I trust we all dream of having long, faithful, and fruitful pastoral tenures.<\/p>\n
At the last T4G, tears came to my eyes when Mark Dever asked pastors who had served for decades to stand. I wanted to be one of those pastors and to do nothing more than pastor the church we planted in 2009. The church was in the neighborhood I had grown up in, three blocks from my high school.<\/p>\n
But God had other plans.<\/p>\n
2020 was difficult everywhere, but, watching our Minneapolis neighborhood burn, the year felt particularly challenging for my congregation. It became a year of crisis counseling. Deaths in our family added to the strain, and by the end of the year, my health broke down. I was bedridden, and my doctor had no answers.<\/p>\n
For over a year I did not recover and was unable to work. My health did not return, and I had to resign.<\/p>\n
I was surprised by this fiery trial. I didn’t know if I would get better; I didn’t know how <\/em>to get better. How would I provide for my family?<\/p>\n By his grace, God restored my health, but only after I was no longer a pastor. So, I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pastoral ministry is not who we are. It is a wonderful role, but whether or not we are pastors, we are his children, and he is our kind Father.
\nThe post Six Lessons I Learned When I Could Not Pastor appeared first on 9Marks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":962,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[312],"class_list":["post-78002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-leadership","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/962"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78002"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78004,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78002\/revisions\/78004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}