Tag Archive: faith

Next Steps

Step one was hard. It required faith muscles that had become atrophied in me. And as I wrote previously, step one could be described as an irrational step. Our next step will again be a faith step, but it’s one my wife and I felt God has given us clarity about.

Our family’s next step is actually closer to three million steps. Or, 1,684 miles west back to my wife and I’s home state of Arizona. We each loved growing up in Arizona and we love our extended family who lives there. Yet, we never really thought we would end up back there (our other two moves had us move 1,000 miles and 600 miles east away from Arizona each time). So a desire to “go home” was not the draw in this decision. (Probably because our last two churches had become “home” because of the people who loved and cared for us there.)

I’ll be joining the staff of Wellspring Church in the “West Valley” area of Phoenix, Arizona (meeting in the city of Goodyear). Wellspring Church was planted just over four years ago. Wellspring has already seen some pretty cool things happen in its short life, and we feel called to come alongside them and serve with them.

In most ways, the staff position will be pretty different from the position I’ve most recently had at Brentwood Baptist Church—maybe figuratively as different and as far as Nashville is from Phoenix. I will continue in many executive pastor roles but also have broader engagement in other parts of Wellspring.

In these recent months of determining what’s next, unbeknownst to us God was reconnecting and re-energizing relationships that began 22 years ago (when I joined the staff of North Phoenix Baptist Church). One of those relationships was with fellow staff member, Chris Stull. And now Chris is the Lead Pastor at Wellspring.

Through the years Chris and I have stay connected. And now what I can see where serendipitous moments we were able to connect personally at important moments of my life. For reasons I can’t explain, I’ve gotten the privilege to serve great pastors (my dad, Dan Yeary, Stephen Hatfield, Mike Glenn), and now I’m excited to serve with Chris.

Wellspring has a strong staff and a lot of committed and called people in their congregation. People who have a commitment to have a church in the West Valley that reaches the lost (Phoenix is the 12th most “unchurched” city in the United States). Couple that with Phoenix being the fifth largest city in America and a lead pastor who is uber-gifted in faith and leadership; and I get excited for the challenge and to see what God may do in the West Valley of Phoenix.

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What Lice Taught Me About Evangelism

Last school year, my wife called to tell me she was picking up my second grader from school because she had lice.

iStock_LICE

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto®

My only previous knowledge of lice came from elementary school where anyone who had lice was considered “not cool,” and we assumed they never washed their hair. Well, my daughter washes her hair regularly, and I tend to think she’s pretty cool.

With new knowledge on lice from the school nurse, the delousing began.

It was a huge task. We vacuumed, sprayed, and washed everywhere lice might live and bagged things up—and that was just our household items. Then, we had to clean out the lice from the actual carrier (daughter) and work hard to make sure the other three kids and my wife didn’t get lice. (I was fairly safe. See picture on website for reason).

Here’s what I learned about lice that helped me think about sharing Christ:

  1. Lice don’t jump. You actually have to make contact. While the Spirit can, we can’t intuit Jesus to others from far away. We have to be close enough for contact. We have to do life with them and share Christ out of our common context. Like avoiding lice, we might be guilty of trying to steer away from those who are far from God in fear that we might catch their sinfulness (by the way, we’ve already caught sin, but we just have to accept the permanent antedate).
  2. Lice are effective at invading everything. We cleaned all of our surfaces. Multiple times. Bagged fifty stuffed animals. For being small, lice are hard to ignore. In appropriate ways, we should inundate people’s lives with our love for Christ. A passing glance will likely not do. We have to be present in all areas. People should have to work hard to ignore our presence and the Holy Spirit’s working.
  3. They don’t stop. They’re committed, those lice. It was multiple rounds of the delousing before they went away for good. A simple rebuff wasn’t going to deter them. What if we were as committed as lice? Only stopping our pursuit when the Holy Spirit convicted us?

Lice are highly contagious. I believe someone already took the clever title “Contagious Christianity,” but the author was right and we should be a part of the contagion.

Here’s to evangelism, lice-style.

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