I double-clicked the mouse button and didn’t give too much thought to it after that. I did mention to Sherri that I’d sent my resume to Seoul, Korea. She just nodded and said, “Oookay.” What else could she say?
My wife is a rugged and adaptable woman, but the fact is, she had had enough of the spiritual drought we found ourselves in as much as I. Our growing weariness with petty church squabbles, denominational politics, and the “business” of church had brought us both to the place where we were desperate for God to do something.
And so, we waited. But it wasn’t long until I received a questionnaire from Seoul International Baptist Church. That night, over dinner, Sherri asked me about it. I laughed. “I seriously doubt I’ll hear back from them,” I said.
But I did. A few weeks later, a second questionnaire appeared in my inbox.
I knew a little something about ministry questionnaires, and I recognized several questions that more or less matched what I knew to be on applications for Southern Baptist missionaries. One of my favorites was a three-part question about the use of alcohol, the gift of speaking in tongues, and abortion. It was obvious that the answer they were looking to hear from this bizarre tripartite question was that I opposed and condemned all three of these practices.
That’s not the answer I gave.
“I enjoy a good glass of wine, I believe the gift of tongues is a legitimate and present gift, though it is often divisive, and no, I don’t believe in the practice of abortion.”
That’s close to the answer I gave. I chose not to mention that God had given me the gift of speaking in tongues. In fact, until recently, I’ve never publicly mentioned that I possess this often controversial gift. My wife doesn’t speak in tongues, and believe me when I say she is a godly woman.
The fact is, I didn’t think the mention of the gift of speaking in tongues would matter. When it comes to Southern Baptist churches, alcohol of any kind is taboo for the pastor.
Little did I know that back in Seoul, my answers to the two questionnaires were being posted all around the church. Everyone was reading them. They broke all the norms. They were edgy and non-traditionally Baptist. And church members loved them!
I wasn’t trying NOT to go to Seoul, but I wasn’t going to feed the pastor search committee what they wanted to hear either. I’d never tried less to impress a church, and I’d never been more real and transparent than I was with these two questionnaires. Maybe it was because the church was on the other side of the world. Maybe I was just too burnt out to care. I don’t know. What I do know is that what began with my answers to those questionaries has continued to shape my ministry.
There are so many double standards in our churches and lives as Christians. So much play-acting. The message of Jesus, writes Dallas Willard, “must come to us free of the deadening legalisms, political sloganeering, and dogmatic traditionalisms long proven by history to be soul-crushing dead ends.”1
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was about to leave all these things behind. Serving a church with as many as twenty-five nationalities and multiple Christian denominations would expose me to streams of living water I never imagined. And after drinking deeply of that water, I can never go back.
In Christ,
Dan
You can find my first two posts in this series here and here.
“Where is the God of Elijah? Overcoming Spiritual Drought” can be sampled and purchased here.
"The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God,” p. 68.
LOVE this!! I love going deeper into your y'alls story like this!