God has brought me through unimaginably dark valleys since I became a pastor 8.5 years ago. Looking back, my greatest spiritual growth occurred when I didn’t quit or retreat out of those valleys but followed Him through the valleys…walking towards greater sacrificial love and service for others even though I didn’t want to, it hurt, or I felt scared.
“Self-Care” has become an important conversation in religious and non-religious spheres of society (I dislike the bifurcation, but you get the idea).
I replied to a marketing email from a former mega-church pastor who now coaches leaders. Surprisingly, he personally responded to me. As he learned a little about Renovation Community in our email back-and-forth, this man quickly understood my difficult ministry setting and encouraged me to rest. [Thanks Shane.]
In general, this increased conversation on Self-Care is excellent. No one, including pastors, brings glory to God when we’re burned out, irritable, and walking around with cloudy judgment due to an unsustainable pace. But Humanity has the potential to twist and abuse anything good into something unhealthy.
When we hyper-focus on “Self-Care” or disguise our selfishness behind it, we miss opportunities to grow through difficult “Others-Care”: a newborn; an emotional teenager; a sick loved one; aging parents; people in crisis; your struggling marriage.
During my dark valleys, God gave me biographies to read of long-dead Christian missionaries and saints. Often God led these people to serve others in faraway lands with limited medical care where the missionary’s loved ones died from illnesses easily treatable (or entirely avoidable) back in their home country. Stories from Christian predecessors who faithfully endured hardship nourished my soul. They also began to influence my personal and ministry decisions.
In “The Hiding Place,” Corrie Ten Boom recounts living in a Nazi female-only concentration camp with her anemic and sickly sister, Betsie, after being arrested for hiding Jews in their home.
When they first entered their detestable barracks at Ravensbrück, Corrie groaned,
***
““Betsie, how can we live in such a place?”
“Show us. Show us how.” It was said so matter of factly it took me a second to realize she was praying. More and more the distinction between prayer and the rest of life seemed to be vanishing for Betsie.
“Corrie!” she said excitedly. “He’s given us the answer! Before we asked, as He always does! In the Bible this morning. Where was it? Read that part again.”
“It was in 1 Thessalonians,” I said…”Comfort the frightened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all…”
It seemed written expressly to Ravensbrück
“Go on,” said Betsie “that wasn’t all.”
“Oh yes” “…to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray constantly. Give thanks in all circumstances. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus.”
***
Early as a pastor, I felt God pushing our church towards greater levels of sacrifice to help those who could never repay our church or (in crass Church Growth terms) provide a good “Return On Investment” for our energy. In other words, God challenged me to radically live out the 1 Thessalonians passage Corrie and Betsie read in their concentration camp.
This felt increasingly risky to our bottom-line. After all, most churches pay their bills out of church attenders’ offerings. And many financially stable families don’t want their children around smelly homeless men or unruly kids from hard places when they enter a church building.
Let’s face it, we feel most comfortable around people like us. Few of us naturally gravitate to social settings where we stand out too much. So when it comes picking a church home, wealthy people often flock to churches with other wealthy people. And poor people often flock to churches with other poor people.
My pastoral choices set Renovation Community on a trajectory that, once in motion, would be difficult to reverse. Loving people warned such a path was financially unsustainable…
‘I’d need to take another job, further reducing my time to to grow a church. The much-needed repairs throughout our massive facilities would not happen without enough middle-class attenders to pay for them. Our church’s tiny savings account would quickly disappear.’
Our time and money spent serving society’s marginalized spiked—a new Spanish-speaking church, a summer day camp and feeding program, temporary jobs for the homeless and jobless, housing the recently-evicted, investing in a new Asian-Indian ministry, providing below-market rental space for other ministries, hundreds of hours counseling struggling people, thousands and thousands of dollars given for rent and bill assistance, prescription purchases, car repairs, groceries, medical bills, etc.
Those loving people with dire warnings probably were right: a church like ours is not financially sustainable, not SELF-sustainable at least. Repair bills will never stop. Pipes, roofs, and air conditioners continue to fail. Decades-old carpet must eventually get replaced. Expensive appliances break. Utility rates climb. And if over half our church family can’t consistently pay basic bills, they aren’t likely to put large gifts in our offering boxes.
Since the Pandemic began, our Benevolence expenses have skyrocketed. More a/c units unexpectedly failed. Burst pipes flooded multiple rooms during February’s arctic blast (but our $20,000 deductible meant we repaired it all out-of pocket).
I have a private prayer journal. It’s an email account where I write my biggest prayers. I’ve recorded many in the last year about how much financial stress has overwhelmed me. “Lord, we can’t afford to pay for this building and pay for others’ needs too!”
With each new request for assistance from our community and within our church family, I’ve felt the stress rise inside me. ‘What if another a/c fails?’ ‘We need to renovate more rooms.’
But it was hard to say ‘No’ to honest eyes filled with tears.
Ravensbrück was almost exclusively a work camp that used political prisoners as slave labor. Corrie and Betsie had little risk of being executed like Jewish prisoners at extermination camps; their work was too valuable to the Nazi war machine. But the sisters endured incredibly high risks of dying from starvation, disease, or other illness related to malnutrition. In the camp’s last year of operation, around 80 sickly women died each day.
Corrie smuggled in a Bible to feed their weary souls. And she smuggled in a bottle of vitamin drops she hoped would stave off vitamin deficiencies, especially in her weak sister. But Betsie kept dispensing drops to fellow prisoners. Eventually, Corrie gave in to her sister’s generosity and shared the precious vitamins with others.
***
“Another strange thing was happening. The Davitamon bottle was continuing to produce drops. It scarcely seemed possible, so small a bottle, so many doses a day. Now, in addition to Betsie, a dozen others on our pier were taking it.
My instinct was always to hoard it-Betsie was growing so very weak! But others were ill as well. It was hard to say no to eyes that burned with fever, hands that shook with chill. I tried to save it for the very weakest-but even these soon numbered fifteen, twenty, twenty-five. . . .
And still, every time I tilted the little bottle, a drop appeared at the top of the glass stopper. It just couldn’t be! I held it up to the light, trying to see how much was left, but the dark brown glass was too thick to see through.
“There was a woman in the Bible,” Betsie said, “whose oil jar was never empty.” She turned to it in the Book of Kings, the story of the poor widow of Zarephath who gave Elijah a room in her home: “The jar of meal [flour] wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of Jehovah which he spoke by Elijah.”
Well, but wonderful things happened all through the Bible. It was one thing to believe that such things were possible thousands of years ago, another to have it happen now, to us, this very day. And yet it happened, this day, and the next, and the next, until an awed little group of spectators stood around watching the drops fall onto the daily rations of bread.”
***
I’ve included screenshots in this post of my honest, raw, and fear-filled prayers as well as pictures of recent gifts.
Someone placed a sealed envelope containing the first check in my hand last Saturday night. Although the givers wrote it October 31, the envelope addressed to Renovation Community and me landed in a different church’s offering plate. Counters then gave it to people who knew me, who then passed it on last week. The second large check arrived in the mail this week. The others have all arrived in the mail in the last few weeks.
Dear reader,
If God had never once given our church or my family one extra dollar in a special way, His faithfulness would not be diminished. If Renovation Community closed due to lack of funds, our God’s grace is sufficient.
Our Lord Jesus’ death on the cross reminds us He has given the greatest gift we need— Salvation.
Nevertheless, He often provides much more, including our daily bread. And in our church’s case, He’s provided for our financial needs like a vitamin bottle that always seems to have more.
One day a fellow Ravensbrück prisoner smuggled vitamins to Corrie after working in the camp hospital. But Corrie opened her same trusty vitamin drop bottle that night. She planned to finish it before starting the new contraband vitamins from her friend. But she found the bottle dry and empty. God stopped the miraculous supply on the same day He provided a different supply through human means.
Perhaps God will also stop Renovation Community’s spectacular ‘financial drops’ one day. If so, I trust He will provide in some other more common way.
Until He stops, you are welcome to gather round to ‘watch the drops fall’ on our daily bread.
He is faithful.
