The Wilderness, part 3 - A Brief Foray Back into Ministry

There were a number of factors that played into the eventual closing of my online business, most of them were completely outside of my control and had nothing to do with me, but the biggest reason is that even though I had experienced nearly two years of really good success, when it hit the skids I didn't knuckle down and press through, I didn't seek the council of others who made it through this period in their businesses and succeeded, no, instead, I jumped right back into the rut, jumped off the sinking ship and ran back to familiar with my tail between my legs again.

I went back to working long-term temp jobs and doing everything I could to get rid of the remainder of my inventory.

It was during this time that a God-only miracle happened for me and my wife. Completely out of the blue we got a phone call one day offering to place a baby boy born that morning in our home for adoption. This was definitely a working of God because we had never approached an adoption agency, never done any of the preparatory work to be considered acceptable by the state to adopt, and I was working a temp job after closing a failed business and my wife was a substitute teacher.

So, no rut to jump in here. We had always planned that one of us would stay home with the kids when we had them and that one was going to be me. We firmly believed that you don't have children to put them in daycare and let someone else raise them. If you are going to commit to having children, you should commit to raising them as well. That was a Sunday that we heard about and met our son for the first time, Monday we got the news that he was definitely going to be placed with us and Tuesday we brought him home from the hospital. Monday, I had to call into my job and let them know that I very likely might not be back and I wasn't.

Over the years I worked various long-term temporary jobs and independent contracts to bring in extra money, but never went back to work full-time permanent. Even going back to work part-time was problematic. First, I had to convince a potential employer that part-time was all I was looking for and I wasn't going to be running out the door for some imagined better offer that wasn't coming because I was soliciting it. Second, the job either had to be in the evening or it had to pay enough to cover childcare and still make a significant contribution to the family budget. If it wasn't going to do that, I could solve getting out of the house by just going out one evening a week by myself. No babysitter cost and no working for a vaporous paycheck you never got to enjoy.

During this time I have also had one other excursion into professional ministry, not very dissimilar to the first, with the except that the people accepted us, worked with us and we did not experience racism for a single minute or from a single person, like we did in our previous experience. It was an inner-city, urban ministry. It was also still in a church-plant state. It was not fraught with the invisible usurping or behind the scenes manipulations that was going on in the previous church I had served, but it was very much centered around a pastor who was very much wrapped up in himself and kept upsetting the apple cart so everyone needed him to keep things together. It was a church body with a lot of potential and he was a man God had shaped with a the potential to be a great leader, but he was going to have to first get out of his own way and stop trying to be a spiritual "player" for God before it was going to come together. Not until he truly knows and understands that he doesn't have everything all together will he be able to let go of the reigns and help to maximize other people to their greatest kingdom potential rather than seeking others to raise him up to his own.

I felt like I was on an emotional and spiritual merry-go-round serving under him and I just wasn't able to keep up with every little nuance he kept chasing after and expecting us to keep up with. There was a lot of hype, a lot of promises and very little delivery. We couldn't find affordable housing in the area and were commuting an hour each way several times a week on top of my wife commuting daily to teach in the community. It eventually began to take too high a toll on us emotionally, physically, and even spiritually. We eventually had to resign so they could seek someone who could live within the community. They deserved that much.



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Location:Carver Dr,Roswell,United States