When God calls us to go to a new place, He first calls us to leave. Leaving precedes going. For instance, when God called Abram in Genesis 12:1 to go to a new land, he was first being asked by God to leave his homeland—to leave comfort, certainty, familiarity, security and the known for the unknown, unfamiliar, uncomfortable and uncertain. The call for Abram was to leave and go, but it would take faith. There is no getting around it: Following God’s leading to new seasons, assignments and places is a journey of faith.
On October 27, Sandy and I said goodbye to a place and people whom we loved deeply and had been committed to for over 16 years, Beaverton Foursquare Church. I’m not a good “leaver,” I’ve discovered. Leaving takes certainty, obedience and surrender. Leaving risks misunderstanding and potentially disappointing others.
Having pastored three different congregations in the past 28 years, I’ve always struggled with leaving because in the natural, it felt like I was abandoning or forsaking the very people whom I was called to love, serve and partner with. However, in seasons of transition, we discover that Jesus is faithful to His people and to His mission; He never blesses one place at the expense of another. In a sense, transitions remind us that we are all interim, and none of us is indispensable. That reality keeps us humble and dependent on Jesus, understanding that we are simply stewards of that which doesn’t belong to us.
As Sandy and I have embarked on this interim period as president-elect, we have completed the leaving portion and are now fully engaged in the going season, even though we won’t fully arrive at the new destination until Sept. 1, 2020. Until then, we view this transitional journey as a gift, and to make the make the most it, we are currently involved in three points of focus:
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