I shared the following devotional at last night’s church council meeting.
Romans 8:28: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
A few years ago, my birth mother, Linda, who lives in North Carolina, was excited to tell me that she had seen a preacher on TV who was so good. In fact, she said, he was probably the best preacher she had ever heard.
Now, I was confused by this because, after all, I’m not on TV, so who could she possibly be referring to? Then she said that he even pastored a church near me, in Alpharetta, and maybe I’d heard of him: his name is Andy Stanley.
Great! So even my own mother likes Andy Stanley better than me![†]
I have to laugh because you can’t be a pastor in Alpharetta, Georgia, and not feel like you’re in the shadow of Andy Stanley and his megachurch, Northpoint Community Church. Everybody loves Andy Stanley.
And who can blame them? He’s great. His church does better at reaching the unchurched than anyone else. And he recently wrote a memoir about his life—growing up as the son of a prominent Baptist pastor, Charles Stanley, and the experiences that led to his starting Northpoint. And the book inspired me in a number of ways. But what inspired me most about the book was something that Andy probably didn’t even think about when he wrote it.
What inspired me most was the fact that Andy’s success seems almost accidental. Seriously!
The way he describes it, he stumbled into ministry. First, he planned on getting a Ph.D. and teaching at a university. But he couldn’t get into the grad school he wanted to get into. So his plans fell through, and he needed money. The youth ministry position at his dad’s church, First Baptist Atlanta, opened up, and he took it—but only on a short-term basis. He wasn’t “called” into ministry. This wasn’t something he would do for very long. But he was good at ministry, and soon he started filling the pulpit for his dad on occasion. And he was good at preaching.
This wasn’t what anyone planned.
Then his dad’s church bought some warehouse property on the north side of town, intending to move there as soon as they sold their midtown Atlanta property. Except the housing market crashed and they couldn’t sell it. So they were stuck with these two properties. So the leaders of the church asked Andy if he wouldn’t mind holding a service in the warehouse up north. It wouldn’t be ideal, they said. It wouldn’t be like a traditional church at all—no choir, no piano, no organ. “Do you think you can make it work—at least until the ‘big church’ moves up there?”
This wasn’t what anyone planned.
Andy was very successful running this satellite campus. Thousands of unchurched people flocked to this warehouse church. The north campus grew so large so quickly that some people in the midtown church suspected that Andy was going force a hostile takeover of the church and kick his dad to the curb. Instead of making a bad situation worse, Andy made the painful decision to resign.
This wasn’t what anyone planned.
So, through a series of personal and professional false starts, and setbacks, and curveballs, and disappointments, Andy started Northpoint—a church that would became a model for reaching unchurched people.
And my point is, it wouldn’t have happened at all, except that nothing seemed to go as planned in Andy’s life!
Isn’t life often like that? Often the best things in life don’t go according to to plan—or at least our plans. Maybe the best things in life happen according to God’s plan, not ours.
A while back I was going through a tough time in my life, and I was complaining to a friend, who happens to be a Jew, as well as a Bible scholar. I asked angrily: “Why is this happening to me?” And my friend, who’s sort of like an honorary rabbi to me, said, “Don’t ask, ‘Why is this happening to me?’ Instead ask, ‘Why is this happening to me now?’” In other words, he wanted me to imagine that God was using this disappointment—this setback, this bad situation—in order to teach me something that I needed to learn.
And I’m like, “Of course! You’re exactly right!” God’s always doing stuff like that, isn’t he?
What if, whenever we face a disruption in our plans, a setback in our careers, or a crisis of some kind in our lives, we asked ourselves, not “Why is this happening?” but “I wonder what God is up to?”
Because you better believe he’s up to something good! Amen?
† I’m exaggerating. I don’t really think she likes Andy Stanley more than me. 🙂