Sometimes, God guides us by closing the doors on us.
“When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.” (Acts 16:7 NIV)
There was a cricket in my house the other day.
My wife hates crickets. I refuse to kill them, though. They’re crunchy when you step on them, for one thing. And they remind me too much of Pinocchio’s conscience.
So, instead of killing the cricket, I started closing doors to isolate it in one part of the house. I then swatted at it with a broom to shoo it toward an open door. It must have been terrifying for the little guy, but I made sure not to make actual contact.
Once the cricket hopped outside, I closed the door and blessed it to leave.
You ever wonder if maybe God does that to us — closes doors to steer us where He wants us to go so that we won’t get destroyed? Looking back, it feels like this is what God has been doing to me through my transition out of ministry.
I first received my pastoral credentials from the church’s denomination in 2009 and began the orientation process, with ordination being the seven-year goal. (By 2015, I had completed 9 out of 10 steps required to complete the process.) I had gone to Japan as a missionary under this denomination, and I was attending the denominational seminary online while in Japan, on a scholarship. I thought I’d be part of this denomination for life.
Doors began to close when my wife and I heeded the sense of calling to Santa Ana.
The same month I returned from Japan with my family and accepted a pastoral role at our home church, the church voted to leave the denomination. As a result, my denominational credentials were not renewed, as I was no longer part of a member church.
I tried to contact the denomination’s regional offices to explain my situation and see if we could work out a way for me to maintain my standing—at the time, I hadn’t yet closed the door to returning to missions in Japan with them—but I couldn’t get anyone to respond for over a year, despite repeated attempts.
By the time someone did get back to me with a possible solution, my transition out of ministry had already been initiated.
This nullified the solution that the denomination had come up with to allow me to maintain my standing with them, and it also affected my ability to go to the seminary campus in Chicago several times per year to fulfill my residency requirements. It was no longer feasible for me to complete my degree there.
Doors closed left and right. It felt like God was swatting at me with a giant broom. But why?
If there’s a running theme throughout my spiritual journey, it is identity.
It was easy to find my identity in ministry, and the titles/credentials I once held were like security blankets that I could wrap myself in and hide under. I clung to these blankets like Linus.
Maybe that’s why God had to pull them out of my hands.
My identity had been too tightly knit around ministry, so when my world was rocked not only by my job transition, but by an election season that led me to question what I had believed about Christianity, I was hit with an existential crisis. What had I gotten myself into? What had I subjected my family to for over a decade?
By the end of 2016, I wanted to walk away from it all. Ministry. Church. The world of evangelicalism.
Yet, I wouldn’t walk away from faith, because Jesus has consistently revealed Himself to me through astounding acts of grace, mercy, and kindness that I can’t explain, other than that God is real, Jesus is alive, His word is true, and the Holy Spirit is active in our day-to-day lives if we just surrender to Him.
If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have continued going to church at all. I would have become one of the “dones,” praying and studying the Scripture on my own, but God had other plans.
My wife and I intended to visit a few churches that our friends either recommended or worked at and hop around until we landed somewhere. I looked forward to being anonymous, to being able to sit quietly in the back without having to do anything work-related on a Sunday.
The first church we went to was led by the pastor under whom I got my start in ministry as a small group leader. I had connected with him during my career transition to help me process, so my wife and I wanted to visit his church first, primarily out of a sense of gratitude for his help during a painful season.
I didn’t know that my wife had prayed that our boys would find a sense of connection and belonging at wherever our next home church would be. This was the confirmation she’d be waiting for.
We visited this church, tucked away in a Santa Ana office building, on my first Sunday as a lay person. We were welcomed warmly by old friends, saw some familiar faces we hadn’t seen in a while, checked our kids into children’s ministry, and settled into our seats for the service.
I don’t know what it was, but I felt a sense of peace over the next few hours. I told myself that we’d come back for another visit after we completed Orange County Church Tour 2017.
At the end of the service, we reconnected with our boys, who seemed quite happy. Our oldest told us that he already made a friend. “What’s his name?” we asked.
When he told us his new friend’s name, I chuckled and pulled out my phone to show him a photo.
Nine years earlier, my family had attended one of the first preview services of this very church when our son was seven months old. We took a picture of him in the nursery, where he sat on a colorful rug next to another seven-month-old boy whose family was attending the service that day.
It was the same boy who befriended our son on our first day back at this church, nine years later. Both of our boys told us how much they enjoyed church that day and couldn’t wait to come back the following week.
My wife later told me about the confirmation she had prayed for. Though we had planned to visit a few other churches before deciding where to land, I was emotionally and spiritually exhausted, and this church seemed like a good place to stop and rest.
And so here we are.
