Big Ideas from a Small Town
By Chuck Huckaby|Published Date: October 20, 2009
Some years back, I had the blessing of attending a wonderful week long seminar on “renewing the historic church.”
It was given by a friend who now works as a church consultant with Vision New England’s “Vision One” program for fostering intentional evangelism in U.S. churches. While there, David related offhandedly that a young lady who’d grown up in his church was now serving in an important capacity in the UK in a ministry known worldwide for promoting outreach in local churches.
 When he said that, my heart was stirred. I began praying that God would allow my ministry to let me “touch the world in 12 ways” from my little town—despite the barriers before me and however unlikely the prospect may be in human terms. I thought, If David can see a historic church renewed in this small town of 3,000 and have a ministry that touches the world in a variety of ways, I believe the Lord can hear my prayer.
Maybe that doesn’t seem like much of a prayer to you, but it was to me. Perhaps it’s indicative of a mid-life pastoral crisis. I’m 49 (47 when I started praying this prayer). I’m no mega-church pastor. I’m not even the pastor of a mighty mini-church, though that’s still a matter of prayer.
A familiar scenario?
This year I will have been the first local pastor of a 70-year-old mainline church in quite some time. The church has many good people who called me so that I would “preach the word.” There have been ups, downs, additions, deaths, and what at times seems like more than my fair share of drama. But I’m still here until God shows otherwise, doing my best, like Ezra and Nehemiah, to build anew on the foundation of God’s covenant faithfulness in the past.
Our town is in the Bible Belt. We probably have 12,000 people in town, 30,000 in the county, and probably 200 churches. Let’s just stay I’ve stopped counting steeples.
Perhaps like many readers, I’m a “bi-vocational pastor.” Being bi-vocational, of course, adds its own challenges. I work all day and then have to do my pastoral duties after those hours. I preach each Lord’s Day morning and Wednesday night, so that alone can keep me pretty busy. Last year the giving at the church started to fall, so I had to do absorb a large pay cut. Bi-vocational pastors understand the scenario.
Ok, by now you know I’m no super-minister for whom “touching the world in 12 ways” is as simple as telling a large and already overworked staff just to figure a few new things to do, funded by adoring fans. Maybe I am facing some of the same challenges you face?
The beginnings
When I began praying this prayer, our church had already started working with a church planting movement in Bihar, India. That was quite a step for us. I’d sought a foreign ministry where our small giving of about $500 per year could make a discernable difference. In this case it would support a church planter’s family for a year. We even had the founder of the ministry visit us and managed to raise some additional money. That was quite a blessing because previously we’d encountered the problem that there were “plenty of needs here.” So the Lord began to bring about some changes. We still support this ministry and plan to in the future.
Well what would the Lord do next?
Next steps
As I mentioned, I serve a mainline church. When I got there, I didn’t have any ordination they considered valid. One of the promises I made the church was that I would do my best to be recognized as a “real” preacher. There was the option of offering myself as a “candidate” for ministry. I may be bi-vocational but I have an M. Div. degree and had been in ministry for 20 years! I found that offer a bit to my disliking. And I started looking for options.
I discovered a small immigrant synod in the United States that was historically reformed. It had maintained its confessional faith and stood against all the theological insanity found in the modern mainline. And because of their historical connection with the denomination of the church I serve, recognition by them would allow me to be a “real” minister!
I came to realize that after participating in an online discussion group for a mainline renewal group. I met and befriended one of the ministers in this body and, with him, we did our best to encourage this beleaguered group of Christian as they sought to live out their faith in the mainline context.
Two aspects of my prayer were being answered, but I didn’t know it.
First, I spent a good deal of time and effort ministering to these Christian people. It would become one of my “ways” of reaching the world. It started by my being able to help, encouraging prayer for, and teach (as much as I could) these saints of God in an online capacity. Those contacts allowed me subsequently (this year) to meet other mainline renewal leaders, and I continue to network with, encourage, and work with Christians in the mainline. As a result of this, the Lord allowed me to embark on a path of creating websites designed to encourage this group, identify other writers for the cause, and begin the process of establishing some online resources to help give voice to the concerns of renewalists.
Secondly, this effort gave me a voice in the immigrant synod where I established ministerial credentials. My work with the renewal group they were part of let some of them who participated there realize I was “one of them” theologically even though (to my knowledge) my ancestors don’t call the same “old country” home.
Since being blessed by reception into their fold, I have ultimately been able to help them with their publishing operation as well as to assist another of their ministers bring an historic print publication to the web.
More open doors
All this while, things had been percolating in the church, too. Because of my connection with India, I’d learned about how Chronological Bible Storytelling had been used in evangelism, discipleship, and church planting. I’d attempted to help restore the Bible to our life by encouraging our Sunday school to teach the “Creation to Christ” concept already, but I felt we needed to revisit this again and again until it sunk in. Our partners were using Bible storytelling in India (as well as many other places worldwide), and it seemed a perfect tool for small churches like mine. You don’t need a $50,000 sound system or PowerPoint to tell a good story. Nobody can say telling Bible stories is unbiblical, like many other strategies, either! And it’s very much “the thing” in “cool” corporations like Starbucks which uses stories to incorporate trainees into their unique culture. I just liked it because it seemed a way that might work well here locally. While it hasn’t been the panacea I’d hoped (what is?), it has helped steer a significant part of what I do here.
Subsequent to beginning this, one of our church members began telling Bible stories in front of the local thrift store. I’ve continued to incorporate Chronological Bible teaching and recently started working through stories from Genesis 12 forward on Wednesdays. At least I know what I’ll be doing on Wednesdays for the next few years (with some breaks of course)! I chronicle some of what I’m doing and some resources I’ve found from time to time in this area at biblestorytelling.blogspot.com.
One Wednesday night I came to church, and there was a strange envelope on the counter. It was from the estate of a former pastor. He had directed that his children send $25,000 to us with the provision we use it for “new ministry.” Wow!
Last year I felt our people would benefit from hearing my friend David teach here what he’d taught me. I also realized he was hoping to put his work in DVD format but never had been able to get the material in that format. God has blessed us with a young elder who does work in the recording field, and we have a friend with profession video production & editing equipment. We took about $1,200 from the “new ministry fund” to bring David down for this meeting and to record his presentation. I’d been encouraging David to do this because I believe any church needs to hear what he says so they will understand the theological issues undergirding renewal, not just assume “church renewal” means “change everything” or “add the latest well hyped program.”
With God’s help, we’ll see David’s DVD helping churches in many, many places. So I am praying that waves of renewal and grace will flow from this effort nationwide, and hope you will too.
Other things we’ve done with this fund (we still have some left): We purchased curriculum for elder training here. I like things that are simple with pictures. I believe too many pastors who have a theological bent speak so that most people can’t understand them. I think that’s a mistake I try to avoid.
Also with this fund we’ve used some dollars to support an interesting ministry. One of my elders began bringing jail inmates on work release to church on Sundays. We’ve used some money from the fund for ministry to buy their lunch. I like this kind of jail ministry because if you go in to the county jail, you get lots of “jailhouse conversions”; but the problem is getting people to be grafted into the church. Once they’re out, they fear the roof will cave in if they enter the sanctuary. Our church really surprised me on this. They broke up the Adult Sunday School class voluntarily into separate men and women’s classes so the men from the jail could join a men’s class and not be singled out into a “jail class.”
In addition to working with my immigrant synod who have been such a blessing to me, I have tried to work with other immigrants who are closer—workers at local ethnic restaurants. I had heard about how Wycliffe Bible Translators get “language informants” to teach them the language. So I did that with one of the men at the Mexican restaurant. It works as well for Spanish as for other unwritten languages. He was teaching me Spanish and I was starting to learn enough to witness to him. I got him a Spanish book with a chronological Bible presentation. Like many immigrants, he went home unexpectedly and I have never seen him again.
Then the owners of the local Chinese restaurant “vanished” one day, too. These were heartbreaking, kick-in-the-gut experiences. I tracked them down to the next town, however, and got them a chronological Bible presentation in Mandarin before they, again, vanished.
And more open doors still
Recently—in addition to the training of my local elders—I have begun doing some mentoring long distance with a ministerial student. He’s about 12 hours north. I guess that’s another way God has answered my prayer.
Right now, I’m working on a resource for churches in my denomination (and whoever has the Internet) to use the Heidelberg Catechism as a living resource instead of a dusty dead book on the shelf. I’m assembling those resources (a work in progress) at heidelbergcatechismproject.com I also host my own sermon notes and audio sermons there. To date, over 1,000 sermons have been downloaded. I was blessed today to find out that a friend of mine took one sermon and “re-preached” it at a mission he’s serving!
Given the way folks find the site (I can tell what sermons they are seeking), evidently there are a lot of busy preachers needing some help on Saturday night and on special occasions! Hopefully the resources they find will be more helpful than some other resources they might use. As a spin off another minister whose specialty is the Westminster Shorter Catechism has asked for my help to create a similar site for his catechetical training materials.
I believe God has answered my prayers and is answering my prayers. I hope that, if this has encouraged you, you’ll pray for me in these efforts. Currently I am praying for special grace for my ministry to go “full time” and for my catechism and sermon site. Most of all I pray for grace to be faithful to Jesus Christ each and every day until His journey for me is over!
Chuck Huckaby is a bi-vocational pastor serving in Lawrenceburg, Tenn., where he lives with his wife, René.
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