Seasons of change

I took the big plunge earlier this month and officially gave my resignation as the Children's and Family Pastor at Forward Baptist. I am reading a statement to the the church on Sunday. Here is my statement (in blue):

A year and half ago my wife and I had come to a place in our former church where we were spiritually, physically and emotionally exhausted. One could even say “burnt out.” We both felt a change of scenery would be a tremendous help for us. At first it was. We felt a burst of energy and a rush of adrenaline as we came and jumped in with a flurry of activity and some pretty big changes too.
Then we both hit a wall sometime last fall. At about the same time Patsy and I both said we didn’t want to be a pastor/pastor’s wife anymore. We prayed about it and prayed about it and spoke with family and friends. I even spent some time with a pastoral counsellor. We also spoke with our pastor Steve Adams, so that he was in the loop as to what was going inside of our hearts. Thank-you Pastor Steve for your gracious attitude and prayerful support.
We also shared with a couple of ministry friends what was going on in our hearts and asked for prayer and guidance. One friend asked us what we would be doing if we could do anything we wanted. I know this sounds crazy to some of you, but we said we wanted to take a couple of years and travel around North America helping and encouraging churches and seeing the continent while calling an RV our home. This friend is the founder and director of a prominent non-profit ministry. He got excited about that idea and wanted to partner with us if we decided to go that route.
After another season of prayer and seeking advice, we both felt we did not have the passion and emotional energy to give to the position of Children’s Pastor at Forward. On May 11th, I offered my resignation to Pastor Steve. This was done with both great sadness for such a short stay at Forward but with tremendous relief in our hearts, feeling we can have a time of recharging and looking forward to a different adventure. After 18 years of being a pastor, this will be an entirely new experience for us, but we are trusting God to guide and lead and provide for both our family and Forward Baptist Church.



My last official day will be June 30th. We are then going to go and live at my sister's vacant house (her family is are living on military bases right now - my brother-in-law is a chaplain in the army) for a couple of months to regroup and strategize and buy an RV