I’m going to tell you my dirty secret right up front. I rarely liked church services, even when I was the pastor. The thing that delighted me and made my Sundays feel worthwhile was going out to dinner with a dozen or more folks after church. What I always craved was community and sometimes the classic formula of doing church got in the way of that.
I had been on a ministry track since I was a toddler. I grew up in an evangelical home and church. Several members of my extended family were pastors, music leaders, and Sunday school teachers. I was bright and could read well by age three. As a little kid, my dream was to be a Wycliffe Bible Translator and missionary. They came often to my church and did slide show presentations of their work “bringing the gospel to other cultures.”