We all go through stages in life. I was in the first grade once. I graduated from the Eighth grade, then I graduated from High School, then I graduated from college, then I graduated from Graduate School, and then I got a Doctorate. I once was a single guy, then I got married, then we had kids, and now we have grandkids, and one of these days, I will be a great-grandpa.

I have been a pastor for 48 years, all in one church. We started with 20 people meeting in a public school gym. Now, we have 1,500 people who call JBC their home church and 50,000 square feet of buildings worth millions of dollars. My role is changing. I don’t preach much; Pastor Mike Dedera does most of that now.

I was in the audience tonight at our “Good Friday” service, listening to pastor Mike preaching and thinking that I used to be up there teaching God’s Word to people, but now here I sit.

As I change and graduate in life, as it were, I want to do more, not less, at least to have more impact for God. I am trying to make writing my new ministry. It is a noble method of communicating the truth of God’s Word; the entire Bible is a testament to that. I aim to write ten books in the next ten years of my life. But I think that this blog has incredible potential to be the most significant ministry of my life. I would like it to expand all over the world. I am praying every time I write that God will anoint my writing and that He will cause the number of people who read it to grow. It is just like when I started pastoring; I prayed fervently that God would anoint my preaching and that Jefferson Baptist Church would grow and grow. I prayed hard, trusted and followed the Lord, and I worked like a dog.

Now, I am a tired old man, but it doesn’t take much energy to write, at least not physical energy. My mind is still sharp, and I can move my fingers. When I was the preacher at JBC, every year on the Sunday after my birthday, I would preach the same sermon, year after year after year. The sermon’s message was to pray for me, and I will become a good preacher, and you will grow spiritually as a result. I believe, looking back over the last 48 years, that preaching that sermon over and over was the most critical thing I did.

It isn’t close to my birthday, but as I pursue this new chapter in my life, I would like to ask you to help me by praying for me every time you read one of my blogs that God would anoint my writing, that His Word would be magnified and spread through my writing and that it would spread to many new readers. You can help that by sharing my blog with your friends.