UBCentral

I know a church where people have strong opinions about what their church should be, but their opinion has no relation to what God says the church should be. They are people of power. And in the UB church–probably all churches–people with power tend to be people with money.

Nobody will say to them, “We’re going to build a church here, and we don’t need you or your money. We could use you and your money, but if you’re just going to be an obstinate person used by Satan to create problems–no, we don’t need you.”

I’ve had those conversations. It’s not easy, not something I relish. But it’s necessary.

David Datema, UB endorsed missionary who is director of the US Center for World Mission, wrote a blog post called, “My Unsolicited Advice for Mission-Minded Singles.” He offers three pieces of advice, with explanation. The second one include:

Instead of stopping to look, look while going. I wouldn’t expect anyone to stop looking for someone. But don’t make it the main thing. Go after the vision of the kingdom before you. If someone gets in your way and you like them, by all means marry them. But the Kingdom waits for no one. Get on the Kingdom train and you’ll be surprised who else might be on board.

One thing Bishop Ron Ramsey has emphasized is, “Lead!” Get out from underneath your wussiness and lead. Guys, it’s time to stand up and take a leadership role. Everything rises and falls on leadership.

I believe most of our churches have people who want to be exposed to some empowering leadership, and want to be part of an effective church. But they need some good leadership.

When I go into churches and start talking about principles of leadership and church health, I almost always see a couple people who are like wilted flowers that got rain water on them. You can see it in their faces: “Yes, that’s what I’m looking for!

Where leadership is exercised, we find people waiting in the shadows to step up and get involved. People who previously stayed on the sidelines decide they now see a situation in which they’re willing to invest themselves. When people see things change, resources that have been sitting there the whole time get unleashed.

My greatest concern is finding leaders to assign to churches. I get resumes nearly every week, but few of them I believe would be the kind of people I want to assign to one of our churches, because their experience shows that they’ve never led or grown anything. I think our single biggest need is to have enough of the right quality of people when we need them.

Years ago, if you started in a small church and kept your nose clean and didn’t ruffle feathers, you got promoted to a little nicer church. Then, if you continued to keep your nose clean, you got promoted to another church.

I think that kind of approach to assigning churches is terrible. But it’s all we knew and what everybody was doing, so I don’t condemn anyone for doing that. But to find people who are leaders, you really have to do some recruiting. It’s something I didn’t take the time to do as bishop–go to seminars, talk to professors, see who the top students are, build a relationship with them, see if they’re interested in doing something with us.

Well, I moved the last of my books out of the office over the weekend. I will complete a few loose ends over the next two weeks and then I will go to Greencastle, Pa., to preach at Macedonia UB and at the Rhodes Grove Camp Meeting Aug 16-20. Those will be my last duties as Bishop.

Many have asked what I am going to do in retirement. So I thought I ought to respond.

For the first couple of weeks, I plan to do very little. I am sure I will become involved in some projects around the house. This will be the first time for many years when I will not have a job to go to in the morning. But I believe more than my job defines my life.

First and foremost, I will still be a follower of Jesus Christ. I hope to have the time to read and study in detail a few topics for which I have a great interest.

I look forward to spending more time with my wife of 49 years, EJ. For all our married life, I have held a job and a great deal of the time she has been employed as well. Next to Jesus, she is the love of my life and I look forward to the time we will have together.

I haven’t been a “person in the pew” since my days in Wheaton, Ill., with Scripture Press. EJ and I look forward to finding a church home where we can serve in our areas of giftedness and interests.

Moving is also in our near future. Don’t know where yet. We had hoped to have a house purchased way before this, but so far nothing. We don’t know what the Lord is trying to say to us, but at this point we are still looking. We have leased a house from Huntington University for the past four years and we need to move out ASAP.

Every time we have moved, EJ and I have talked about the need to rid ourselves of much accumulation of “stuff,” but we really never have. We move it and store it away somewhere…garage, closets, attic, basement…you get the drift. This move we will have a huge moving-on sale, and hopefully a lot of that “stuff” can be moved from our house to someone else’s so they can store it away until that time they need to have a huge garage sale.

It will be nice to get settled somewhere.

After the dust settles, I’d like to do some pulpit supply, seminars, and church consultations as opportunities present themselves. I still believe what the rock in my yard says, “Where God is taking us is always better than where we’ve been.”  I look forward with eager anticipation to whatever that may be.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve my church in this high capacity.  It has been a rewarding, challenging, and humbling experience.