The Succession Story (Part Two) – The Man Who Came to Dinner

“Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He will do it.”
Psalm 37:5

A commitment to find a successor was made and placed into the hands of God. Psalm 37:5 informs us that if we commit our way to the Lord and trust Him for it… He will do it. This Psalm described the journey to find my successor… Commit, Trust and Wait for God to do it.

As a season of waiting began… It was a season of little or no activity for the first several years. There was only the awareness that a commitment to find a successor had been made.

Then, in the summer of 2014, the season of waiting took a turn. My family went on vacation in Mammoth, CA. As the Lord would have it, over sixty members of our church family were vacationing at the same time in Mammoth. We gathered together on three occasions. We had a gathering of everyone for a time of fellowship and worship. The moms had a girls’ night out at a local eatery and the men had a time together.

The men’s gathering was a BBQ steak dinner in my family’s large cabin. Over a dozen dads attended. When the last two men walked in the door for dinner, the Lord spoke to me. As one of them passed in front of me, the Lord said that “he was going to be the next senior pastor of Evergreen SGV”. He was the man who came to dinner.

To say the least, I was surprised that this man who came to dinner was God’s chosen vessel to lead our church into the future. He was not a pastor and had as much experience of being a pastor as my sons-in-law with whom I was vacationing.

I told no one of this revelation for months. Then I informed three people so they could join me in prayer, one of them being my wife, Reine.

I now knew who the next senior pastor of Evergreen SGV was going to be. The first two conditions had been met. The Lord identified my successor and the discernment had been left up to me. The third condition was now in play. We could not call my successor out of their employment situation. God would have to make him available.

As it turned out, the man who came to dinner was duly employed. And so a different kind of waiting commenced.

And so, the journey continued.

It gave me a lot to think and pray about as I waited.