What I Learned From The Churches I Served: Last

FCBC Sanctuary We Built

This is the last in a series of Blogs about what I learned from the churches I served. I began in Kilgore, Texas, passed through La Porte, Texas, had a short wander in the wilderness of Boulder, Colorado and my last posting was my sojourn in Beaumont, Texas.

Once I left Beaumont I moved to the Fairmont Central Baptist Church in Pasadena, Texas. This church was I believe God's way of providing us with an affirmation that we were in His will and synchronized with His timing.

This church had gone through a difficult few years. Their founding pastor, Paul Lee had left after many years and he was followed by a novice whose real goal was to have a comfortable place to await his appointment as a Southern Baptist Missionary to Israel. I don’t know much about the dynamics of their ministries but I do know that when I arrived on the scene I thought I had returned to the very first church I pastored.

I spoke with their committee and they told me that they had suffered a number of setbacks and lost a lot of their membership. In fact, the committee said, “We don’t even know if we’ll be able to pay you what we are offering.”  That was scary since it was about half what I had been making and they had no parsonage. However, maybe believing in the carrot and the stick approach to motivation, they added that “But we promise if the church grows we will make up the difference between what we can pay now and what we should pay if the money were there.” And so with that commitment I began my ministry at the Fairmont Central Baptist Church (from now on shall be called FCBC).  That relationship would last more than 15 years.

Let me quickly add that the church did grow and they did keep that promise to make up the difference. One Sunday at the end of the service one of our Finance Committee members stepped forward before I offered the benediction and announced that they were raising my salary to the level it should have been in the beginning and then handed me an envelope. In that envelope was a check in an amount that made up what I had not been paid up to that point.  It is nice when folks actually do what they promise and it blessed us beyond our ability to express our gratitude.

I’ll not take time to recount all the things we did while at FCBC.  Truth is, I was able to take every thing I had learned at all the other places and put them into practice at FCBC. My goal from the beginning was to have a strong pulpit, great fellowship, deepening spiritual maturity, major international mission awareness and that through these to become as Rick Warren might say, “A Purpose Driven Church.”  I believe we succeeded.

An interesting side note was that if you read my last posting you know that at Woodland Baptist

Charles & Janice Ellis worked with us both

at the church and in Partnership Mission Projects

Charles is a Cowboy Poet and Chuck Wagon Cook

Church I had as many as 22 Deacons however at FCBC I had no Deacons. Oh we had a few ordained men but none of them wanted to be a special decision making group. Don’t misunderstand, they did the work of a Deacon and more. What they didn’t want was to be a formal organization. So, I just used them as my counselors and would meet with them informally over coffee.

You might ask what I learned from that experience. Well it was this, it doesn’t make any difference what your organizational structure is as to whether your church can grow. The real key was that the people “had a mind to work”. . . . and work they did. Like the people at Kilgore they undertook every project with enthusiasm; Like the people in La Porte they reveled in fellowship so that every gathering whether worship or ministry they made it fun; and like the folks in Beaumont they they had a vision for missions.

However, it was also at FCBC that I learned that not everyone who praises you is your friend. I learned that not everyone who is on your team is a loyal player. I also learned that there are some people who support you only as long as you are feeding their particular ideas.  As much as I hate to admit it some people are all about ego.

In the beginning work and ministry were fun and exciting. Ron Asbury was again my minister of music. I love this man. He understood my goals and tailored his music ministry to support where we wanted to go as a church. He worked hard and he was loyal. It was such a joy to be together again. Once Ron left the man who followed was a showman but he was not genuine and he was not transparent and in my book most damning of all he was not loyal. But in spite of this the church grew to the point I found myself in another building program. This one was nearly twice the size of the last because it included a wonderful worship center, office suit and educational space.

Our Youth At A Bible Study

In many ways (except for the music ministry) FCBC was a redo of what had taken place at the church in Beaumont. They even took up the Partnership Mission and carried it further. By the time the Partnership with Australia ended I was Directing all the work in Queensland. 

In a sense though we had a different name, made up of different people and located in a different community FCBC was God's way of essentially keeping me in the same church I had left. WE became over time the church that should have been and I believe would have been had we remained in Beaumont.

Then, in 2005 and fifteen years after coming the FCBC I had a major heart attack. My doctors said that I needed extended rest because at the time they believed that I had lost 30% of my heart muscle use. That eventually proved not to be the case but at the time it is what we thought we knew. So I resigned and moved to Dripping Springs where I spent the next two years recuperating.

Epilogue:
After about a year I was leading the music at the First Baptist Church of Dripping Springs who had

Lester Collins when I served with him

in Dripping Springs, Texas

lost their facility to a fire. As they reorganized I worked with their Personnel Committee in drafting a new set of Bi-laws and Personnel Policy.  Most significantly for me I got to work with one the men in Baptist life and ministry that I respected and admired, Lester Collins. Here is an example of why I admired him so much. Lester was nearly 90 when he preached this sermon.

In 2008 I moved back to Beaumont and eventually became a member of the church I had formally served as pastor (Woodland Baptist). The very church where I believed God intended for me to be when I came to the end of my ministry. Not many of the people who were there when I was pastor and a part of our story are there now.

A Few Lessons Learned along the way:

1. I suppose that the single most important lesson I learned from these four churches is that when it comes to leading a church into a growth mode is that no matter what our plans and no matter how hard we labor “Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”  In building His church the Lord uses people with all their abilities and shortcomings but in the end whatever is built is done “'Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,' saith the Lord.”

2. The next thing I learned was that while the preaching of the Gospel is foolishness to men it is the power of God unto salvation. We must return to the primacy of preaching in our churches. “My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” For this reason I adopted the philosophy of the pulpit in which I saw my responsibility being to make sure whatever I preached was true to the Scripture and then step aside and let God’s Spirit do what only He can do. Never try and make something happen during the invitation just step aside and let it happen and give God thanks for allowing you to share in the experience.

3. Another lesson was the the people had to be unified. The whole body must share a vision for where God wants them to go; they must share a common mission on how to get there; and they must have a solid bond of fellowship. All of this must be real and felt and not just official. We have been to many a “fellowship” where there was no “fellowship!” 

Fellowship means they are together in the Lord but that is expressed by how they are together in the world. Fellowship is essential to growth. The affection people share for one another must be real, it must be felt and it must be constantly nourished.  We must continually remind ourselves that there is no such thing as quality time without quantity of time. 

4. It is essential that we not over praise anyone but always encourage and thank them. Praise goes to God. Somewhere along the way of active pastoral ministry instead of saying “Thanks for your help” I started saying “I just praise the Lord that He lead you to take on this ministry. He really used you in a wonderful way to bless us all” or some similar statement.

5. The pastor must have not only the approval of God but he must also have the support of the people as a whole. I used to tell members of the church who opposed some idea I had to just wait . . . sooner or later I’ll be presenting something you will like. In this vein, unless the pastor is inept or outright unrepentantly immoral he should be supported.

6. Somewhere along the way I learned to give the task to the person who was complaining about what needed to be done. I remember telling one man, "It is clear to me that you have studied this more than I have and that you are really concerned because you were able to muster the courage to come through that door and confront me about our needing to do something about it. I think you'd be the perfect person to take that on."  It worked wonders more than once.