"Success"

Jim Black - 2006

I wrote the first lines of the song "Don’t need to succeed to be loved by you…", and I thought to myself that I could never sing this in church, especially in light of the way things were going.

You see, I’m a pastor of a church that has been in the process of "starting" for almost 13 years now. It seems that as soon as we would begin to gain some momentum in growth and excitement, something else would happen to stop everything cold.

This time it was the leaving of our youth pastor combined with the falling apart of the marriage of our co-pastor. The youth pastor left in August, right after we had planned a full schedule of awesome events for the Fall. This left it to me and my co-pastor to divide the responsibilities and try to keep all the plates spinning. We did this through the Fall, although we found out that we could not replace the "cool factor" of the former youth pastor, even though we both once had been cool youth pastors (at least in our own minds!) But things were beginning to go well again…

Then, on a beautiful, fall Sunday morning we gathered the whole church together to actively worship as we painted the house of one our members (the local newspaper came to do a story of this event.) After we finished the house (it took 1-1/2 hours), and we were barbecuing some burgers, my co-pastor came to me with tears in his eyes and told me that his wife had left him that morning, and that he was resigning immediately. This was the second of a one – two punch that left us reeling, and in the next few weeks the attendance in our worship meeting went from over 100 people to around 30.

I’ve never been one to care much about numbers and keeping track of them. I would rather have 10 fired-up disciples than 1000 who are disobedient and have no intention of living out the words of Jesus. And I know in my mind that "success" as we define it in our culture is way overrated. (I just heard a comedian on the radio say this. "If you make it your goal to fail, and you succeed, then which is it?") But these two events in succession took the spiritual wind out of my sails. The way I usually express my struggle and frustration is by writing songs (it’s much cheaper than therapy), so this is the song that came out as my prayer/complaint/praise to God…

Deep, Deep Love

Don’t need to succeed to be loved by you

Been driven by greed and what the world offers

It’s all that I need to be loved by you

But it’s hard to believe…

Don’t need to be the best to be loved by you

I’m needing some rest from this wheel I’ve been turning

I think it’s a test. Am I loved by you?

It’s hard to believe

Cause I’ve seen into the darkness of my own heart

‘til I can’t bear to look any longer…

O the deep, deep love, O amazing love

The love of God is all I need…

Don’t need to be first to be loved by you

In fact you were last and it turned out much better

For me you were cursed, so I’m loved by you

But it’s hard to believe

Don’t need to bleed to be loved by you

You suffered the loss to cover my failings

It’s all that I need, to beloved by you

But it’s hard to believe…

( to hear the song go to this link: www.indieheaven.com/artists/jim_black )

We thought that our Christmas service that year was our last time to meet as church…but into that service walked a new family that came up to me and said, "We believe that God sent us here…"

I’m learning that sometimes it is just as much of a miracle to take the next step as it is to fly with the eagles…(Isaiah 40:31).

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