The Pastorate

When I met and married Chris Gordon I did so with full awareness that he was in the ministry. That I would join him in that. I wanted to work alongside him with teenagers. I wanted to be heavily involved. I also entered into this agreement with NO desire to "promote" from being the Youth Pastor's wife to being the Pastor's wife. No thanks! I do not fit the mold of what that looks like in my own head, little alone in anyone else's.
Before moving to Sayre we got calls from other churches very regularly. I mean like one a month or so. But when we got here the calls stopped, which was WONDERFUL! When you live where your "called" it's harder to know where that's supposed to be sometimes. At least it is for me. Not having that stress for three years was just what we needed. When we started in Sayre we had just weathered two very difficult summers in ministry. I really wanted to be done before we came here. I wanted to join a church and minister as Sunday School teachers or something. No more full time ministry, but God had other plans. When the first church contacted us it after we'd moved to Sayre it was almost a shock. It was the first time I ever contemplated actually leaving our people here. And we have some really good people in Sayre, America. I cried at the thought of saying goodbye to these precious folks who have loved my family so well. We interviewed with this church and even went and visited but as soon as we arrived I knew we wouldn't be moving there. It was big. Big city. Big church. Busy schedule. Little input. I just couldn't see us there. Sure enough the door closed with them, but the thought of leaving had been planted and processed a little. In the coming months Chris got a few more calls, but nothing that was promising. This all began in December 2011.
The following spring Chris began wrestling with another calling he felt on his life. People confirmed him without even knowing where he was. On and on that spring he kept feeling more and more like he was supposed to be a pastor. I thought he'd be a great pastor, but I did NOT want to be a "Pastor's Wife!" But as we talked about it I thought it'd be safe for me to go along and play the role of the supportive wife because of all the "strikes" that we have against us. We have tattoos, plural. More than one. Okay for the youth guy, not so much for the preacher. We have brown kids. Some folks still don't think that's a great idea. I'm opinionated and overly involved and sometimes hateful and 100% not precious. I usually don't see my husband doing church work and being gone from us as "laboring for Kingdom purposes" I mostly feel sorry for myself and resent him for not being at home to help me. I'm selfish folks. It's ugly. For most guys their first place to be the Pastor is small and filled with little old couples who don't like tattoos or the color we would add to their Fold. Like my grandparents before they fell in love with my fellas. We were safe from actually having to BE the Pastor's family, or so I thought.
For over a year Chris sent his resume to churches all over the state. Big ones, small ones. City churches or country congregations. We only interviewed with one and while we thought it was promising it didn't pan out. In July we got a full day together with no babies. The first one in a long while, like maybe since Casen was born in February or Bennett in October. I can't remember. But on our day of uninterrupted conversations my original dream came back up.
I have a huge crush on Jen Hatmaker. I want us to be like her and Brandon, her hubs. I would love to just follow her around and laugh at her sarcastic wit and honest way of living transparently. I fell in love with her the first time I read her blog about her adoptions. I just think like she does. I want to raise my family like she's raising hers. Learning to the BE Jesus instead of just knowing about Jesus. Anyway, on our day away church planting came back up a la Hatmaker. That's always been a down the road dream for us. But after a year of sending resumes with no promise of a church on the horizon we thought maybe that was more of a now thing then we thought. We got really excited about that option and began looking into the how to's and trainings and support methods etc... Then about three weeks later Chris came to me convinced he's supposed to go to seminary before we could plant. Not just online, but he was sure we were supposed to move to Wake Forest, North Carolina. NORTH CAROLINA. Needless to say I was none too thrilled about the thought of moving cross country with our brood for four years. No thank you. I did not want to go. We even went and visited and while it was a beautiful place, I don't like living three hours from my family, little alone 21 hours away.
About a week before we left on our little visit Chris got a call from a guy in Greenfield, Oklahoma. (I owe you a dollar if you know where Greenfield is.) Chris explained to him we were moving to NC for seminary, but the guy continued to ask questions for almost two hours. In the next week Chris received three more calls from different people who were on the Pastor Search Committee at Greenfield Baptist Church. Including one from a guy named Smokey as we landed in Durham, NC. It seemed pretty obvious that we needed to talk to this committee before we committed to moving so far away, especially since I wasn't exactly on board. The more people Chris talked to the clearer it became that this was from God and I was suddenly way more excited to be a preacher's wife. Apparently I needed the threat of moving 20-ish hours away from family to get excited about a role I've stereotyped to death. We went and interviewed with the committee and at the end of our evening with them they invited us to come in view of a call September 15th. Every bar we set for them they jumped over, including Chris attending seminary. Not only can he do it online, he can take hybrid classes and make 2-3 trips to Southeastern a year and finish in a reasonable amount of time. The church is not only supportive of this idea, but are willing to pay for ALL of it. Fees, books, flights, expenses while staying... ALL OF IT! See - they've jumped over our bars. I could go on and on with how God has confirmed this is His will for our family.
We went this weekend and were so loved on. It's a tiny church in a really tiny little community. It's halfway between Geary and Watonga and about 100 people live in Greenfield and the three businesses in town are the church, a co-op and a post office that's only open three days a week. The church runs 50-75 on Sunday morning and the best part is that most of those people are our age! With kids our boys age! That is unheard of in small country churches. Chris was voted in with the church's first ever 100% vote. We are packing up and saying goodbye to five years in Sayre this week and will start in Greenfield September 29th. It's crazy!
I'm packing up a storm and purging five years worth of accumulation. I mean we've added three people to our family in this house. It's unbelievable how much stuff we have. I've never packed kids before and man oh man it adds some boxes. But we are busy packing, purging and garage sale-ing while we say goodbye to a place and people that will always be so precious to our hearts.
Please say a little prayer for our family, our youth group that we're leaving and our new church family as we all transition. Pray specifically that our boys make the move smoothly and the students we're leaving will weather the change well. Lots of change, but lots of good things to come.