Significant Life Fulfilling Your Eternal Potential Every Day

Is Bigger Always Better? In the early 1990s my life was in crisis, but not the kind of crisis easily understood by most people. At the time, I had been serving my church, Faith Family Church in Victoria, Texas, for several years, and the Lord had blessed it. In just a few years, the church grew from two hundred fifty to several hundred more members. Like so many of us, whether in the ministry or the corporate culture, I had been conditioned to believe bigger was always better, so our increase in size meant success. Or did it? Coming out of college, I wasn't sure if God was calling me to full-time ministry. So I went on the mission field and preached throughout Africa and Eastern Europe. When I returned, I sensed the Lord leading me into pastoral ministry, and I was encouraged in this pursuit by trusted friends and family members. Not long after that God called me to Faith, which is in a small community in southeast Texas. Having grown up in a rural Pennsylvania community, I found Faith to be a perfect fit since I never wanted to lose that small-town feel of community. The problem, though, was that most of my peers were serving in megachurches that boast thousands of members. With only hundreds attending Faith at the time, the difference between the numbers felt a little bit like failure even before I started. I needed to be moving toward a bigger and better church to pastor, right? Wasn't that how I would know I was doing a good job? Don't most of us, regardless of profession, mark our success by increasing our numbers? Then my chance came. In 1993, a pastor and friend of my father-inlaw came to me and said, "Jim, I'm ready to hand over my life's work. I'd like you to consider taking over my church." Let me tell you, this church was every pastor's dream: about two thousand active members, a large staff, financial stability, and more ministries than I could imagine. By the grace of God, this was my opportunity. Now I could have what I thought I wanted. Socertain I would say yesI went to Arlington, but I left feeling that something just wasn't right. I didn't understand, though, what it could be. Football Fields and Faith I knew God had a plan for my life, that he had called me, raised me up in ministry, led me to the mission field, and given me early success that enabled greater opportunity. And now this move to Arlington was the next logical step...right? But something nagged at my heart, and to tell the truth, I was a little disappointed in myself for not jumping on the opportunity. I wanted my life to be like King David's, whose life we'll study in this book and whose godly leadership affected his generation in a significant way. So I wondered why I couldn't get on board. I've come to believe, in the time since, that pastors, along with most of us, fight a battle between wanting versus having, and I just wasn't sure that what I had at the time (a smaller church) was what I wanted. But truth be told, even after I found myself smack-dab in the middle of an opportunity to have what I thought I wanted (a megachurch), I still wasn't satisfied. When I got back to Victoria, my brother-in-law invited me on a hunting trip in Arkansas, and it sounded like a great diversion. Driving north out of Texas, I received a glimpse into my discontent. As I passed through small town after small town, I discovered a truth about my dilemma in the high-school football stadiums along the roadside. Any of you who have seenFriday Night Lightsknows what football is to Texans. We love our football, and we support it with everything we've got. In almost every Texas community I passed, a stadium sat in the middle of town as a shrine to our love affair with football. But as I drove through these small towns,Graff, Jim is the author of 'Significant Life Fulfilling Your Eternal Potential Every Day' with ISBN 9781400072620 and ISBN 140007262X.