On Leaving

I left.

I moved my family across the country at what looks like the drop of a hat to most people. This changed my reality entirely. I was pastoring, and now I’m not. I lived in Maine, and now I don’t. I had a familiar circle of close friends nearby, and now it’s a different (though growing and wonderful!) circle. Everything changed. And the effects of my shift weren’t isolated — my family, of course, has made this move with me, and the church I lovingly pastored, of course, did not.

I didn’t really give most folks outside of my church family a ton of explanation, since a) most people outside my immediate circles weren’t too interested, or b) the ones who did care didn’t really have a good chunk of time to hear a long, long story that was years in the making. And I certainly didn’t give a long or detailed explanation on social media as things unfolded; not only am I increasingly disillusioned and disappointed with what social media brings out of people, but I also don’t think my story is nearly scandalous enough for most folks — I imagine as soon as they read I didn’t cheat on my wife or steal from the church coffers or commit some heinous crime, it wouldn’t be salacious enough anyway.

After all, our culture (especially our church culture) typically operates on the unspoken assumption that people generally move because they are unhappy, because they failed, or because there’s a scandal of some kind; further, this assumption is exponentially applied in the case of a pastor resigning, to be sure. But in this more-personal-than-usual post, I’d like to explain why I did all of this, and I’m happy to report that the reasons have nothing to do with the above assumptions. So if you’re up for a little bit of a journey in prose, let’s go!

Well, then — why?

Well, like I said, it’s a long story — to properly tell it, I want to first tell you about three other times that God has simply…moved me. Let me begin by stating clearly that I don’t think God works identically in any two people. And I think that holds up intellectually and rationally, since no two people are the same; a Creator knows his creations right down to their DNA, and even more so, a Shepherd knows his sheep. So I don’t think God would deal with any two people exactly the same, and I certainly don’t expect my experience to resonate with everyone — it will be too “mystical” for some and yet quite ordinary or even mild for others.

The first brief account is how I was moved to Maine from where I lived prior, which was Oklahoma City. I was sitting in church in the balcony section, listening to my pastor preach, when it sort of “hit me,” like a mix between a bright idea and a message from someone else. It wasn’t a voice or anything like that (I’m not Elijah in a cave who was told to listen for a still, small voice. I’m a present-day Christian with no such prescriptions or expectations), but it was more of an “a-ha” moment, like a solution to a problem that I’d been working on, only I hadn’t been working on anything like that at all. The message? “Go to Maine and work with Pastor Wiley.”

Oh, good — we’re going even further back. yay

I had met Pastor Wiley at Bible College a couple or three years prior, and I was impressed with his passion and clarity of speech. At the time, I resolved to go to Maine, and this resolution lasted for, well, a solid couple of weeks — par for the course for this Bible College student raring to go wherever God would send him as soon as he’s released from his four-year leash! So, yes, the idea of going to Maine was quickly lost to time, and I nearly immediately got back to determining to follow in my father’s footsteps and become a missionary to Zambia, Africa like I’d wanted to all along. My email address to this day still has “Zambia” in it. I was a Missions major; this was always the goal.

At least, until that Sunday when I was impressed to go to Maine. I do not know why it happened then, but it did. And — in a blatant affront to my course in life — God had the audacity to disrupt my plans, direct my paths, and choose my route for me. Of course, I willingly participated in his calling once I had been illuminated to it, but I was so elated at the clarity of my calling that I wouldn’t have done anything but willingly follow. I imagine Saul felt this way after being knocked off his horse: who could do anything other than obey the voice of invitation and authority, especially when it was so clear? And so, after consulting with my pastor and waiting his suggested time to see if this just wasn’t some passing fad, I contacted Pastor Wiley who excitedly welcomed me, and I soon made my way to Maine.

Before long, I was pastoring a church of my own, the amazing and wonderful Topsham Baptist Church. That’s another story in and of itself, but it’s not one of the three I’m telling you today that I hope will help pave the way for why I departed from that same healthy and happy church nearly 11 years later at the best and highest point of recent decades.

Is that it? Are we done with backstory yet?

So that’s the first of three accounts I’d like you to know, and here’s the second one: marrying my amazing, way-out-of-my-league wife. In my final years of college, I was intent on marrying a wonderful woman named Vivian.¹ She and I had been together for quite some time, and I even purchased an engagement ring for her at one point — she had my heart, as immature and naive as it was. After I graduated, I stayed in Oklahoma City where my alma mater is located, in hopes that after she graduated, I would propose and we could marry. She and I were on the same page, and things were good. Well, all of that fell apart when her father and her pastor counseled her to call me and end things. And so, with many tears, she did just that. I’ve always considered myself a fairly intuitive and keen guy, but I had no clue that was coming.

Blindsided, I begged and schemed and plotted and prayed to be able to be back with her, and was still earnestly praying that this would be the case. I held out hope because, just like I was sure I’d be a missionary to Zambia, I was also sure I’d be married to Vivian. Until one day in the parking lot of a Bank of America, I prayed out loud to God from my little Nissan Versa. I said something like, “Lord, you know I want to be with Vivian. But if there’s someone else you want for me, please let me know. Please help me out here.” Right then — at that very moment — my phone buzzed. It was a text message, and it had but three simple words: “Marry Amber Peacock.”

I’m not aggrandizing or exaggerating or any of the other words we use to sanitize lying — the above account is entirely accurate. The text message ended up being from my brother, whose wife (and Amber’s dear friend) was speaking with Amber at that very moment, and the point of discussion was that if I’d ever actually take the possibility of being with Amber seriously, she’d actually be interested. Well, now — this was quite a situation!

Wait — more backstory?

Just a tiny bit of backstory is required here, too. You see, I had first met Amber not in college, but in high school. She was in her first year of Bible College and I was still a senior in high school, working at Arby’s at the time, getting ready to go to college myself. As it turns out, Amber ended up coming up to my town in New York (in another odd convolution of events and circumstances for herself) for Christmas break, and was staying a block and a half away from my childhood home where I lived. Naturally, since she knew my brother (who was in her class at college), she spent a lot of time at our place during that Christmas break, and I was smitten. Smitten, I say.

Well, I was actually smitten a few weeks prior, when someone showed me her picture as they told me she was coming for Christmas break. “She’s coming here?!?” I said incredulously. This vision? This beautiful, arresting, gorgeous woman would be in my town? I couldn’t believe it! But I didn’t take it very seriously — after all, she was in college and I was in high school. It could never happen (though it didn’t prevent me from trying to impress her in various and now-humiliating ways that we still laugh about today).

The point is that she was always the one I wanted, but I figured I could never have. There’s way more to the story, but in the end, I did take my brother’s advice from his text message and Amber and I were married within a year. The whole point of this account is that I do not have words or a will to try to rationalize or explain away the serendipity or clarity of God’s direction and answer to my prayer for a wife. God moved clearly then, and I am so glad he did.

Ok, just one account left, right?

Just one more story before we get to the point. This third one is about my vocation. For about 7 years while pastoring in Maine, I had worked for U.S. Cellular, at various retail stores selling cell phones, cell phone service, and cell phone accessories (yes, this made me think of Hank Hill²). All was well — I was making enough money to provide for my family, meeting people in my community (some of whom would join and become pillars in the church I pastored), and enjoying it just fine. I was content there.

Then — I don’t know why I felt this way and still couldn’t tell you even today — one day I came home and said to my wife, “I think I’m supposed to be done at U.S. Cellular.” Now, I’d never be foolhardy enough to quit my job before I had another one lined up, so I stuck to it, but I knew my days there were numbered, despite how much I enjoyed it and how good it was for the church in terms of my exposure to a lot of people and subsequent opportunities to invite them to church, and so on. So I plodded along for another week or so before the most interesting thing happened. But in order to understand this, there’s just a bit more backstory.

Seriously? More backstory?

It’s brief, I promise. Years prior, I had become acquainted with Mark,³ a good man who was raised in the faith but had since drifted from it. He had started an electrical contracting company, and it was growing. Well, around the same time I felt led to leave U.S. Cellular, Mark was being plunged into the waters of baptism at a nearby church, as he’d come back to Christ (in another massive sequence of perfectly-orchestrated events and circumstances of his own). Well, it just so happened that Mark randomly showed up at a Bible Study that I attended each Wednesday morning at 6:30 AM — I recognized him right away, and hugged him and sobbed when I did, as I’d seen that he had been baptized on social media. I was so happy.

What I didn’t know at the moment was that Mark needed an office manager — nothing too fancy, just someone to answer the phones and schedule some electrical projects in town. And it just so happened that I raised my concerns about my tenure at U.S. Cellular as a prayer request, not knowing that Mark needed someone. So he talked to me after the meeting, and offered me the job. “Ah — this is why,” I thought, “this is why I was dissatisfied at U.S. Cellular. It wasn’t discontentment; it was divine preparation for God’s next move for my life.” I joyfully accepted Mark’s offer, and within four years or so, I was promoted to being one of two directors in the Company due to Mark’s generosity and God’s providence and sovereign and good leading in both of our lives. Importantly, this job would be remote-compatible at just the right time, too. Stay tuned.

Are we done with the extra stories?

Okay, so that’s all three accounts of God’s mysterious but clear and providential leading in my life. And trust me, I’m a pretty skeptical guy. I’m not the guy who sees a swarm of fireflies and thinks God’s saying something to me, and I’m not the guy who narrowly avoids a car accident and thinks an angel shoved a vehicle or two to keep me safe. Don’t get me wrong — this isn’t always a good thing, if it is at all; it means I don’t chalk things up to God nearly as much as I should, and that’s changing as of late.

But these three accounts of God’s clear direction — my moving to and pastoring in Maine, my marriage to my wonderful wife, and my vocation with Mark’s electrical company — formed a clear pattern of providence and will serve as building blocks to what I hope will be a more understandable explanation as to why I left my church, my state, and my home to move to a new church in a new state to find a new home.

The why

I hope it’s clear that just like with my intention to go to Zambia, my intention to marry Vivian, and my working at U.S. Cellular, I was perfectly happy to pursue what I believed God had called me to, and — at least in the case of U.S. Cellular and the pastorate in Maine — what God clearly did call me to. But in all of those cases, God intervened in the most apparent and visceral way to let me know that it was time to move on.

Similarly, God did the same thing to lead me away from a church that I thought I may very well pastor for the rest of my life, a place where I was content and didn’t have hardly any living expenses while making decent money working for Mark. But this couldn’t have happened without God “greasing the skids” and preparing the way long before it was time for me to leave. Let me tell you about how he did.

About 7 or 8 years before I ended up leaving Topsham Baptist Church and Maine, a couple of teenagers began attending my church. Turns out their father had been a pastor himself, and was now helping out at a church in another town in Maine. There’s a bit of a long story here, and it’s not mine to tell; suffice to say that their father’s experience at that church was a bad one, and getting worse. So the two teens were coming to my church, and healing there. Before long, their father and I eventually met for a coffee, where I asked him to come to our church to heal and be blessed and be a blessing. He agreed, and joined our church.

Before long, he was co-pastoring with me, teaching Sunday School, preaching occasionally, and leading in the finances and administrative direction of the church. All I had to do was focus on the Word, some creative directions, and most of the interpersonal aspects of pastoring. I was spoiled rotten with this man by my side, and this man remains one of the best men I’ve ever known. Now let’s put a pin in that for a second.

We’re going somewhere now

Also, a few years prior to my departure, I began to have thoughts and ideas about moving to the church and town where I am now with my family in Kansas. Just like Maine, I had no ties here, so I understand if that sounds random; however, please remember that I’m not unacquainted with random instructions from the Sovereign Commander-in-Chief. Remember? The call to Maine where I’d never been and had no family or ties? The sudden invitation to switch career paths and work at Mark’s company doing something I’ve never done? The seemingly random text from God to my phone? All of these appeared to me suddenly and arrested my attention until I acted upon them, which was quickly. And just like with them, the idea of moving to this small town in Kansas appealed to me, but I quickly quashed it and quelled it until it quieted down and eventually quit. Until it came up again. And again. And again.

And each time it came up, I’d run it by Amber, who would say, “I’m happy here. I don’t want to move anywhere.” And that was that. If I wouldn’t have my wife by my side, perfectly happy and content, then there’s no way it could be God’s will, however much I thought it might have been. This continued for about three years or so. I’d bring up the concept of leaving when it seemed to conjure itself in my mind (maybe once every six or eight months?), run it by Amber, and either because of her input or my own evaluation of the needs of our church or my job or some other factor, we’d agree together that we wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon.

Until one day earlier this year, I called my wife by phone. The idea of leaving didn’t just seem like a far-off idea anymore. It seemed like an inevitability I could no longer resist — I remember staring at Kansas on a map in our office as I asked my wife to seriously consider the possibility of moving, and I mentioned our now-home, our small town, by name once more. I fully expected to hear the same answer as before, but at the same time I somehow wasn’t surprised at all that her heart was now united with mine in this calling. She simply agreed — it was time. The Lord had clearly been working in her life as well as mine, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

It’s all coming together

If God had led us away even just a year or two earlier than he did, it might not have worked out with my job with Mark’s company, which I now am able to still have and love while working remotely. Mark has been so, so generous to me and family over the years, and that’s only increased with each step we have taken toward the center of God’s will for our lives. I can’t imagine a life without Mark or my job — from a human perspective, he’s made all of this possible, because we serve the same God and follow the same plan that he has laid out for us. Praise God.

Also, if God had led us away any earlier than he did, it would have been too early for our precious church family, too; they weren’t ready to stand without me yet. And for other reasons not mine to tell, it also wouldn’t have been the right time for my co-pastor to become the sole pastor of the Topsham Baptist Church.

On the other hand, if we’d left any later than we did, our children would have entered high-school without any (read: any) peers nearby or opportunities to flourish. So you see — God started leading me to Kansas a long time ago (before I was ever born, if you think about it), but to those around me, including those in our own church, it looked and sounded very sudden. Because it was.

To wit, my new pastor here in Kansas was a bit nonplussed at first — after all, though we went to Bible College together, we didn’t really run in the same circles and he was a couple of years ahead of me. For all he knew, I was just a church-hopping goofball who was looking to get out of Maine for any number of the ordinary reasons: discontentment, unhealthy church, money issues, scandal, and so on. So although he and the church have warmly received us here, his initial reticence was more than warranted! I am very thankful for his wisdom.

Is there more to it than that?

I do think it would be intellectually disingenuous to suggest, though, that God didn’t also use events and circumstances over the years to — although unbeknownst to me — prepare my heart for departing Maine. I was increasingly keenly aware that my children had no (again, this means zero) friends their age, save for one good friend my oldest son had (and still has remotely!). They were in need of an environment where they could grow spiritually and be surrounded by friends and Godly influences tailored to them (that’s saying a lot for someone who was once pretty vehemently part of the “integrated church” movement).

I was also picking up on the fact that my co-pastor’s influence and leadership had blossomed to the point where the church was really beginning to trust him and look to him as a leader — as instrumental as I was in lifting up the church when I first arrived, and as much as I enjoyed teaching them from the Word each week, I would soon only be getting in the way. They might disagree right now, but in a few years I’ll be vindicated in such a belief. I know I will.

Lastly, I would be dishonest if I were to suggest that God also didn’t use my being blackballed by a group of pastors and their families with which I was partnered in the ministry; this likely served to inevitably gradually loosen my roots in Maine without me knowing. I’ll briefly explain: There were about 8 or 9 of us families sent out of the same church a good number of years ago, and we were all going to take Maine by storm, planting churches and winning souls to Jesus — we would all be friends forever, and our kids were all going to marry from each others’ families, and the whole nine yards.

But when I went through a serious bout of depression and deconstruction, many aspects of my faith were deeply challenged; when I rebuilt my faith on the Bible and Christ alone, I came out a different person than I used to be (I’d argue for the better, but they’d naturally disagree). I had re-evaluated several beliefs common to our group, such as the King James Translation issue and other secondary and tertiary doctrines, and I had come to different conclusions than they had. For each one of these pastors and their families — without exception — this was enough to write me off, even to the extent of being named in a sermon or two about “departing from sound doctrine.” Man, that stung. I can see maybe not having me in your pulpit, but not having me in your life? But it never made me want to leave Maine. Rather, it actually galvanized me at the time. But looking back, I can see a reality in which, if that separation had never happened, we might still be in Maine — I might have been so blessed by the ties that bind that I might never have been keenly aware of God’s call. That can happen, you know.

So I am genuinely thankful for my seasons of depression, and I am especially thankful for that group of men considering me to be a heretic of sorts — they may have meant it unto me for evil, but God meant it unto me for good.⁴

Don’t get me wrong

So please don’t get it twisted — those things were all already a reality for us and we were still very prepared and ready and willing to continue to serve Jesus in Maine for the rest of our lives despite any of those factors. But God once again shone the light of his will from Heaven and re-plotted my course as I was going about doing what I believed (and still believe) God called me to do at the time, and I think he used a good number of factors beyond my comprehension and control to accomplish this in my life.

The reality is that I was content, and I was happy. We all were. But that’s exactly why God moved us: because — and I’ve said this a million times to my church if I’ve said it just once — God doesn’t move discontented people. He only moves content people. It wasn’t perfect, as nothing ever is, but the truth is that Amber and I and the kids were happy. Healthy. Wealthy, even. We loved our people, and they loved us right back. We had it “made in the shade, drinking pink lemonade,” to quote Kenny Baldwin. We couldn’t imagine a life besides what we all had. But God knew better. He always will.

And now that we’re here in our little corner of the world, I can see more clearly just how wonderful God’s will is when I just submit to it. Imagine if I’d been allowed to marry Vivian or go to Zambia or stay with U.S. Cellular. What opportunities I would have missed! And now I think back to if I hadn’t moved to Kansas with my family. What I would have robbed Topsham Baptist Church of! What I would have missed for my family! And what blessing I could have been to my new church here that would have passed me by! All missed, because I wouldn’t have been listening.

And so I listened.

And I left.

And while I still very much miss my beloved church family with many tears, and while I still sorely miss my friends and loved ones in Maine, and while, yes, it still feels sort of weird not preparing sermons weekly, I also weep tears of joy when I thank God each morning for my new life here. I love my new church, and my new pastor, and I will happily strive to be the kind of church member that I’d want if I were still a pastor. I am already learning so much here, and every day it becomes more apparent why God has planted us in this blessed place, right smack in the center of his will.

God is so, so, so good.

Every head bowed, every eye closed

Maybe you’re wrestling with a decision. I just want to encourage you to follow Jesus, whether that means staying or leaving or taking on a new ministry in your church or giving more from your paycheck or whatever. Just follow him. Don’t go it alone: Talk to your pastor — I sure did. Talk to your spouse — I did that, too. Be selfless, careful, and bold — follow Jesus, wherever he leads. I am so glad I did.

You will be, too.

1. Not her real name. ↩︎
2. Propane Accessories GIF ↩︎
3. Not his real name. ↩︎
4. Have you ever checked out the Hebrew phrase Joseph uses there, in Genesis 50:20? You know, when Joseph says, “You meant it unto me for evil, but God meant it unto me for good” to his brothers? It’s אֱלֹהִים חֲשָׁבָהּ לְטֹבָה, and it unmistakably connotes the idea of weaving a tapestry. Joseph’s brothers were spinning threads of harm, but God was weaving them into a masterpiece of good. Man, I love this stuff. ↩︎