Through several God moments over the past six weeks, Julie and I are convinced that there is a new plan for my ministry. Because of this, this Sunday morning I submitted my letter of resignation from Spring Creek. This was a difficult decision to come to, but easy to do once we were convinced of God’s call to us.
Here is the letter I read this morning at the close of the service:
“Over the past several months Julie and I have been talking and praying over the direction God is leading us in the future. Through weeks of intense prayer and after several independent confirmations, we have come to the conclusion that the Lord is leading me to resign as the pastor of Spring Creek effective August 11.
As I stand here today, I cannot tell you exactly what the future holds for us. I know that I still have a passion to preach the gospel and a strong desire to lead churches to be involved in missions, especially overseas. We are going to be actively working with churches to send students and adults on mission, with an emphasis on being part of Transform 2014. I also have a desire to write Bible study material for students and adults and I will be spending much of my time in the next few months putting together material for youth ministries to use for short term studies like Disciple Now. The short way to describe our new adventure might be to say that we are going to do the ministry of ETC Ministries full-time, though we have no salary or promise of benefits from ETC.
While some may say it is more prudent to keep a steady job instead of trying to pursue something that has no assurance of income, we feel that God has spoken to us and so we need to be obedient now. For us, if we had all the answers about our future there would be no requirement for faith.
I do want to say clearly that we are not leaving under any pressure or because of some conflict or crisis. I have no doubt that because of the nature of our departure some outside our fellowship may put forth various rumored causes. Please be assured that we are not running from anything, but running toward new opportunities. I am not leaving ministry, just changing focus.
With all that said, let me thank you for allowing me the privilege of being your pastor for the past 20 plus years. Spring Creek will always be the home church for my family. My girls know no other home than Spring and Julie and I have lived here longer than anywhere else in our lives. We love this community and we love this church. We have so many good friends, lifelong friends here and we will always treasure the memories we have made here.
I hope and trust that the work we have done here will not end with our leaving. When we came to Spring Creek back in 1992 our intention was to lead the church to know Christ and His Word. We wanted to honor God with our lives and our work here in this church and community. We wanted to be part of changing lives through the work of the gospel. I am happy that I baptized so many of you here today and that I have seen God do such great work in your lives over the years. I am proud that we were able to be part of rejuvenating Spring Creek I feel confident that the church is in better shape now than when we came here.
I know that there is a great future for this church, and there is a man God has in mind to be the next pastor at Spring Creek. Please do not think that I am the only one who can do this job here. The next pastor will most likely not be like me, nor should he. He will have skills I don’t have and will be able to lead you to new heights.
You will always be in our thoughts and prayers and we will always value your friendship. You will always be welcome in our home, wherever that might be 🙂 May God bless you and may He use you to be a great blessing to many others as you have been to us.
God bless,
Steve”
We are looking forward to the coming months as we go on this grand adventure. 🙂