The Bethel Story, Part II

A few days after talking to Bethel's pastor, I was scheduled to preach in the Sunday morning contemporary service. That Sunday morning, I play acoustic in the band while someone else leads, and then I preached.

At some point during worship, I noticed two women out in the crowd. Their faces weren't familiar, but that's not all that strange. Our service at FUMC tends to bring a lot of guests, so I didn't think much of it.

But then, as I'm preaching, I noticed they were very intent on the sermon. My first thought was, "Wow! I am nailing this sermon," but then, knowing my sermon skills, realized that something was different about these two new faces.

After the sermon, our associate pastor stood and served communion. I noticed the two ladies took communion and were still very obviously watching what was happening on stage, pointing, assessing what was going on.

As soon as the service was over, I was on stage, packing up my gear, when my keyboard player, David, hands me a phone.

(I realize this sound very cool and rock and roll...as if members of my entourage regularly hand me phones at various times. The truth is that Kristen had our phone with her.)

I answer the phone and it's Chris, upstairs in the sound booth.

"That's Elizabeth from Bethel," he says. "And she's got the pastor's wife with her. They're headed up to the stage right now."

I hang up and turn around to see Elizabeth and Leslie Strader standing there.

After a few introductions, Kristen and I started asking a few things about Bethel. It was a little awkward...I didn't really know how conversations like that are supposed to go, but both Elizabeth and Leslie were so normal and down-to-earth that we were immediately at ease.

We found out some info on the church, thanked them for coming and then went on our way.

Later that night, I email Ross my resume and mention meeting Elizabeth and Leslie.

He emailed me back and we planned to talk on the phone sometime on Monday.

Over the next week, Ross and I talked on the phone a good bit. Again, the calls were mostly finding out about the church and the Wrights. I immediately liked Ross - seemed like a genuine guy trying to lead a church in way that honors God.

We began making plans for Krist and I to visit Bethel one day - just to check it out. Both FUMC and Bethel had pretty busy weeks ahead, but we finally nailed down a Friday to visit.

We packed up the kids and headed to the church.

We met with Ross, asked him about 10,000 questions, then went to lunch with the whole Strader family. (He took us to Double Dave's. That's a God-thing. How else could Ross know I have a serious crush on Double Dave's?)

After lunch, we headed over to the Straders' house. The kids played and we sat around for a little bit just getting to know each other.

As we left, Ross followed me out to the car and said,

"Pray about it. Call us if you're interested."

So we prayed. We felt a sense of God's peace and provision. A few days later, I let Ross know that we were definitely interested.

The Bethel Story, Part I

Had a couple of Skribit suggestions last week regarding my new position as worship pastor at Bethel Bible Church in Tyler. This may get a bit lengthy, but figured I'd give you the whole scoop!

Alright...I made my official announcement to the church yesterday. The Methodist church handles these things a bit differently than most, in that they typically will mail a letter to the congregation. This does a couple of things - allows the church leadership to be the primary source for info, communicates encouragement and joy for the staff member leaving, and gives a tentative schedule for a staff member's departure.

It works pretty well, and it really helped me with the whole "shocking" aspect of dropping it on folks during a Sunday morning service. (I had actually planned to leak it to the church, but as those things go, tons of people already knew it was a possibility. How does that church grapevine thing work, by the way?)

Back in March, Chris called me. Chris works for a guy named Dave. Dave is married to gal named Elizabeth. For the past year, Elizabeth has been managing the worship team at Bethel, where she and Dave are faithful members.

Through Chris, Elizabeth was following the worship-related stuff on the blog. When "All The Freed" was done, Chris gave her a CD. Then in March, Chris calls me and it happens something like this:

CHRIS: "Can Bethel call you?"

ME: "Huh?

CHRIS: "They love the CD. They want to call you."

ME: "They know there are professional players on the record, right. They realize I'm not going to sound like that, right?"

CHRIS: "Yeah....can they call you?"

So, I say yes. I'm tell Chris to give my number to the senior pastor, a guy named Ross Strader.

So, Ross calls me. But never gets me. At least I don't remember talking to him. I hate to use the phrase "phone tag," but there's no denying it - we played phone tag and never really got in touch with one another.

I decided to leave it alone. I gave up on calling him. And he kinda' did the same.

This is the part where you fast forward a couple of months...to May 30th.

It's Friday, May 30th. My anniversary. At about 10 that morning, Kristen comes rushing into the bedroom, where I am gasping, sweating and pushing my body to the ultimate limit on my treadmill. Seriously, gang...like 6.6 on the speed. That...is...cruisin'.

She's got the phone covered with her hand and she's mouthing...

"Ross Strader. It's Ross Strader!"

Since I couldn't speak and pant at the same time, I communicated to Kristen through the skillfull use of hand signals something like this:

"Can't. Talk. Need. Air. Tell. Call. Back."

I also might have thrown in something like "call 911-I can't breathe," but I'm not sure.

I get off the treadmill eventually and call Ross back. We talk for about 10 minutes about Bethel, my ministry, whether or not I'm "looking" for a new place, that whole deal. I tell Ross that I'm not out there pursuing a new job, but that I would send him a resume.

He says great, and we hang up.