It has been a good week. A long, busy, stressful, exciting, busy, difficult, fun, amazing, busy, interesting, incredible, busy week. And did I mention, its been quite busy too! But most importantly, its been a week in which we have seen God move, seen his power at work in amazing ways, and caught just a tiny glimpse of the plans he has for the community that is Queens Road Baptist Church.... wow!
For those of you who don't know, the church has been embarked on a search for a second minister, a search which has lasted, (on and off) for over two years, but which, finally, and with much thankfulness, we concluded this week, with an overwhelming majority agreeing with the proposal of the diaconate to issue a call, and the acceptance of that call by our new second minister.
As you can probably imagine, the process has been difficult. Anyone who is, or has been involved in the leadership of a Baptist church (and in most Baptist churches, that's most people!) will no doubt have their own memories of the so-called "settlement" (or is that "un-settlement") process - not a straightforward process in any sense, but in this case, things were made more even more difficult by the fact that, after a couple of false starts, the candidate who looked most promising, who eventually accepted the call this week, was coming from outside the process... leading to much pulling of hair, gnashing of teeth and wailing.
From the outset, we knew this wasn't going to be an easy trip - but we were encouraged to keep going, because at every step of the journey, the fact that this was the right person, God's person, for the job was clear, and the thing that gave us hope was that, at each step, more and more people were seeing this, more and more people were catching the vision, more and more people were becoming open to the fact that yes, this was what God was looking to do, here and now. And so, when the votes were counted, an amazing 89% in favour, that was when all the time, effort and energy that had gone into getting things this far became worthwhile.
But this isn't about me.... its not about how busy I've been, not really. This is about people being open to God, genuinely listening to him, putting aside their own feelings and choosing to do what he wants. Its about listening to the people who have been called to leadership roles - not blindly following them, but trusting that they are listening to God and seeking to do the right things. Its about people genuinely wanting to see God doing a great thing here in Coventry, and wanting, longing, for our community to be a part of it. Its about the church family coming together, moving forward, accepting that God's ways are higher, greater, more mysterious than ours, and that the things he calls us to do are not always safe but recognising that, above all, he is good, and the things he calls us to are good.
If people weren't willing to believe that, this would have been a very different blog entry, so now we are standing, not at the end of a difficult settlement process, but at the start of something new - and its going to be an exciting place to be!
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