The Resume

Late 2018 was a weird time in ministry. I knew that God was calling me to be a lead pastor but just didn’t know where. At that time, we had just hired a new staff member and it did not seem like planting was in our near future at Heritage Park. It seemed like it was somewhere in the 5+ time frame and I began to become restless. I had been at Heritage Park since the summer of 2006. I loved my church. My wife loves the church. My daughter loves the church. BUT God was very distinctly calling me to step into a new role. I still loved working with students but knew that the door of that season of ministry was beginning to close and I promised myself that I would not overstay my calling. I met with a local pastor friend and talked with them about what is going on in my life. He chuckled and said, “It sounds like you need to give a few people you trust your resume and see if they hear of any places where you would be a good fit." UGH.

So I opened up a document and began to create a resume. I hadn’t had a resume since 2006 when I was graduating college. What do I put on the resume? How do I list out the things that I have done, the things that I have built, the process that I have gone through? The first draft was very bad. It looked kinda like this:

Work Experience: 

2006-2018: Heritage Park Baptist Church - Student Pastor

Education:

BA in Christian Ministry - East Texas Baptist University 

MDiv in Biblical Studies - Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Was that it? Is that all I have? Eventually, it came together and I was able to talk about the things that God had done through my ministry. I was able to talk about creating an internship program and starting a small group ministry. I was able to talk about starting an area-wide student discipleship weekend that has lasted for over 10 years. I was able to talk about the different mission partners that I have made along the way and how many students we have mobilized to serve God in various ways. AND YOU KNOW I PUT A PICTURE OF MY FAMILY ON THAT RESUME. Who could resist that cute little Rowan Ruth and my amazingly beautiful wife?

Here is the picture that I used:

I sent my resume to a few pastors that I trust and waited. I checked a few job boards and Kacee and I would dream about where God wants to send us. Early on in the process, Kacee told me she would follow me anywhere...unless it was cold; she did not want to live in a cold-weather place. We talked about our values and what we wanted to see in a church. Outside of theology and church health, we landed on 3 core values: We wanted to live in the community that we were pastoring, we wanted that community to be diverse, and we wanted to be able to publicly educate our daughter. Simple enough. That was our litmus test. We had a couple of places become pretty interested in having us, but God closed the door. Looking back, I am glad. As we began to dream about living in these communities we were going to have to compromise one of our 3 core values. We continued to trust the Lord. He has a plan and we are not in a hurry. Heck, after all, we love where we are.