Shepherds, Nonprofits & Pastoring
We are more convinced than ever that life is a series of small choices. When you walk with God, and learn to lean into Him, you hear His voice. Scripture talks about Jesus as the Good Shepherd who loves his sheep and would leave the 99 for the one.
Our lives are normal. We are just people who mess things up and try new things and wake up and ask God to lead the way. Life is leaning into God and making a series of choices to follow him and obey him, no matter the cost.
Many of you know the story of the nonprofit that is ending now. For those of you who haven’t heard, or want a refresher, it really started when we were living in Ohio. We were young marrieds leading a college/young adults Bible study and we were incredibly focused on our careers. We put the pursuit of other things in front of our marriage, and before we knew it we were on the brink of divorce. God himself put us back together, and we had a sensitive spot for marriages ever since.
In Texas, we immediately got plugged into Christ Fellowship McKinney where we ended up serving and growing for 17 years. Scott left the comfy job that paid plenty of money and started at Dallas Theological Seminary. We walked away from 85% of our salary and gladly walked into a life of vocational ministry. Scott ended up working full time as a pastor at Christ Fellowship, and we were all in for helping people find and follow Christ. We saw couples together as part of care ministry, and we were passionate about doing more. What could we have done to help if they had come to us sooner? We started creating materials to equip couples, and plenty of preventative care to get Christians launched in the right direction. As it turned out, there were a lot of churches that didn’t offer the kinds of programming we were creating, so we started dreaming of a nonprofit organization that would serve the community and all the churches in a unique way. And The Family Greenhouse was born!
The Family Greenhouse (TFG) coached individuals, couples and families to have healthy relationships with each other and with God. God guided us to begin training for those coming to us asking how they could coach too. Training was born and became an obvious passion of ours. It was amazing to see how equipping leaders could multiply our impact in an amazing way. Oh, the places we could go!
At the time, our friend Brad Ewell who was a coaching intern with us said, “I am excited that TFG will grow to include more coaches. There are many people seeking personal growth or taking their good relationship to great. Some people want faith to be part of the process while others do not. The goal of TFG is to work with all people while also providing a tangible example of how developing a relationship with God can be one of the greatest decisions in their lives.” It was a wild time of growth!
In 2018, we were weary of telling the community that we weren’t actually a greenhouse, but rather a place to get training in relationships. We changed our name to Relationship Experts and shifted our focus to the equipping of Christian leaders, both in church and business. We had the privilege to teach and disciple leaders at many churches and organizations and create curriculum for online use. Encouraged by being in our “sweet spot” of skills, we happily marched on working long hours and reaching more people.
As much as ministry was effective, the one salary of the nonprofit was not enough for our family. By September of 2019, we knew Scott needed to get additional income for our family. That journey is enough for a blog post of its own, but let’s just say we dropped to the floor to ask God what He wanted us to do next. The path was not clear, and the road was bumpy, with limited visibility. We had sold our house already and had nothing else to lean on. We incurred a lot of debt, we had family troubles, we were still pouring ourselves out for the mission of the nonprofit.
The only thing I can say we did was talk to God. The rest was all Him. We waited and cried out and read our Bibles and listened. Nothing changed for a long time. What do you want us to do? What have we done wrong? In what ways are we not honoring you, Lord? Help us hear from you and obey you, no matter what the cost. God was refining us and drawing us close to him.
Us: Which way should we go?
God: We walking together, so it will be obvious.
Us: Should we take this job or that opportunity or switch to that goal?
God: The goal is me—have a relationship with me.
And it went on like this, for longer than I want to acknowledge. The Lord was faithful to sustain us with what we needed. We heard God nudging us to write down what we had learned in our years of doing relationship ministry. So our COVID project was writing a book! And by July our paperback baby, Authentic Conversations, was born. It was a wonderful transition project and gave us a place to pour out the secrets we had learned in the quiet places of doing care ministry.
Finally (IMO) God revealed his plan for us to return to the local church. Scott would be a pastor, shepherding and training leaders and volunteers. Yes! We were ready. Where should we go? After months of waiting, the answer was clear—CrossRoads Church in Peosta, Iowa! We are thrilled to serve God in this next chapter, and we have grown as humans and ministry workers in these years. If you look closely, you can see the wrinkles. Scott had hair when this all started! Lol. So as I write this, it is the last day of our nonprofit, and Scott starts his job in Iowa tomorrow. Our God is an on-time God. We are grateful for the plan, and we will continue to be normal people taking one step at a time. Leaning into God, we will listen for the His voice and take baby steps of obedience. And we implore you to do the same, because it is a rich and satisfying ride.
