the    sides

It was about 8 months ago that a friend of mine (Danny Payne) said to me ‘You ought to think about submitting your name for the Lead Pastor of Western Hills.’ He’d been on staff there, loves the church deeply and honestly thought there could be a fit there.

I honestly thought he was on drugs. My exact response was: “Thanks. I’ll pray about it. No.”

He mentioned how awesome it was to see a man of prayer in action. I’m pretty sure he was being sarcastic.

Then Croatia happened and changed everything. He gets to write the story, I don’t.

Danny P and I ended up having the same conversation after Croatia. I was in the middle of the same response when the Spirit just popped in and said…”Are we going to have to go back to Croatia?”

So I sent in my resume. I didn’t even update it. In fact, I almost forgot to tell Amy. We’re laying in bed talking about the day and I think I said something like - “Yeah, had lunch with my guys Downtown, blogged on the Broncos, and sent my resume to Danny Payne.”

“That’s great. Hope you enjoy seeing the kids on the weekends.”

Typically, not updating your resume is not a good idea. You generally want your resume to include things like a current address, phone number, and/or email address. Mine had none of those things. It did have this website. I wouldn’t recommend this course of action but I think it was my subconscious kicking in. Somehow the Search Team tracks me down, sends me a questionnaire.

I fill out the questionnaire. The whole time I’m thinking - “See God? Are you watching? I’m obeying. I’m passing this test of if I’d be WILLING to leave Pinecrest. Now leave me alone.”

I figured that would be the end of it. They’d read my answers, see the blog, see the earring, hear the messages online and that would pretty much kill any chance I had to be a lead pastor in a Baptist Church.

Then the phone rang. It was a Monday night during a football game. It was the Search Team wondering if they could fly us out for an interview.

I started repeating every thing the Search Team said to me so that Amy could keep up with the conversation. Neither one of us were ready for this. I’m officially wigged out at this point. They’ve been listening to the messages online, reading the blog. Want to meet face to face. I felt like I was in a three-way wrestling match between me, God, and Western Hills.

“I just can’t come to Topeka.”

It wasn’t a “No” but more like a “Not yet.” Instead we sent them a questionnaire to fill out for us.

What happened next was one of the many confirmations that God would give us over the next few months. They put that questionnaire in the hands of over 40 key leaders of the church. They returned to us every single original form. Not a doctored compilation document. Not a summary sheet. But every single sheet of paper from every single leader. Unvarnished. Raw. Authentic.

The next step was them meeting me at Oasis, a youthworkers conference in Emporia. They came and hung out with me that day, invited me up to lunch the next day. After two days of conversations, one of the Search Team guys drilled into me pretty good.

He said something along the lines of “You keep saying - ‘if this process continues.’ When are you going to realize we want you and you’re going to have to figure out what God is telling you?”

It was a statement that I hadn’t heard in over two years. What is God telling you to do? What is God telling you to do? I had a group of friends in LR that joked around what we needed was a bunch of parrots to put on people’s shoulders and that would be the only thing this parrot would say. “Brawkkkk, What is God telling you?” In times of hard decisions, we’d do the normal questions and prodding of each other then one of us would always say - Where’s the parrot? Are you listening to the Parrot?

Instead of flying us to Topeka, I wanted them to come to Parker. I wanted them to hang out with us at our church, experience a service, hang out with my staff team, my elders, and my youth volunteers. I wanted them to eat dinner at our house and enjoy a night just sitting around talking.

And they did all of that. It blew their minds to the access and openness we had here. It was painful for us. Two churches sat in my living room being the Church. Lots of questions and thoughts, lots of tears. Talked about everything and anything. They got to ask hard questions of the team about what I’m “really” like. WHBC got to taste what living in community is really about, how wonderful and painful it can be. We all got to hear God say ‘This is what I want’ with clarity, no doubts. It made things simpler…not necessarily easy.

We went out to Topeka last weekend to preach and meet the entire church. I was nervous and anxious going into Sunday morning. Not about my sermon. Not about the process. Would the larger congregation give a young guy with a passion for Jesus that just so happens to have a soul patch and an earring a chance? Search Team had months to get to know us. This congregation had less than one day.

Fear unfounded. It could not have gone any better. It felt like a homecoming of sorts. Kids loved it. We loved it. They loved us.

So we end one journey on December 28th, start another on the next Sunday.

Now you know the rest of the story…