Sunday, November 8, 2009
Getting Ready!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Starting a New Journey
Tears streamed down the face of a 9 year-old boy. He knew that something was missing in his life. He wasn't a terrible kid; but yet he knew that he was a sinner. Petrified in the pew, this little boy could not go forward and pray at the altar as some where now doing. He was too scared; too afraid that people would think he didn't understand. So quietly he sat there, but deep within his soul things were far from quiet. That still small voice kept whispering to him his need of Jesus in his life. So on October 14, 1990, I accept Christ as my savior.
A few years later, when I was 12, I attended church camp. During the last evening service on Friday night I felt God dealing with me again. This time the Holy Spirit was calling me to be a preacher. “A preacher? I'm just 12.” When I got home from that week I began to ask my mom about it. In her wisdom she said I should just keep that between the two of us. She was afraid it was just some emotional experience and it may go away, but it never did.
When I was 16, I went to my pastor and took a deep breath and said as quickly as possible, “I don't know if I'm doing this right, but I think God has called me to be a preacher.” He smiled and hugged me. He said he felt that God had been dealing with me about this but said, “If God has truly called you, you won't be happy doing anything else; but if he as not called you, you will be miserable.”
I then began the long arduous process of becoming an elder in the United Methodist Church (a process I am only now about to finish). Most of my time in this 12 year process has been waiting. Waiting until I graduated high school, then college, and finally seminary. But all through the waiting God has been using me. I began preaching when I was 16, filling in for pastors when they needed some one to supply in their absence. This was a wonderful experience to prepare me in the future.
In the fall of 1999, I enrolled at Asbury College with the clear objective from God, or so I thought: go to college and become a United Methodist pastor in Kentucky. I loved college. It has been one of the best experiences of my life. I was strengthened and challenged in my faith. I heard of the need for holiness and sanctification (which I had heard in my church but not to this degree). I knew there was more for me, but I didn't know when or how it would happen.
While in college I found myself becoming close friends with several MK's associated with WGM. I had heard of WGM before because my home church supported Marsha Hartley at Taylor Christian School. During the fall of my senior year and I was invited to go on a Task Force trip to Argentina. I immediately said, “No. God's called me to be a pastor in Kentucky. I don't need to go.” Funny how we decide things so quickly without consulting God. God wanted me to go. So I signed up and was really excited. I couldn't wait to go.
The day before we left I went to see mentor of mine. We talked about my upcoming trip and then he looked straight at me and said, “Charlie, are you sold out to Jesus Christ?”
“Sold out to Christ?!?!” I was shocked. I knew what he meant in theory, but in practice definitely not. How could he ask such a question? I would be attending seminary in fall and take my first pastorate that June. I've given my whole life to God, I know about the Bible. I'm going into ministry as my full time vocation, and yet those words continued to echo in my ears.
Later that night, I was at the commissioning service for the Task Force team leaving for Argentina. I was excited, but no sooner was I seized by great fear. “What on earth am I doing? I don't know Spanish. I never really traveled outside the United States, and now I'm going to a completely different continent. I can't do this,” I thought.
This sense of dread gripped a hold of my heart. As we were closing the commissioning service we celebrated Holy Communion. I was shaking as I reached for the bread and dipped it into the chalice. However, when I put the bread in my mouth something wonderful happened. I heard that still small voice again! “This is how much I love you!” And in that instant a flood of grace filled my heart and soul. I was no longer afraid, I was safe in Christ. It did not matter what would happen I knew I was completely in God's care. I was sold out to Jesus Christ!
My life has never been the same since that moment in the student center and that trip to Argentina. I went thinking it would be a good experience; I had no idea it would be such a life changing and life challenging experience.
I entered seminary and the pastorate just as I had planned, but things were different. I knew God was calling me in a different direction. At first I would dismiss it. “These are just crazy thoughts,” I told myself. “You a missionary? Just crazy.” But the thoughts would not stop. God would not let me go. I began to have dreams where I was preaching in Spanish. Yet I kept dismissing it, running farther and farther away.
Doors became open that seemed rather ironic, yet I know it was God. I had moved 30 miles south of Wilmore to live in a parsonage after my first year of seminary. This house was in the middle of no where, and within six months a family from Mexico moved in across the street from me. We became good friends, and I learned a lot and helped them out when I could with getting their drivers' licenses and taking the citizenship test. Then, two miles from my church a United Methodist Hispanic congregation began to meet. I started to help at this church thinking God would be satisfied with this type of cross-cultural ministry, but he wanted more.
I was eventually appointed nine miles from my hometown. I was back home, but home has become a miserable place. It is not because positive things are not happening with my church and the community. It is actually quite the opposite, and yet this is NOT where I am suppose to be. Then one day a friend, who knew I had been struggling with a call to cross-cultural missions, said to me: “You are hiding behind ordination and your church.” It was true. She was not telling me anything that I did not know. I have been running from God. I have been running for six years. Unlike Jonah, I did not run completely away from God. And unlike Peter, I did not return to my old way of living. Instead, I thought I could run from God and hide in the church. Maybe then God would see how much more I would be needed in Kentucky than I would be somewhere else. But trying to live outside of God's will is a terrible place to find one's self. No matter how much good I can do, I cannot be happy or satisfied in my spirit as long as I am running from God. Home is an agonizing place to be when God desires something else for your life. I am tired of running. I am ready to answer the call to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” (Matthew 28:19a).