The Why Behind fuel2ignite…
Other than coffee, what is it that gets you out of bed in the morning? What is the “Why” behind what you do every day? What I’m asking, in a nutshell, is what is your purpose? Because if you can find your “Why” it’s a game-changer.
As we embark on this journey together, I want to tell you the Why behind this ministry. This is a passion project that has been decades in the making. To make it all make sense, I wanted you to know a little about my journey and what has led to my Why.
I’ll be telling you lots of stories throughout this journey, but as we embark, I just wanted to take you on a brief 30,000-foot view of what led me to this point.
Taking the Way-Back Machine all the way back to 1992, I was a senior in college and God was beginning to do a work in my life. I was in a college class at a Winter Weekend at Ridgecrest Conference Center in Black Mountain, NC. Ironically , I met my future wife in the class that weekend. The teacher led us through a study on a Max Lucado book called Six Hours One Friday. The premise of the book is that because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross and in the resurrection, then three things are inherently true:
Our life is not futile
Our failures are not fatal
Our death is not final
That book had a profound effect on me. That book and a verse-by-verse Bible study series on Revelation by David Jeremiah were the two catalysts for my call to ministry.
I had been working in journalism as a sports writer throughout college and a couple of years beyond, but God was calling me into ministry. In 1994, I would become a Youth & Children’s Pastor at my home church in Troy, NC. I had no training, no experience, just a desire to follow God’s call on my life. To be honest, I struggled quite a bit for the first few years in ministry. I used the spaghetti method - just throw something on the wall and see if it sticks. I had no idea what I was doing.
In 1996, I moved on to a similar position in a church in Wilkesboro, NC. I was still struggling to find my stride in ministry, but the Lord, in His providence, brought two men into my life. One was Pastor Rick Speas, who took me under his wing and graciously poured into me and mentored me, teaching me everything I could possibly want to know about ministry. He was the best combination of a pastor and preacher I had ever seen. Still is. Eventually he was called on to another church and the man who would follow him would play an equally important role in my journey. His name was Homer Greene. He was the interim pastor who would follow Pastor Speas. Homer Greene was the greatest encourager I had ever known, a real-life Barnabas if you will. He expressed a belief in me that I cannot put into words. Every time I was around him, he breathed life into me and he made me believe in myself, which changed the trajectory of my ministry. I knew him all of 6 months but he changed my life.
I would go on to a successful ministry in my next church in Maiden, NC and later plant a church in Denver, NC, thanks largely to the lessons I had learned from those two pastors that God placed in my life.
But by 2010, the wheels began coming off in my life. Somewhere along the way I started reading my own press clippings and started doing ministry in my own strength. We had started a church in 2005, and for the first four years we depended on God for everything, but something had changed in me. I’m ashamed to say that in my arrogance, I began to think I was the reason for the success. I began to operate and try to do ministry in my own strength and for my own glory. I was in need of humbling and the Lord would soon provide it. For the next two years, the Lord allowed calamity to come into my life. It literally got to the point where I was afraid to leave the house each day because I was afraid of what catastrophe would happen next. It led to me going through two major crises at once - pastor burnout and financial Armageddon. I didn’t have the will or desire to go on in ministry, and in the meantime, we were in danger of losing everything. To top it off, I experienced a betrayal at the hands of someone I had grown very close to. For me, that was the final straw. I grew bitter and angry and remained that way for the next two years. I was not pleasant to be around. My own family loved me, but I’m not sure they liked me all that much.
In 2014, my precious wife had a come to Jesus meeting with me. I didn’t receive it well either. But realizing how much hurt I had caused them and how close I was to losing them as well proved to be my turning point.
It would take me a couple more years to climb completely out of the hole I had dug for myself but by 2016 I had resumed preaching as opportunities presented themselves and I was returning to the old me in a lot of ways.
But you can never fully go back, and I’m not sure God wanted that for me. Having been through some tough times, God placed a burden and compassion for others on me.
I wanted to help others in their struggles. I wanted to communicate the lessons I had learned from that Six Hours One Friday book- that your life is not futile, that your mistakes are not fatal and, in Christ your death is not final. I had a head knowledge of what that meant back then, but now
I had lived it. And I remembered the impact of those who had invested in me and I wanted to pour into others the way those men poured into me. So that was the genesis of this ministry.
But life comes at you fast and the next thing you know my Mom was sick and dying and I had three kids to put through Bible college and you blink and several more years have passed.
But the Lord has been impressing on me so much how badly people need to be encouraged, how badly they need someone to come along beside them and put an arm around them. I feel like every experience I have had in my life has led me to “such a time as this.”
This is my Why. This is what gets me out of the bed in the morning. God has given me a story to tell and a deep desire to encourage as many people as I can along the way. I hope that you will join me on this journey and I pray that it will be a blessing to you.