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I finally talked to my pastor
I met with him this past Sunday , right before the evening service.
He had only been back from General Conference for a couple of days when a prominent member of our church had a major stroke. The lady in question is middle aged and not overweight at all. She had major hemorrhaging and was not expected to live. But God has raised that woman up this week and she is having a recovery that the doctors are calling miraculous!! Because of this situation, my pastor has been quite preoccupied, understandably.
Sunday morning he was milling around the fellowship hall with a few people. He gave me a hug and, in front of all present said, "Brother we missed you Wednesday night, and last Sunday night. Is anything wrong?" It got very quiet and all eyes were on me. i politely told him that we were fine, but that there were some things hindering us from getting to church as often as we liked. He invited me to come by that afternoon.
I have explained our financial situation to him before, but I do not think he can wrap his mind around the fact that one of his ministers is literally having to stretch his gasoline to this extent. In the meeting I explained to him that we were not only missing out on church, we are also missing out on life. I tried to sound positive and to not sound "woe is me". Truthfully, his tithing sermon of a few weeks back never crossed my mind. It would have been a good chance for him to broach the subject as I have fallen a little behind this month, especially with his apparent view that all financial hardship is linked to giving. But he never mentioned it.
I then broached the subject of us possibly moving to the other church, and pondered aloud that God might be using our circumstances to push us in that direction. I also shared the seemingly logical reasons for such a move. He stared at me blankly and finally said,
"Well, I hate to lose anybody, but I don't want to stand in the way if it is God's will"
He then explained how that the other church had started as a daughter work of our church, but that he had not visited there in almost 10 years.
That was it. No opinion. No encouragement. No advice. No mentoring. Nada. Yet, nothing negative either.
I told him we had not made a definite decision.
With it getting close to Christmas, my wife is wanting to wait until the first of the year so our daughters can be in the Christmas program. Furthermore, my wife is not sold on the other church yet. She says that the pastor seems nice, but that his wife reminds her of Mrs. Olson on Little House on the Prairie. I know it sounds like my wife is being picky, but I want her to feel at peace about this move.
Thank you for praying for us and please continue to do so. On a positive note, i had a VERY good job interview last week. They called me in for fingerprinting as well. The Human Resources manager said she received very positive feedback from the two managers who interviewed me. I'm just waiting to hear something now. This would be a MAJOR career opportunity.
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