When The Door Opened

Before Cassy and I moved to Middle Tennessee, we were in West Texas. I was running a pretty small graphic design business and driving for Uber and Lyft in the evenings, and I was frustrated overall. Not because anything was particularly wrong, but because I kept feeling like I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing.

The thing I kept coming back to was a summer I spent interning at a church in Las Vegas. I was in college, running a group at a youth camp, and three kids in my group who were atheists accepted Christ that week. I knew in that moment that I wanted to spend my life in the church. That was years before the West Texas season. And yet there I was, driving strangers around at night and designing logos during the day, thinking about that camp every single day.

Eventually it built to the point that I'd had enough. I called some pastors, told them I was convinced I was supposed to be a pastor, probably a senior pastor, and could they confirm that for me? Their advice was basically the opposite of what I wanted to hear. "You can't just make it happen. Serve in the church. In any capacity they'll let you. Work there if you can."

So I did. Worship team. Visuals and lights. Children's ministry on Sunday mornings. Youth group on Wednesday nights. Everywhere they'd have me, I showed up.

And then a door opened. A listing on a website called ChurchStaffing.com for a Communications Director position at a church in Brentwood, Tennessee. I flew out, interviewed, and got the job.

Christ says in Revelation 3:8, "I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut." Paul wrote something similar in 1 Corinthians 16:9, "a wide door for effective work has opened to me." The pattern in both is the same: you don't open the door. You stay faithful, you serve wherever the church will let you, and then you walk through the door when it opens. I'm grateful I didn't force it. And I'm grateful I didn't give up while I was waiting.