In July, 2006 I made the agonizing decision to leave my role as an Executive Pastor at Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, California. As hard as it was to step down, my wife, Connie, and I had complete confidence that God was leading us.

When I resigned I had no idea what I would do. We had to walk by faith and depend on God in new and fresh ways. It was a spiritually rich time in our lives and I will always be grateful for God’s faithfulness.

At first I assumed that I would go back to pastoring a local church. This would have been a very familiar and comfortable step. However, as we talked and prayed, Connie suggested that God may have something different in mind for our ministry future.

God began to open up various ministry opportunities and to be honest it was all a bit confusing. During this season of confusion and searching, I flew to Singapore. On that long flight through the middle of the night, I spent a long time in prayer asking God to bring clarity to my future. As I read Scripture and prayed and listened, I had a powerful encounter with the Lord. I remember saying “Lord, there are many things I could do, but what do YOU want me to do?” And, in that moment, God spoke to my heart and said “I want you to help pastors be healthy, holy, and humble.” Immediately my response was “That would be a worthwhile investment of the rest of my life.”

Out of that encounter high above the Pacific Ocean we have been led to start a new ministry called, “REPLENISH”. It is dedicated to helping pastors and Christian leaders pay attention to their soul, live spiritually healthy lives and build spiritually healthy teams.

During the fall of 2007 I was captivated by a couple of obscure verses in Exodus 28 where the Lord is describing in painstaking detail the priestly garments being made for Aaron and his sons. Two different times (v.2 and v. 40) you read the words “so they might have dignity and honor”. God has laid it on my heart to help those who serve in ministry to serve with “dignity and honor”.

In recent years, we have all witnessed the carnage of gifted ministry leaders who stopped paying attention to their soul and character. In Christian leadership, we cannot separate the message from the messenger. It is a dangerous thing to equip ministry leaders with strategy and technique and “best practices” without at the same time nurturing and cultivating the soul. The heartbeat of REPLENISH is that our doing and leading must flow out of our “BEING”.

Filed under: Replenish