy

As I have mentioned here before, the summer of 1999 (that's me on the porch of the Betsy B that summer) was one of great joy and accomplishment for the student ministries of FUMC-K, and also one of great personal stress and frustration.  The Pastor Who Shall Not Be Named was changing the entire atmosphere, future and spiritual nature of a church that I loved, and I was faced with a decision.  Six years earlier when I had left Springfield Friends Meeting for Kissimmee, I had to decide whether or not I wanted to "mess with happy."  This was very different.  This time I felt like a player on a football team who could no longer respect the decisions of the Head Coach.  My attitude (and that of many others) towards him was becoming more and more negative, and that negativity was impacting my spiritual life, and therefore my ministry.  I decided to put my resume out on some youth ministry job banks on the Internet.  Little did I know what was about to happen to me...

It only took a couple of days for the e-mails and phone calls to start pouring in.  Churches from all over the country were interested in me, and this was a bit of a shock.  My only national reputation at the time was among Quakers, a tiny denomination- and that had been six years prior to this job search.  It seemed to me that 40 year old Quaker-turned-Methodist youth pastors would not be in great demand.   I knew I had been blessed with strong youth groups over the previous 20 years, and I had shown the ability to stay at one church for much longer that the average youth pastor tenure of 18 months.  I knew I was employable- I didn't know that within the first month over 50 churches would contact me.  It was like a feeding frenzy.  E-mails and phone calls came into my office and home most every day.  I was in demand, and found myself in the position of interviewing churches more than they were interviewing me.  The calls came from most every denomination.  They came from Las Vegas, Texas, New Orleans, Chicago, Charlotte and all over Florida- and they just kept coming.  The more The Pastor Who Shall Not Be Named got under my skin and made it clear he really didn't want me around, the more my ego swelled with this secret knowledge of the demand for my services.  And the more my ego swelled, the less my search became about God's call in my life- and the more it became about me.  And that is never a good thing...

Starting Monday I will take you back to some of the places I considered and visited, and to the decisions I made that eventually sent me to the Union Church of Hinsdale.  We will relive some wild, funny and odd stories that you have most likely not heard before.  And we will look back at the choices that led to me making a decision that should have been turned over to God.  I hope you will join me.  Tomorrow I offer up another edition of Random Ramblings!  See you then.

Because of Jesus,