When It's Time to Move

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Do not despise your situation. In it you must act, suffer, and conquer. From every point on earth, we are equally near to heaven and the infinite.
Henri Amiel

Changing churches provides a unique opportunity to re-evaluate your work style in light of God's goal for your ministry. One is never more open to changes in style than at the change points of life. The unique feature of the ministry workload is its open-ended nature. There is far more to do than time to do it in. So the pastor is faced with questions such as: What's enough? What's lazy? What's "working too hard"? The answers can determine not just how you adjust to a new church but your prospects for the long haul. James Berkley, pastor of Dixon (California) Community Church at the time he wrote the following chapter, remembers his experiences with those questions. "There was a time in my first year when I thought I wasn't going to make it. The senior pastor called me into his office and said, 'The youth group really isn't going like we expect it to.' Suddenly, I had visions of washing out of the ministry right there. It came as a shock. I didn't realize things weren't going well. "I had to reassess what I was doing. I asked myself if I was working as hard as I could. I got input from other people who knew me well. They thought I could do more. So I knuckled down and worked harder. It made me be much more thoughtful about what I was doing. "I wasn't lazy. It's just that I didn't know what was expected. The truth is, I was there three years, and the youth groups were all right, but they never took off like you read about in books. There was always that edge of worry lurking somewhere. "But as I continued to work in ministry, I realized another side to the productivity ...

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