My Untold Tale of the Gopher Tortoise

I saw this Gopher Tortoise when I was in Florida last week at the Exponential Conference. I took it's picture and had a "flash back" to an experience I'd had with one of these terrestrial tortoises in the early '80's.

 

I haven't told this story very often. It's the curious story of a path God led Sheila and I to travel while we were praying about where God wanted us to plant a new church. It's a story from back in the early 80's.

It's the tale of the Gopher Tortoise.

After a decade of serving the United Methodist Church as a pastor, and investing three years of my life training, studying, and preparing to plant a church, I was rejected as a "church planter" by the United Methodist bishop overseeing northern Indiana. I'm not sure if he felt bad about rejecting me, but he may have had a twinge of regret because he offered several explanations for denying my offer.

• "There's no money."  My response, "I'll raise my own."
  
• "Even if we started a new church, we don't know where we'd put it."  My response, "I pick the place."
  
• "If it doesn't fly, we're stuck with a problem. What are we supposed to do if you fail? How are we going to close a new church if it's not making it?"  My response, "If it's not working, I'll close it for you. I'll take the risk. If it goes you win; if it fails I lose."
  
• "We already have enough churches. I have trouble getting good pastors for the ones we already have. Why start another one?"  My response, "I've thought about it differently. I've been looking at how many people don't participate in any church, not at how many churches there are for them to not attend. Let's start one designed to reach the people who don't want to attend church as it's currently offered. Let's offer a new style of presenting the Old Gospel to reach a new generation."
  

Well, the episcopal leader and I bantered issues like that back and forth for more than two years. Finally, the bishop put it in writing, "No. You cannot plant a new church."

How do you handle rejection?

I wasn't really mad at the bishop. I figured he was doing the best he could. He just had to operate in a system that had become rigid - like wet concrete flows and then "sets-up" as an immovable object, the red hot methodist movement in America had "institutionalized" itself.  And everyone knows institutions do NOT exist for innovation; they exist to preserve the Status Quo.

Sheila and I headed south for a short visit. We ended up in Florida trying to decide whether we should move there, live in the sunshine and plant a new church in a rapidly growing population of folks moving from the "Rust Belt" to the "Sun Belt."

It seemed kinda like an I.Q. Test for us.

God called me to plant a new church and the denomination I'd grown-up in, loved and served for 30 years, blocked me every way it could. I was dazed and disappointed, but within a month of "getting the word getting out that I was called to plant a new church," I had half a dozen calls from core groups of new church starts from all over America, begging me to come and start a new church with them.

It was like I'd stepped into some kind of weird parallel Universe, where people were looking for ways to help you more than they were looking for ways to control you. 

Like I said, it was a "curious" time.

And that's when Sheila and I were walking along a sandy trail in central Florida, praying, talking to each other and asking God for guidance. We had an offer in hand, given to us by an excited group of fired-up Christians who wanted us to lead their new church start in a rapidly growing region of Florida. We'd studied the Bible (for wisdom, direction and clarity), prayed (for years) and sought Godly counsel (from the very first day of our calling).  Now we had to make a decision; would we stay in Florida or not?

That's when I saw the Gopher Tortoise on the trail. 

I picked it up, since Rule 68A-27.004 of the Florida State Law regarding the harassment of a Gopher Tortoise had not yet been written, I figured it was OK. I showed it to Sheila and asked if she knew what it was. She said she didn't, so I told her, "It's a Gopher Tortoise. We don't have these back home in the Midwest."

That was it.

I was looking into the eyes of a Gopher Tortoise when I said the words, "back home in the Midwest," and in that moment I felt like my "home" was in the Midwest, not in sunny Florida. I suddenly felt a great peace about staying in the Rust-Belt and looking for a way to plant a new church there. I told Sheila exactly what I was thinking, what I was feeling, and she said she felt the same way. God knit our hearts together as we stood on that sandy trail holding a Gopher Tortoise. We knew we were coming "home" together.

 We ate dinner later that night. We'd told the core group for the new church start-up that we were going back to the Midwest. During the meal Sheila said to me, "Wherever you go, I'm with you. Whatever you do, I'm with you. I'll help you do what God calls us to do, no matter where it is or what it is, I'm with you."

The Gopher Tortoise didn't hear Sheila say that, but I did.

I'll thank God for the rest of my life that such a wonderful friend has walked beside me from that day to this. Sheila has been with me every step of the way, from the early days of rejection and searching and faith-stretching trial, to the upcoming celebration of our 25th year of ministry in what is now one of the largest United Methodist Churches in America. 

It's been quite a road and I'm looking forward to taking our next steps toward Christ.....together.

Psalm 85:4  -  Our LORD and our God, you save us! Please bring us back home.

Comments

[Matt J.]

Dude. You can't tell a story like that and leave us hanging.

You obviously got to plant the church, but did the bishop have a change of heart? Did he retire and you got a new bishop?

??

[Linda Voss]

Oh Mark thanks for writing that blog posting. But yes, tell them the rest of the story abut the bishop.

[Steve Miller]

Funny - I've traveled most of this great nation during my career. We've had family scattered to the far reaches of it. We've talked at times about living closer to family yet this feels like home. And I am certainly thankful that the two of you reached the same conclusion.