This is Pastor Tim’s article that appeared in the Evening Leader on Tuesday, Dec 23, 2024
27 years ago, in late 1996, I was a senior in College at Ohio Norther University in the metropolis of Ada, OH. I was looking ahead to graduating from ONU in spring of 1997. Back in those days, the United Methodist Church, had just come through a season of tremendous change in how people got ordained. That meant that no one understood the process and how it worked to become a pastor anymore. It took another 8 years after I graduated from ONU before they, in their infinite wisdom, found me worthy of ordination. It was a process that was utterly meaningless in the greater scheme of things.
When I think of what happened to me on the course of becoming a pastor, there was nothing in my professional journey that really made much of an impression on me. All of the real experiences I have had along the way had very little to do with credentials or processes. What really formed me into the pastor you know today are things that took place in my own life and my own relationship with God. For this article, I would like to recount one of those experiences because it relates to the Christmas Season.
It was almost winter of 1996 an a position in a church near where I lived opened up. I happened to work with the son of the minister of that church. The opening was for a very part time youth leader. As I recall, the pay was $400 a month. I can remember going over to meet with the board of that church and talk through what they wanted of me. I was an inexperienced 23-year-old kid who had no idea what it meant to lead in a church setting.
I can remember agonizing over this decision because I knew one thing for sure. If I took this job, I would have to leave my very much beloved home church. I was 23 years old and I could count the number of Sundays I had missed being in my church on Sunday morning on one hand and I probably would not even need my thumb to do it. I even got up the day after Prom and went to church. One time in college had to work on a Sunday morning, I left early and caught the tail end of church that week. I almost never missed and leaving that little church was the hardest part of taking this new job. It was the only thing I had ever known, even the pastor there had been the pastor who was there my whole life. I never knew a different pastor than Calvin Waugh, hands down the finest man I ever knew. I took the job with the blessing of my home church, and it crushed my heart to go.
What does this have to do with Christmas? I want you to think of an experience you had like this one where you had to leave your life behind. This was one of the hardest times for me, but it certainly was not the last time I had to leave everything behind because of a change. I want you to compare that change to the one experienced by that Baby in the Manger displayed in that Nativity scene you have in your house. That Baby went from the heights of heaven, the very right hand of God, to a feeding trough, the dirty and disgusting place where the animals ate. Jesus went from being praised by angels to a barn. That is a descent that you and I have no way to fathom.
When I read stories in the Gospels where Jesus was frustrated that the disciples are not getting it or He is kicking over tables in the temple or He is sneering at church leaders who so stuck in their ways, I begin to understand the level of frustration that Jesus must have experienced. It makes me just stand in awe at the way He speaks to the poor and broken in society. Not even a hint of frustration toward those people. He is patent with the sinful woman at the well, He is not afraid to kneel in the dirt next to a man who can not walk, He reaches out and touches a blind man even though society thought he was sinful.
The only way that Jesus was able to do these things is because He never forgot why He took that very first enormous step down. On the many days I have been drafting a resignation letter, I remember the night I was awake all night trying to decide if I was going to be able to walk away from my home church. I made a decision that night that has kept me here for as long as it has. I wanted to be a part of building His kingdom. While my contribution to that goal is insignificant when compared to Jesus’ contribution, that was still the factor that brought me to this place in my life.
I can not ever hope to fathom the depth of commitment to the Kingdom of God that Jesus must have held to leave behind what He did to become our Messiah. All I can say is that of all things I have to be thankful for this time of year, nothing else comes close to that.