The stripping process: broken down for breakthrough

A powerfully honest story of personal growth in ministry: Year of World Evangelism feature

Fredrick Russell is pastor of the Miracle Temple Church in Baltimore, Maryland.

It was a frigid, snowy Saturday morning eight years ago when we pulled up for the first time in front of my new church. The entire metropolitan area had just been hit with its worst snowstorm in decades.

Sprawled across our beds at a suburban Holiday Inn watching the weather report the afternoon before, our family wondered whether the streets would be clear enough to make it to the church where we were scheduled to be intro duced the next morning. We were excited and apprehensive at the same time normal feelings for ministerial families anticipating the first day.

A month or so earlier, my wife Brenda and I had decided to accept the invitation to take the pulpit of the Miracle Temple church in Baltimore, Maryland. We had spent almost six years in our present congregation and felt that it was the right time to move. The peace we had felt was uncanny as we contemplated and accepted this call. It was unlike other times when we were considering a change. There was the sense of a yet undefined destiny.

Prior to the call we had not even heard of the church. We had accepted it sight unseen (not always the wisest thing to do). The conference president had kept emphasizing that the church had great potential. Being somewhat of a cynic, I felt that when a president describes a church as having "great potential," that was an "alarm bell" signaling an unambiguous message: Don't go! Yet we had come.

We knew that Miracle Temple was a much smaller congregation than we had led in our previous pastorates, but we accepted it anyhow, knowing that in a couple of years they would move me to a larger congregation. At least that's how I explained it to my colleagues who were as "size" conscious as I was.

As our family drove into Baltimore in our aging but trusty minivan, we fol lowed the directions the lay elder had given us the night before, and soon enough, we turned onto the street and into the neighborhood the church was located in. To say I was shocked by what I saw would be a gross understatement.

I can't believe this

Baltimore is a city of row houses. They are essentially town home-type structures connected together and stretching along unending city blocks. In the city's heyday, these types of homes had been the "crown jewels" in the housing stock of Baltimore. And in many areas of the city today, young urban professionals are moving in and snatching up row homes in textbook cases of gentrification.

The section of the city where the church was located, however, didn't have to worry about young urban professionals or anybody else coming into their neighborhood. The housing structures still appeared solid but were in massive disrepair. Many of the homes were boarded up, and the graffiti artists had done their work on them.

As we drove up on the church, two or three deacons were out front struggling to clear a pathway through the snow to the building. At least they didn't have to shovel the parking lot, because there wasn't one! We found parking half a block up the street next to a snow bank. With some effort, we managed to get out of the van and made our way down the block to the church.

The building itself was a two-story red brick structure occupying the corner of Lombard and Fulton streets. The cornerstone announced proudly that the building had been built in 1866, one year after the conclusion of the American Civil War. The Miracle Temple congregation had purchased it from a Brethren congregation and had occupied it for a little over 20 years.

We were greeted warmly by the hard-working men out front and ushered in. It took a couple of minutes for the deacons to realize that I was the new pastor. While their warmth touched me, I was overwhelmed by my initial take of the place. The building was relatively clean, but one definitely felt its age. It was obvious that attempts had been made to improve things, but it still felt dark and clingy.

The bedroom-sized lobby was uninviting with well-worn red carpet and poor lighting. We were led upstairs to the small second-floor sanctuary. It was decent, but nowhere the size I was used to. Downstairs was the fellowship hall that doubled as classrooms for the children's Sabbath School classes. There were a couple of other small rooms attached to the back of the church, along with a kitchen.

As the deacons continued the church tour with obvious pride, I was becoming more depressed by the minute. Because of the snow, people were gathering slowly. My wife went with our kids to Sabbath School, where she tried to make the best of what was happening there. I kept looking for the conference president, who was scheduled to meet us to introduce me as the new pastor. I thought of him coming through the door to tell me it was all a mistake, that in fact it was another church in which I was to be introduced.

The fact is he never came, figuratively or literally. He was, of course, delayed due to the weather. Thus, to add to my by then depressive state, I had to introduce myself to the congregation.

Now, in such a situation, what do you say about yourself? "You are blessed to have me. I am considered, by a couple of people, including my wife, to be one of the most gifted pastors in the church, and how in God's name I came to pastor in this place, simply escapes me." Thankfully, I didn't say it that way, but given my state of mind, or should I say, the wounded state of my ego, I did feel that way.

Ego and pride

Ego and pride are slippery and imperceptible to recognize in oneself. And in ministry, it can be doubly difficult. This is because of the cloak of spirituality that permeates so much of what we do and say. This is especially true when it comes to the matter of "size," or numbers.

Wanting as it may be, success in ministry continues to be defined relative to the great three: buildings, bodies, and bucks. What's the size of your building? How many members and baptisms do you have? And, how much money do you have coming in? Even though there are heated denials, many in ministry would probably admit in their more vulnerable moments that our ministerial self-worth is occasionally tied to this matter of how big and how many ...

What lies at the core of it all is ambition, which has its own rewards and punishments. Psychologists speak of CEOs as having "encore anxiety;" a feeling that every year must be better than the last. Well, pastors have that too, along with the feeling that the next church must be bigger than the last. And when it doesn't happen, one's ministerial pride (clearly an oxymoron) can take a hit.

My "ministerial pride" had not just taken a hit on my first day at Miracle Temple, it was under assault. All around me were the clear, unmistakable signs that I was in a "go nowhere" situation, in a bad part of the city, with a relatively small congregation, in a building that had seen better days. To top it off, I was upset with God, the conference president, and any other person responsible for putting me "here."

The president felt that it had great potential, that it was promising? For me, right then "promising" was not exactly the word! Someone once wrote, "Whom the gods would curse, they call promising."

After a long day of preaching and meeting the new congregation, and trying my cherubic best not to show my disappointment, the day mercifully ended. Our family made its way back to the hotel, the place from which we had started out earlier in the day with such hope and expectation.

After my wife had put the children in bed, we sat together in the room liter ally stunned at the "place" in which we found ourselves. My wife tried her usual search for the "silver lining" in it all, but even she found it unusually difficult this time. That night, we got on our knees. She prayed, and I cried.

God and me

The next morning, I knew I had to regain my balance after the "surprises" of the day before. I phoned a few friends for perspective and encouragement. All of them struggled to put a good face on what I described as my "predicament." Throughout the next day, our family searched for housing in preparation for the move to the Baltimore/Washington area.

There was a growing feeling and sense on the inside that God was about to do something in me, and it probably was going to be painful. What I didn't know at the time was that I was about to engage in "hand-to-hand" combat with God, and it was not really going to be about my disappointment with Miracle Temple. This was going to be about God making a preemptive strike in an effort to finally take over for good in my life and ministry, and Miracle Temple was just the vehicle He would use to do it. He was going for the total disarmament of my pride, ego, and self-confidence. God had tried this before, but I had always rearmed. It was essential that I not do it this time.

God wanted to use me so much that He was willing to take me down to position me for a future that I could only dream about. All the great leaders of the Bible went through painful experiences before they were prepared to be used by God, a "stripping" process if you please, in order to experience sustained "favor" over their lives that would have been impossible prior to the pain.

The "stripping" happened to Moses in the desert, to David in the cave, to Peter in lonely abodes, to Paul on the Damascus road, and to countless others, all in a "place" of God's choosing. For me, it was to be Miracle Temple.

Almost there

Three weeks after my first Sabbath at Miracle Temple, I stood at the window on the second floor of the church owned row house where my church office was located. Rat droppings were on my desk, the yellowed-stained walls were bare, and the room was cold.

Looking through the window onto streets that a few days earlier had been covered with snow, I could see that only scattered, dirty patches of the "white" stuff remained. In the inner city, snow can sometimes be a blessing in that it covers the grit and grime of the streets. But the snow was gone, and the grit and grime had reclaimed its territory.

Everywhere I looked from my second floor perch, there was garbage. I felt like the followers of Nehemiah when their task of rebuilding the wall looked hope less: "The people saw the rubbish, and they were discouraged." I was still deeply discouraged by what I had seen during the last three weeks as I analyzed the church's potential.

The people seemed warm enough and friendly, but I was not sure where "I" could take them. I knew I had to endure here at least a couple of years. So standing at the window, I made up my mind that I would go into a "holding pattern," doing just enough to maintain the church until I could get to a more "substantial" congregation.

That attitude went against every thing I thought I stood for, and God wasn't about to let me get away with it. In fact, at that moment, I was about to go to a place with God that I had never been before.

Give me a vision

Standing at the window, I actually sensed God speaking to my spirit in such a clear way that it almost scared me. I sensed Him speaking to me about the selfishness of my attitude; my quest to be always on top; the problem of my pride; and my proverbial lack of dependence on Him.

In that brief, horribly serendipitous, insightful moment, I saw some of the "darkness" inside my own heart, and I didn't like what God was showing me.

Standing at the window in my rat-and-roach-infested office, I made a request of God that would change my life, taking me on a journey that I, in my wildest dreams, could never have orchestrated.

I prayed a simple prayer that I had never before prayed: "God, please give me a vision for Miracle Temple, and I will give it all I've got." A peace and calm suddenly came over me. Somehow I knew that every thing was going to work out, and that I would be fine.

Eight powerful years . . . and counting

The last eight years have been a whirlwind. God has been teaching me daily, nurturing me in my dependence on Him, and convincing me of the value of rising early in the morning to seek His face. Prayer is a nonnegotiable for me. I have a deepening desire to be more and more with God as He has always wanted to be with me. We're finally on the same page. Yes, of course I still struggle at moments with the "stuff" of the heart, but I'm more aware of it and confess it immediately when it rises up in my spirit.

I watched God do the "stripping" process in my life; having to take me down in order to build me up again His way. I fought God, and thankfully, I lost, just as Jacob and Paul discovered, when you fight with God and lose, you still win. As Paul put it, "When I am weak, then I am strong. His strength is made perfect in my weakness."

My ministry at the Miracle Temple has exploded all my initial expectations. It is a rapidly growing church, filled with people who are passionate about Jesus Christ. After eight years, we have moved off of Fulton and Lombard streets into a new Worship Center and Ministry Complex. By God's grace, Miracle Temple has truly gone on to accomplish a holistic outreach, inreach, and community ministry that confirms its name.

The struggling group of that first Sabbath has moved on to be considered by many to be one of the most innovative and pace-setting congregations in the Adventist Church. God has our church on an incredible journey, and I'm glad to be along for the ride.

After many pastoral years, my passion for ministry on some days is off the "Richter scale." During the last few years I've turned down a number of enticing invitations to some of the largest congregations in the country (something I wouldn't have done a few years ago). I know for sure that I'm where God wants me to be right now. God has placed "favor" over the ministry He has given me.

He has taught me from His Word that to prosper in His favor, three things must occur: (1) 1 can have no known sin in my life; (2) I must walk in obedience to His Word; and (3) I must walk in humility before Him.

Then there is the powerful vision for this place that He gave me when I asked Him for it in the midst of my early struggles. He continues to give me the wisdom and continuing strength and drive to see it through.

Much like the delightful Delaney sisters who summed things up after surpassing 100 years of life, "I wouldn't take anything for my journey now."


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Fredrick Russell is pastor of the Miracle Temple Church in Baltimore, Maryland.

September 2004

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