Trust in the Lord...

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5–6)

Earlier this week, we posted a position online for a part-time Associate Pastor. Given our checkered history with hiring at NewLife, I confess to being anxious about it. But I’m praying that God will direct this process and lead the right person to our church. At least I know He has done it before, way back in the fall of 1997.

In September 1997, I entered my senior year at UConn. I had served the previous two summers as the summer Youth Program Coordinator at South United Methodist Church in Manchester. I came out of the second summer convinced that I wanted to serve in youth ministry after I graduated college. I had not had a great model of youth ministry growing up, so I wasn’t quite sure what this would look like. But I did know three things: I wanted to focus on discipling kids, not just leading fun and games. I wanted to be a part of a ministry that ministered to the region, not just one church. And I wanted to stay in the Manchester area, having developed a close connection with a number of the kids who attended the South United Methodist youth group.

In addition to being a college student, I was also a volunteer staff member with Musicon Ministries, a parachurch organization that brought teens together during the summer to learn a Christian musical and then took it on tour for a couple weeks during the summer and four weekends throughout the school year. The musical for the 1997-98 season was about a youth pastor – played by me – who took his youth group on a retreat and was trying to teach them the book of Ephesians. For our fall weekend, we were invited by a cast member, Tracy Wu, to her home church in Glastonbury, a little church called NewLife Christian Fellowship.

Unbeknownst to me, a number of NewLife people had been gathering for a number of months on Saturday mornings to pray, and one of the main prayer requests was for a youth pastor to serve their growing population of children and teens. That Sunday morning, the ministry performance went great, and after the service ended, the pastor, Peter Dewberry, approached the director of Musicon, Jon Colegrove, and let him know that if, in his travels around the state, he found anyone interested in youth ministry, to let him know. Jon replied that he actually did have someone, and introduced Pastor Dewberry to me.

A couple of weeks later, Jon, Pastor Dewberry and I met up at Friendly’s by the UConn campus. Pastor Dewberry proceeded to tell me two things about what they were looking for: they wanted someone who would disciple their kids, not someone who had a fun and games model of youth ministry. And he said that they saw themselves as a regional church, and wanted their youth pastor to see their church as a platform from which to minister to the region. And, of course, the church was in Glastonbury, the town to the south of Manchester. Clearly, it seemed that God was working through the prayers of His people and orchestrating this confluence.

I ended up coming on part-time as the NewLife youth pastor in January of 1998, driving back from college every Wednesday and Sunday to lead the senior and junior high youth groups and to attend church and meet the families. And when I graduated, I went full-time, moving to Manchester (down the street from South United Methodist Church) and ministering to kids from around the Glastonbury region for the next four and a half years. And in 2006, after some time in seminary and as an associate pastor at another church, I returned to NewLife as the senior pastor.

I know that there are no guarantees when it comes to hiring staff. Nevertheless, I do believe that it was the faithful prayers of the Saturday morning contingent at NewLife that were heard by God and answered, and that He was also preparing my heart for the role He had ordained for me. As we look at hiring again, let us devote ourselves to prayer and ask God to once again orchestrate His plan in His undeniably supernatural way.