Despond

I don’t know if it was passing the big 4-0 mark or knowing that my public ministry was half over, perhaps a combination of the two, but I found myself wading into retrospection.   Am I making a difference?  How am I doing at reaching my goals and fulfilling my dreams?

Try as I might, I couldn’t shake the questions, so I pushed the keyboard aside, leaned back in my chair, propped my feet on the desk and began taking inventory.  On one side of my mind I listed accomplishments, on the other side failures.  Does God really care about this stuff? Rebuking myself, I sat upright, and got back to work. 

But the questions wouldn’t stop bombarding me, so I decided to turn to my Brain Trust for counsel.  Once a month, three retired ministers from our congregation meet with me to discuss ministry in general and our church in particular.  I call them the Brain Trust because all of them have earned doctorates.

I put two questions on the agenda, what are your greatest accomplishments? And what are your biggest regrets in ministry?

When the two older ministers spoke, I could tell they’d made peace with both sides of their ledgers long ago. Not so with Fenton, who is freshly retired.  When he spoke, he had a distant look in his eye; I could tell his thoughts were from current analysis.

In 1977, Fenton stopped selling insurance and investments at thirty-seven to launch Tarzana Baptist Chapel with five people. My general expectancy was it would take about two or three years to grow a church of three or four hundred, Fenton said.  He planned to use this launch to become a mother church or to build a network of satellite churches throughout the Los Angeles Basin.  It didn’t turn out that way.

Tarzana Baptist Chapel constituted as a church five years later with 135 members.  It never grew any larger; today it is gasping for life.

Once when I was irritated and complained about the fact that the church wasn’t as big as it ought to be because wed done all the church growth stuff, Fenton said, God reminded me that He never promised me a big church.

But Fenton had promised himself one. 

With a doctorate in Church Growth from Fuller Theological Seminary hanging on his wall, Fenton knew church growth principles, and he applied them.  But the church wasn’t growing.  Why?

       He’d always thought that if a guy couldn’t grow a church he was either incompetent or carnal.  He didn’t want to consider himself either.

The work was tough.  Jews, Fenton’s target group, aren’t the easiest people to introduce to their Messiah, and besides, he had a barn door in the back of the church.  As a general rule, they had to reach three new members to net an increase of one. 

Some, like John, left to attend one of the large churches in the area.  Fenton poured hours into John, a wannabe director from Australia, who lived out of his van.  In time, Fenton brought him to faith in Christ and helped him get squared away.  About the time Fenton was seeing real fruit in John’s life, he left Tarzana to go to a church with a drama program and a theater.

The cycle repeated itself.  Fenton would do the hard work of cultivating, witnessing, and baptizing the converts-only to lose them to the great choirs, fantastic youth and magnificent drama programs of larger churches.

It was frustrating. 

If Fenton didn’t lose them to a church down the road, the transient nature of Los Angeles would claim them.  One year 51 out of 110 members moved away.

That year, Fenton crashed.  It was almost like a death, Fenton said, the church was never the same again.  As hard as that year was, he didn’t hit bottom.  Not yet.

But he would.

He’d watched God transform Judy, a nurse who was addicted to prescription drugs, cocaine and heroin.   She didn’t need any twelve-step programs; God delivered Judy from her addictions when He saved her.  Fenton baptized her, and she was doing well.   Then it happened. 

And when it did it was three times worse than before.

Fenton lost track of her, I don’t know whether she’s dead or alive.  Fenton said. 

Judy’s lapse haunted him.  I should have spotted this.  He thought, I should have been more cautious and warned her. I should have paid more attention to her. 

Fenton was a better missionary/evangelist than a shepherd.  Because of his failings, he began losing sight of the value of his life and his work.  Despond-despair and cynicism, cloaked in depression, shrouded him.

That event, and others, led to an overriding sense that he wasn’t effective enough.  Fenton came to believe this congregation wasn’t going where it should go, and he couldn’t take them there.  He went to the Lord in prayer, pleading for answers.  All he heard back was, For Tarzana to grow it needs a new vision.  Fenton threw himself on the sword and resigned as Pastor to become a full time missionary to the Jews.

His plan was to focus on personal evangelism and to awaken churches to the needs of the Jews.  However, he had a hard time motivating pastors to follow up on the Jews he introduced to the Messiah, and his speaking engagements at churches were too few to make a lasting impact.

That night, Fenton stopped short of saying he regretted going into the ministry, but he gave me a strong impression that he had mixed emotions about whether he had fulfilled his calling. We didn’t talk about it again for months, not until we were returning home from a Church Growth Conference.

Fenton was driving.  Chaplain Scott Sterling, one of Fenton’s converts that went into the ministry, rode shotgun, and I relaxed in the back seat, eavesdropping.  For thirty minutes or so, they discussed the good old days at Tarzana and some of the people that surrendered to the ministry-about a dozen.

I couldn’t believe it. 

I interrupted their conversation, Fenton; do you remember the conversation we had in the Brain Trust meeting a couple of months ago where you talked about your regrets in ministry?  Sure, Fenton said, what about it?  Let me get this right, I continued, you pastored a church for ten years that produced a dozen ministers like Scott here and you question your effectiveness as a pastor? 

It got quiet.

In my opinion, I continued, you’ve had a wonderful, world-changing ministry, and as your Pastor, I want to bless you for the work you’ve done and release you from the guilt you carry because you never built a large church.

Despond blinded Fenton to his ultimate value-being a servant of God whom He used for His purposes.  Not to build large churches, but to build a missionary force of authentic believers.

That night, I decided that I would fight the temptation to worry so much about my goals, accomplishments, failures and shortcomings.  Whether I fulfill my dreams or not, I pray that I will be faithful.  Like Fenton was.

After all, isn’t that what’s really important?