Leaving Joy--#1
In the summer of 2003 Walt headed out on a 3 month sabbatical. He sensed God was up to something new at Joy and he wanted the chance to visit some new kinds of ministries emerging in the States and around the world. One of the places he visited early on was Sheffield, England and the ministry of Mike Breen. Walt invited Jan and me to join him. We caught a glimpse of what God was stirring in Walt's soul.
When Walt came back from his sabbatical he began to talk through what this new way of doing ministry might look like for Joy. Mike Breen moved over to Phoenix to help us in the transition.
As is true with any culture/vision change, Joy, especially the staff, went through a period of transition and chaos as we tried to figure out what God was up to and what it all meant.
In 2004 we made a shift in worship. I sensed my time as the overseer of worship was done so I stepped down from that responsibility. Out of that came a new way of viewing worship. We moved from a seeker model to a worshipping community model. In this new model, each pastor took responsibility for one of the worship services. The concept was for each pastor to be the pastor of that "congregation." So I took responsibility for the 9:35 service. I was now responsible not only for worship at that service, but for building that service into a community.
For me, the change brought a new energy. For most of my time at Joy I had a more manager type role. This new shift would free me up to pastor a group of people. In addition to worship we had picnics, I started a weekly 935 email letter, I began to meet with leaders who would eventually develop smaller groups out of the 935 worship service, to name a few things we did to build the 9:35 worship service into a missional community of people.
Then Joy was hit by a financial crisis. We were going into the hole financially and needed to stop the bleeding. More often than not, that means staff restructuring and pay cuts. As it became evident we needed to do something significant, Walt called the pastors together and invited us to pray about our call to Joy. He told us he was going to the board to hand in his resignation and would be willing to leave Joy if the board felt he should. Each of us needed to take time to discern if God was affirming our call to Joy or if this might be a time for change.
I was absolutely enjoying my time as the pastor of 935. So I didn't feel I needed to pray about it. I felt like I would be at Joy until I retired.
An aside: When Joy called me back in 1984 it was with the thought that I might plant a new congregation five years later. We actually started looking at land near where Joy ended up relocating. But Walt and I enjoyed ministry together so much that nothing really came of it.
Then the ELCA invited Joy to take the lead in planting 10 churches throughout the US--10 congregations that would be created from the start to be mega-churches. My role was to help train the lead pastors and staffs of these new congregations. As we were getting ready for the first site in Yorba Linda, CA, I woke up one morning sensing that I was to pursue the lead pastor role for that church. I told Jan about it and she said I should go for it. Walt was very supportive as well so Jan and I, along with my brother Jeff and his wife Diane, started the interview process. We headed out to Yorba Linda for a few days to see the area, look at homes, and meet with some of the pastors in the area. We drove back to Phoenix pretty certain that we were going to do it!
During the interview process we were holding one of our evangelism conferences. For whatever reason that week I had several pastors ask me when I was going to leave Joy and become a Senior Pastor! Little did they know.
What I didn't know was that Lyle Schaller, the great church consultant and our speaker for that week, pulled Walt aside and said that my leaving was a bad idea. First, he said Yorba Linda was one of the toughest places in the country to start a church. Second, he said the Lutheran church needed a strong model of a healthy growing church and a strong, healthy staff. In essence he said that together, Walt and I could build a more significant ministry than the two of us could do on our own. (Walt didn't tell me this until after we had made our final decision.)
Convinced we were headed to Yorba Linda we decided to visit it one more time. And something odd happened. As we crossed into Yorba Linda all four of us (me, Jan, Jeff, and Diane) felt the door shut. We headed back to Phoenix and pulled our names out from consideration. The ELCA went ahead with the project and it was a spectacular...failure!
I was never quite sure why I had such a strong sense to apply for the job only to have the door shut, but it did renew my commitment to Walt, Joy, and its mission. I really believed I would be there for my entire ministry.
Back to the fall, 2004. I continued to enjoy every minute of my new responsibilities. But then, seemingly out of the blue, I woke up one morning in November (not unlike that time years ago when thinking about Yorba Linda) with the strong impression that God wanted me to plant a new congregation out of Joy. The only way I've been able to explain it is I heard God's whisper. When I told Jan about it that morning she immediately said, "I think that's right!"
I set up an appointment with Walt to try the idea out on him as I was headed out of town for 10 days. The day before that meeting I bounced the idea off of Mike Breen whose excitement for the idea was a nice, affirming gift of grace. Walt, too, was extremely supportive of the idea. I told Walt the staff I'd like to take with me (which would also help with the financial challenges Joy was facing) and we began the process of making the transition.
I was headed out for a few days of vacation right before Christmas so I pulled Michelle Halonen aside and asked her to be a part of the team. She didn't even blink an eye when she said yes! I was meeting Jeff and Diane, Terey Summers and her husband, Jimmy, in Disneyland. I took them to lunch and told them I was leaving Joy to start a new church. After a nice dramatic pause, I asked them to join me.
Because this was all happening around Christmas it was hard to get to all of the people I felt an obligation to talk to personally about this (and then I got sick on Christmas Eve and was out for a week) so the news leaked before I could get to everyone.
Christmas night, at our Wright family dinner, we announced it to my family. Talk about a Christmas surprise!
Christmas weekend we held an informal meeting with some key leaders to share the dream. Then Walt and I held a forum with some of the main leaders of the 935 community. Finally we were able to get to the Joy staff, but by then most of them had heard the rumors.
In early January Walt and I did a joint sermon announcing the new venture. We invited the people of Joy to pray about the mission with us and if they were interested in joining us, to indicate so on the card. At the end of the service when I introduced the Grace team, the 9:35 service gave them a standing ovation--a very cool act of support and a demonstration of Joy's passion for mission.
We were off and running. We now had about 3 months to put a new church together, find a place to worship, and get going.
But we forgot one main thing...we forgot to get permission from the Bishop.
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