My sense of self-importance was tested early on. My master career plan had me earning an MBA. Yet, I would not have an MBA for the money I could earn. I would have it so that I could flaunt my talents and credentials, without any regard towards meeting my material needs. I would be a talented leader and visionary. I would be an ethical manager. I would make my business career secondary to my calling in the Lord.
So, with an eye toward launching ministry as I approached the age of 25, I would select an MBA program that would give me the best opportunities to grow as a minister. The MBA was not the goal. It was only a means to achieving spiritual success with a worldly title.
Two factors made my decision to go to Texas Christian University: a full-ride scholarship, and an offer from several families in the Fort Worth area, for me to live with them, free of charge. I had both of these conditions satisfied, before accepting the offer from TCU. It would be a cost-free, worry-free way to serve God while winning a graduate degree in management.
The free room and board was an affirmation, and a confirmation, that I was making the right move. Soon, I was made the youth minister of this particular church. With a lot of inexperience, but a hearty vote of confidence from TCU and a body of believers, I was ready to move forward. In a few short years I would be a rising pastor with an MBA.
I really felt I had nothing to fear. My basic needs were being met. I had a lot riding on the assurance that my tuition, and room and board, would not be worries to slow me down.
After all, did not the early Church, in the Second Chapter of Acts, share "all things" in common? Was it not the whole point of Kingdom living, in this age, that we support one another, and bear with one another, as one family of the Lord? We are but a spot on the eternal timeline, if that. Those with Kingdom hearts should believe, and behave, as though their material possessions are best put to use in helping those that want to serve the Lord full time! And this was my intent.
And also, didn't the Apostle Paul write, in First Corinthians 9: That was also the Lord's instruction to those bringing the good word, that they should live off the good word.
I naively believed that a few years focused on developing as a minister, while doing the work of a full-time student, was something that others would value enough, to share of their possessions for a short time.
I should say that, at the same time, my funds that would have been used for room and board, were put in the collection plate of the respective church.
But my sense that I was due this kind of help from a body of fellow believers, was based more on a sense of self-importance, than on any humble and sincere desire to work out my salvation the right way. In less than a year, the hospitality once offered me began to crumble, and the MBA focus weakened. I made a few youthful errors in judgment, but none harmful, or outright sinful. Mostly, my hosts forgot that they had offered me their homes, and that my decision to come to Ft Worth was based on this assumption. I began to feel that there was no support for me at all, and that people couldn't care less whether or not I got my MBA, or if I ever became a minister.
But it was all about me, and that was the problem.
It was like love being offered, then taken away. It was putting my trust in people, and then feeling betrayed by them. It was trying to do the right thing, even heroically, and then feeling as though God was looking away, and did not care whether I succeeded or failed. It was a pattern to be repeated throughout my life.
I was talented. Success came easy to me. Therefore, people, and God, owed it to me to continue to make things easy.
Important? No, not at all. I made little difference in the lives of the kids that were my charge, and the congregation in question did fine without me.
Today, I am focusing on doing important work, without thinking of myself as instrumental in its success.
The congregation in question has mostly dissipated. Most of those that attended it at the time have left it for bigger, more visibly successful churches.
The idea that we should share our goods, especially with those involved in God's work, is still good and right. For ministers to get MBAs, is still a commendable aspiration.
But the idea that I am important and that for that reason alone, I should be taken care of, has been debunked.
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