Mysterious Ways: A Short Story

Beads of sweat stood at attention on Pastor Burt’s forehead. When he looked down to read, they joined forces and raced down the bridge of his nose like an Olympic ski jumper, finally splattering on the worn pages of scripture he was holding chest high.

Burt’s voice boomed over the sound system as he read the words from 2 Chronicles 7:14:

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Burt had been hammering his congregation with this passage for three weeks straight. This week he was doing everything short of bribing them to seek the face of the Lord. They just didn’t seem to realize how desperate they were for a touch from the hand of God.

He had been reminded of this verse at a conference on revival a month before. The conference speaker, who was leading a church that had quadrupled in size in just two years, told everyone how a series from 2 Chronicles 7:14 had unleashed an unprecedented revival at his church.

This had lead to unprecedented growth, unprecedented giving, unprecedented speaking opportunities, unprecedented book contracts, and ministerial success that in his particular denomination was, well, unprecedented.

That was all Burt had needed to hear. More than anything else, he wanted to have an unprecedented ministry, even if it meant copying another pastor’s methods. So he wrote down the scripture reference in his glossy conference notebook and decided it was time to give revival a try. Lord knows he had tried everything else.

He had been at the Fulton Community Church for three long, hard, fruitless years. When the church invited him to be their pastor, they told him they desperately wanted to grow and they believed he was the man to help them do it. He moved to town with a basketful of ideas, ready to make the church’s dreams come true.

Within two years, Burt had tried every idea in his basket–twice. The Fulton Community Church simply would not grow. Door knocking, small groups, bulk mail, radio spots, blood drives, Habitat for Humanity, VBS, jazzy worship–you name it and he tried it. He encouraged, cajoled, threatened, and begged, but it didn’t matter. The good people of Fulton Community Church would nod their heads in agreement, say “amen,” and go home. Some of them would put their bulletins in the trash as they tucked Burt’s words away in the back of their minds, where they would be forgotten on the way to lunch. Others stuck their bulletins in the back of their Bibles and threw Burt’s words away before they got to the car. Either way, what Burt said rarely made it home with his people.

They all liked Burt as a pastor. His wife was a “doll” (an actual quote from one of the older ladies), his three boys were well behaved “for pastor’s kids” (another quote from the same old lady), and his preaching was rarely boring. Once they got used to all the sweating, the consensus was that Burt was the best pastor their church had ever had.

When all of his ideas played out with no success, Burt panicked. He had read a statistic in a ministry magazine that said if a church doesn’t start growing within the first three years of a pastor’s ministry, it is unlikely that growth will ever occur in that pastor’s tenure. With that kind of timeline, Burt knew he had to get busy. He bought into every quick-fix idea that showed up in his email inbox.

There was a part of him that was ashamed of his desperation, but he had to do something. He was a man. Men leave their mark on the world by building things. Some build houses and others businesses, but Burt had decided long ago that he would build a church. But before he could build Fulton Community Church into the kind of church he would be proud to leave behind for an even bigger church, he first had to raise it from the dead. He was determined to breathe new life into it no matter what it took. But now, after a series of failed initiatives, stalled ideas, and roadblocks from stubborn, yet pleasant people, he was running out of steam. He had promised his wife that if this series on revival didn’t work, he’d start looking for a slightly less dead church to resurrect.

As Burt brought his sermon to a close, he asked those who were serious about seeking the Lord’s face to stand. He had asked for such a commitment at the end of each of his revival sermons. The conference presenter had stressed the importance of forcing people to make a decision in response to a call for revival.

After the first sermon, only a few people responded when Burt asked all those who wanted to humble themselves before God to stand as a way of demonstrating their humility. The second week, most people rose on cue when he asked everyone to stand and beg God to bring revival to their church. He had encouraged all of them to offer up an audible prayer to the Lord at the same time. Most were distracted by the noise of other people praying. What Burt had hoped would be the glorious sound of a chorus of heartfelt prayers offered up to the Lord, turned out to be the awkward murmuring of an unconvinced group who would have been happy to have one person say a short, well-rehearsed prayer on their behalf.

“These people insist on remaining closed off to what God wants to do here,” Burt told his wife on the way home.

This week, Burt asked the congregation to stand and close their eyes and imagine that they were in an open field beneath the warm sun. As they stood there, with orange light seeping through their eyelids, Burt invited them to imagine that the warmth they felt was the glory of God shining from his Holy face.

“Take a deep breath,” he told them, “and stretch out in the warmth of God’s love. Like a sunflower trailing the movement of the sun, seek out the face of God.”

Most of the people were standing and participating. Those that weren’t were frowning and wondering what kind of books their pastor-turned-guru-of-guided-imagery had been reading.

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