Favorite Mistake

So in the year 2004, I believe, I was a senior pastor of a little town in Illinois called Glasford.  It was a town of around 500 folks, and a church about 1/5 of that size.  I was 24 years old and leading a church by God's mercy.  I miss my friends from their as I didn't keep in touch with them all.  I'm sorry about that development.   Now I made many mistakes while I was there, but I only want to share with you one of them.  It's my favorite mistake because it turned into a huge blessing.

The church had one Sunday morning service, one Sunday evening service, and Wednesday night prayer meeting.  I was golden for preparing Sunday morning, sermons are my thing, actually they might be the ONLY thing I did well as a pastor.  Wednesdays were a whole other story but at least they were on another day.  But there sat Sunday evening service.  Traditionally, the pastors before me shared another sermon.  I couldn't imagine doing that for very long because we don't retain that much of what is said to us in a sermon anyway and then a second one in the same day just seemed like it would muddy up our thinking.  (This was when I still believed sermons had a huge impact on spiritual growth.)

I decided instead of a sermon I would give a Bible study that would be chalk full with application.  Not a bad idea, right?  Except for the fact there is no difference between a sermon and Bible study when the pastor is standing and delivering it from a pulpit and nobody dares to ask questions or converse:)

I thought the most applicable thing in the world would be a WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) theme.  Except for the fact the WWJD never worked for me because I wasn't always sure what He would do.  He didn't play baseball, video games, or deal with parenting.  So I sat back in my office chair and thought up a very bad idea.

Enter my mistake.  I decided that instead of WWJD, we could do WDJD (What Did Jesus Do).  I made it my task to go through the life of Christ and pull from the Scriptures every single thing Jesus did that we could do. I believe that God not only allowed me to do this, but He helped! I called them checkpoints. And at the time I honestly believed that I and all of my congregation could simply go through the checklist and systematically do them.  Literally becoming like Jesus!  How spiritually mature were we going to be?  

There I stood week after week for two years delivering the life of Christ and all of it's checkpoints from my pulpit.  Wondering if anyone out there was doing any of the checkpoints because I couldn't assess it, and secretly knowing that I was failing in my own efforts.  It was overwhelming.  There were almost 300 of them.  Who had the time?  Who had the energy?  Who had the ability...except Jesus? I had become an accidental legalist.

I started dreaming of how we could do it better one day, figure out a stricter system (oh my), but Jesus had a whole different plan for these 'checkpoints.'  One day many years later He would reveal to me they are opportunities.

Until next time...