I could not believe the call I received from the placement director at my seminary. A small Free-Will Baptist Church needed a pastor – not a youth pastor or an assistant pastor, but the only pastor! I was excited about the opportunities to preach the gospel there. Also it seemed that this church fit with my theology. I was an Arminian. I believed that a person freely chooses to follow Christ, and he can freely choose not to believe in Christ. And the members seemed to favor the charismatic movement. Also, a very bizarre thing happened to me that confirmed to me that God wanted me there.
Previously, when I was still going to seminary, I was involved in a Christian lay ministry for singles in Chicago. It was called the Hub. That year, the state of Illinois offered personalized license plates for free. So I decided my license plate would be “HUB”. Evidently, someone else had “HUB”, so the state gave me the license plate “HUB 133”. I think those numbers were just arbitrarily chosen by the state. When I accepted the pastorate at this small church, they rented for me a very small house – it was more of a shack. It was a very humble abode. But still, I was excited that my pastoral career was off and running. It was hard back then. The church was extremely poor. The church existed from week to week. All they could afford to give me as a salary was $50 a week, and a place to live. That barely covered my food and gas for my car.
After six months of being there, I gave directions to a friend of mine on how to get to my little house. I told him to look for my car with the license plates “HUB 133”. I then gave him the address to my house. “Wow!” said my friend “Did you plan it that way?” I did not know what he talked about. But then it hit me. My address was “133 Hubbard Street”. I had received my license plates a year earlier – HUB 133. And the address of my house was 133 Hubbard! I did not how to take this except as a sign from God! I was exactly where God wanted me to be!
But that did not mean that this church and I were a match made in heaven. The church was very fundamentalist. They believed that no real Christian would ever drink wine. They also had a touch of racism in them. I remember once how someone asked me about a white person marrying a black person. I said there was nothing wrong about that. That raised some eyebrows!
My friends told me to leave this church. But where else would I go? I was 30, single, and no other church seemed to want me. Anyway, I thought maybe I can slowly bring them around. It seemed like it was working. The church doubled in size. But that is still less than 100 people. I was concerned that the Free-Will Baptist Church was a fundamentalist denomination, and that it would be difficult to grow more than this as long as we stayed affiliated with that denomination.
Then one day the pastor at the nearby Evangelical Free Church, a very large church, asked if our church would want to convert to the Free Church. He said if it did, he would bring some members down our way to help us to build it. I was excited! I presented the idea to our members, and they voted yes. For the first time, I saw light at the end of the tunnel! I could see that our church growing to 300+ members. I could see the church being able to afford to give me a salary that is enough that I could find myself a wife and raise a family.
At the same time this was going on, I did meet someone. She, too, was from a Baptist church. The only problem was that she was divorced, with an 8-year-old daughter from that marriage. When I found out that she was divorced, the first thing I did was ask the leaders of my church if my dating a divorcee would be a problem. They said that this was no problem, providing that she divorced her husband because he was cheating on her. We already had members in our church who divorced for this reason. So I continued my relationship with her. She would visit me at my church, and my church openly welcomed her. Finally, I popped the question! And she said yes! This was a dream come true. The church was switching to a much better denomination so it looked like it would be a fairly large, established church and I would finally get married, and even have a daughter immediately. Also, this is 1984. The Cubs were the best team in baseball. Everything seemed to going my way!
That is when things turned sour. First of all, the Cubs blew it in the playoffs. Could this have been an omen? And when everyone in my church found out that I was marrying a divorcee, there was one woman who objected. I did not think much of it. After all, it was just one woman who objected. But the pastor at the large Evangelical Free Church got involved in it. He called for a meeting so that we can come to a resolution. I thought this was great.
So my fiancé and I went to this meeting with the leaders of my small church, moderated by this pastor. It turned out that this pastor was not a moderator at all. He took the side woman who opposed our betrothal. And he convinced the others that divorce and remarriage is wrong under any circumstances! The meeting turned out to be about only one thing – when I was going to submit my resignation.
This I then did. I thought of staying there and fighting it, but that did not seem to be the Christian thing to do. I knew if I stayed, it would cause a split in the church. And besides, my fiancé’s pastor liked me, and he started to talk to me about me being his assistant pastor. So it looked like this is where God was now leading me, except for one thing. My fiancé prayed about our relationship. And no matter how hard she prayed, she could not have an inner peace about, not until she took the ring off! So that was it! She said it was not God’s will for us to be together – just one week after my resignation. And her pastor now said that he did think it be good for me to join his staff under these circumstances.
So now I was without my pastorate, plus I was a victim of a broken engagement. I had nowhere to go but back to live with my parents. What was I going to do now? I went to my Assemblies of God pastor. He said that leaving a church for a woman and then the woman then dumping me showed at least on my side that I was capable of make some unwise decisions. I cannot disagree with him on that! He said it would be hard to find a pastorate. That seemed to be more evident as I tried to find another pastorate. I tried everywhere. But I could not find anything. I remembered how it took two years for me to find a pastorate after I graduated from seminary. Now, it seemed like it would be harder. Not only that, but this was probably the lowest I ever was spiritually. I was intensely depressed, even contemplating suicide. I could not pray. Every time I tried to pray, only hatred and depression came out. I was mad at the members of my church. They were like a family to me. I could not believe they would force me to resign. I was mad at the Free Church pastor. And I was mad at my ex-fiancé. But most of all, I was mad at God. I thought God gave a sign that this church was his will for me. What happened? I was afraid I could no longer trust God with my life. I was not in good shape to be a minister.
So I decided to no longer to be a minister.
