W. Davd Phillips

I turned 37 last Sunday (June 4). I am just about at mid-life. But this past week I’ve seen a couple of posts by great people who are looking back at their life a bit a reflecting on where they are compared to where they thought they would be. That introspection is necessary from time to time and is difficult to do. Then to share it with everyone in the world to see; that takes guts, courage and security. What I appreciate about what they shared is that we’ve looked to a different level of success than scripture. Also, please don’t take this as a criticism of anyone’s post as they look at their own life. This is just my little rant for the day.

So I took a few minutes today – actually like an hour – and thought about my life as well. Here’s are my thoughts. First, if you don’t read all of this, you’d think I was bit proud. I have never failed at anything. I have failed, but I have always been able to get up and go after things over and over until I have accomplished the task, be it school or a job. There are things that I haven’t been good at, and realizing those I have changed course. It was like that growing up in school. I was put in a special class for people who were gifted and one day a week we would sit around and come up with new board games, or (and to this day I still do this) take a few shapes on a piece of paper and make a picture out of them. It was to challenge us in ways a typical classroom setting couldn’t.

This lack of failure isn’t because I had it easy. I always seemed to get the hardest teachers. I always got the ones everybody dreaded, even in Seminary when I had a choice. I remember to this day the feeling of being told that I may have leukemia.

Life has always seemed to give me the difficult situations. For instance, when I was in college I did student ministry at this small rural church. I had been there about 6-8 weeks when the pastor resigned to go to another church. We had 3 part-time staff leading the church over the next 6 months. I was a full-time student doing part-time ministry. The church then asked me to preach every other week as well. When the worship guy preached every other week, I led the music. At the end of those six months, the deacons asked all of us to leave. I was 20.

I pastored a church in Louisiana for a year after seminary where I was told that blacks and whites were not supposed to worship together (according to scripture) and where two young kids we led to the Lord didn’t really know what they were doing because their mother was the “woman at the well”. After a week of prayer and fasting I resigned.

I’ve been accepted into 2 PhD programs, one in preaching and the other in Communications, and never got to start them because God moved us.

I helped start 3 internet companies that failed after I left. Many weeks I put in 100 hours/week and I was told by a doctor one day that I had 3 choices: change careers, cut back on the ours, or start buying all the life insurance I could because my wife would be a young widow.

My wife was a children’s minister in Alabama for a year. The senior pastor lied about Brenna and the work she was doing and they asked her to resign. For 9 months we had no income. And we had no income because God wouldn’t let us work – not even at McDonalds. One day while praying during this time, God spoke to me, in sort of a Fred Samford voice, “Dummy, you cannot provide for your family. That’s my responsibility”. Wouldn’t it be cool to hear God speak like Fred Samford?

I got mad at God during this time. Really mad. I told him that He has never really let me do the things I wanted to do, i.e. PhD work, pastor a growing church. I yelled, had a few fits, cried a lot as I watched my wife weep. Then I just gave up fighting. It was doing no good anyway!

God then opened up ministry here in Delaware. It is a great place to do ministry. He has done some pruning for which I am thankful, so things are one again tight and tough. But He has shown me again that it is His church and He must build it. That’s my mantra right now. When things get tight, I remember something I heard Mark Lowery say: It sure beats Hell! Still, though, there are days when I wonder if I am failing in the one thing I’ve always wanted to do – at least since I was 15!

We all have our stories. Yours may be worse than mine. I haven’t cornered the market on a tough life.

I turned 37 last Sunday (June 4). And as I today look back over my life, I am reminded of the words of a song by Truth back in the late ‘80’s called “So Far, So Good”. The chorus goes like this:

We have come so far
You have been so good
When I trace the road that I have traveled
I’ve got to tell you Lord
I look at where we are
And I see where I could have been
I need to say again, you’ve been so good,
Who would have guessed that we would come so far!

Is it how I dreamed my life would be? No. Would I change the hurt and the pain and struggle for anything? As of today, I can honestly say “No!”. It’s not because I’m a glutton for punishment. It’s because I know that he indeed loves me and that He is forming into His own image.

Far too many of us want the success without the pain. We want Blackaby’s mantle without his tears. We want Warren’s PEACE plan without paying the price for peace. Most of us end up like Mark Driscoll’s early years. Are we really willing to go through what he did to be where he is?

*[UPDATE...I SAID SOMETHING WRONG HERE. IT IS NOW CORRECTED]*

Ministry is tough. Check these recent stats:

* Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.

* Fifty percent of pastors’ marriages will end in divorce.

* Eighty percent of pastors and eighty-four percent of their spouses feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastors.

* Fifty percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.

* Eighty percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years.

* Seventy percent of pastors constantly fight depression.

* Almost forty percent polled said they have had an extra-marital affair since beginning their ministry.

* Seventy percent said the only time they spend studying the Word is when they are preparing their sermons.

Pastors’ Wives

* Eighty percent of pastors’ spouses feel their spouse is overworked.

* Eighty percent of pastors’ spouses wish their spouse would choose another profession.

* The majority of pastor’s wives surveyed said that the most destructive event that has occurred in their marriage and family was the day they entered the ministry.

I wonder how many of us realize that Paul was beaten and stoned? Did Peter get the ez-pass into heaven? How about John the Baptist? Have we forgotten that there is the fellowship of suffering, which Paul longed to know? Our grandparents know what pain and suffering is. Our parents know it less. We know it even less than they.

Shouldn’t we accept it that life for those called to lead dumb animals (sheep) might be painful? We might be more willing to accept it if the ones held up to us weren’t always the ones with large churches and things look so good. Unfortunately, I wonder if Jesus would even show up in many of those churches.

I’ll finish my rant with this: Todd Agnew has a song out that has put things in perspective for me. It’s become a point of challenge for me. If you can get it, download the mp3. The song is entitled, My Jesus.

There are too many people in this world who are hurting. And I’m tired of living for success and popularity. To know Jesus and the fellowship of his sufferings! To know and live like “My Jesus”. I hope that’s your longing…

Which Jesus do you follow

Which Jesus do you serve

If Ephesians says to imitate Christ,

Why do you look so much like the world

My Jesus bled and died

He spent His time with thieves and liars

He loved the poor and accosted the arrogant

So which one do you want to be

Blessed are the poor in spirit,

or do we pray to be blessed with the wealth of this land

Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness

Or do we ache for another taste of this world of shifting sands

‘Cause My Jesus bled and died for my sins

He spent His time with thieves and sluts and liars

He loved the poor and accosted the comfortable

So which one do you want to be

Who is this that You follow

This picture of the American dream

If Jesus was here would you walk right by on the other side

Or fall down and worship at His holy feet

Pretty blue eyes and curly brown hair and a clear complexion

Is how you see Him as He dies for Your sins

But the Word says He was battered and scarred

Or did you miss that part

Sometimes I doubt we’d recognize Him

My Jesus bled and died

He spent His time with thieves and the least of these

He loved the poor and accosted the comfortable

So which one do you want to be

‘Cause My Jesus would never be accepted in my church

The blood and dirt on His feet might stain the carpet

But He reaches for the hurting and despises the proud

I think He’d prefer Beale St. to the stained glass crowd

But I know that He can hear me if I cry out loud

I want to be like my Jesus

I want to be like my Jesus

I want to be like my Jesus

I want to be like my Jesus

Not a poster child for American prosperity, but like my Jesus

You see I’m tired of living for success and popularity

I want to be like my Jesus

but I’m not sure what that means to be like You Jesus

Cause You said to live like You, love like You

but then You died for me

Can I be like You Jesus?

I want to be like you Jesus

I want to be like my Jesus

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Ministry, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.