The Call That Set The Date
We had been praying about when to leave Joe’s interim full-time job at Horizons, our sending church.
Not whether to leave. When. That’s a harder prayer than it sounds, because the answer has a number attached to it, and ours didn’t work. We couldn’t afford to leave guaranteed full-time employment yet. We didn’t have enough monthly commitments to cover our salary and insurance. In fact, we were a little over $800/month short of where we needed to be to even consider setting an end date. But we had a stirring in our hearts and felt like it was time to plant a flag in the ground and take a step of faith. The question, as always, was when.
Then we got a call from our team leaders asking whether there was any possible way we might make it for a regional conference. It’s the one where all the ABWE missionaries who can get there come together for fellowship, sharpening, and sharing ideas. It doesn’t come around often.
(I’m withholding details because I’m not going to be the guy responsible for letting someone know when somebody’s house is sitting empty for a period of time.)
The date of that conference gave us the confidence to step out in faith, even though the math didn’t line up.
But we felt called to line up anyway. And God worked it out.
The Two Weeks I Did No Outreach At All
I’d been trying for weeks to make time to call and email churches looking for partnership.
Then I had two weeks of theological training at ABWE headquarters. Two weeks without phone calls, e-mails, personal referral asks… I love the training, but I had so much to do and zero time to do it.
God came through perfectly, and it’s an amazing story, but I want you to have the option whether to dive into the details or just move on, so I’ve collapsed that story into the button below. Just click or tap and it’ll expand, or skip it if you’re pressed for time.
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I spent a lot of my little spare time griping to the Lord that I was so busy studying that I was doing less outreach than before. How on earth can our monthly donations increase while I have two whole weeks away, pointedly NOT sending emails and calls out?
We were $800 short of where we needed to be to take a full-time salary.
And I needed a full-time salary in 3 weeks.
Then, suddenly, on the same DAY in the middle of my second week, two things happened.
A family member we weren’t expecting came on for $200 a month.
And a ministry I’m connected with found out that a missionary they’d been supporting for a couple of years had left the mission field 6 months prior, and that missionary’s organization had just been quietly cashing their checks. So the ministry got (rightly) frustrated, but they didn’t want to change the amounts in their missions budget. They immediately directed that missionary’s support over to us.
$600 a month.
I cried.
And instead of emailing ABWE’s Missionary Finance team about the update, I just… walked downstairs and told them. Then I sent an email so there’d be a written record.
Then I talked with the Director of Prefield Ministries, and he had me move our family from the 50% lane to the 75% lane on his prayer board. 🤣
God came through literally just in time.
The Day After I Left
E.J. was my best friend since high school. Nineteen days older than me. We came up in ministry together and never really stopped: He was the drummer in my youth group for many years, and we worked together in worship, tech installs, and camps, for 20+ years of solving problems side by side. He gave that church 15 years as their official tech director.
When his health failed and the church’s tech started having issues, I humbly, carefully, prayerfully stepped into job. It was a wild 15 months.
The day after I left, E.J. passed.
I had 2 weeks to finish calls and emails to prepare for the Texas trip, and suddenly it didn’t matter. Everything got put on hold while I wrote a eulogy and prepared for the hardest public speaking role of my life so far. When I got home from the funeral, another kind of hard work set in.
The Anti-Job
Picture me in a camping chair, at a donated table serving as a desk, because my wife had already given our desk away on Marketplace. Looking up church websites. Sending emails. Letting the dog in and out. The creak of the camping chair as I get more coffee or put on headphones to block the sound of another episode of Bluey while I research and reach out.
On the one hand it was surreal. What I’d describe as an anti-job: I have a full paycheck to not go into work, but to work wherever I am. I was simultaneously struck by the mundanity of day-to-day life while also being far too buried and busy in the milieu of responsibilities.
I haven’t even talked about this anywhere, but we were weeks, nay DAYS away from a Texas trip, and we couldn’t fit all four of us and our luggage in my little car. Our old minivan was limping along.
We needed to find someplace to trade both of our vehicles toward one newer one. Especially one that would survive a trip to Texas and back, and ideally one that would be left in good enough shape to serve our family back home while we’re overseas.
God opened the door for a 2014 minivan at a perfect price. We got our new vehicle 2 days before loading it up and hitting the road.
But that was scores of Facebook scourings, calling dealerships of all shapes and sizes, arranging test drives and visits.
It was a BUSY 2 weeks.
71 To 77 To 85
Here’s what actually happened to the money while all of that was going on.
We went from 71% to 77% in June.
By the time the July newsletter went out, we were at 85%, and I wrote it from a public library in South Carolina, already on the road.
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- A friend from our church for $30 a month.
- A stranger from our church for $25 a month.
- An old friend in North Carolina who knew Abbey’s parents came on for $50 a month.
- Another stranger from our church for $20 a month.
- A dear friend from a supporting church in PA for $10 a month.
- A pastor of a supporting church came in on top of the church’s donation for $50 a month.
- Another old friend of Abbey’s parents came on for $30 a month, while
- another sweet family from the same amazing church in PA came on for $30 a month.
- Then, entirely unexpectedly, we had a partner at $1,200 a year as an RMD from his IRA, who changed it to $1,000 quarterly.
- A friend from a church I worked at temporarily after moving to WV came on for $25 a month.
- A friend from our church updated from $7 a month to $25 a month.
- Someone ELSE from the PA church came on for $20 a month.
- And then a pastor in NC whom we’ve never spoken to came on for $25 a month (He still hasn’t answered any of our emails.)
And in the midst of all of that, a slew of one-time gifts came in. These were not partners we asked for. These were seeds planted months ago finally sprouting up… at just the right time.
And Then We Loaded The Van
That’s where the first half of this ends. A 2014 minivan bought 2 days earlier, packed to the roof, pointed south, with 85% of a budget behind us and about $1,255 a month still to raise.
We thought we were driving to Texas to raise support.
We were, eventually. But almost none of what actually mattered happened there.