Sending Our Founding Pastor: Navigating Transition with Hope

Show Notes

In this heartfelt and transparent episode of Wisdom for the Wilderness, founding pastor Zack Thurman and Pastor Josh sit down to share the difficult news of Zack’s upcoming departure from Overland Church. With honesty, tears, laughter, and deep pastoral care, they walk the church through the emotions and practical realities of transitioning from its founding pastor to the next shepherd.

Zack opens up about the internal wrestling, the Lord’s clear leading, and the mixed feelings of deep love for Overland paired with obedience to God’s new assignment in West Palm Beach, Florida. He shares the timeline of how the Lord stirred his heart and opened doors, including the opportunity to coach church planters and help a multiplying church network reach more neighborhoods with the gospel.

Together, Zack and Josh give the church a clear, biblical roadmap for this season:

• Celebrate and send the Thurman family well (we don’t say goodbye — we send)
• Grieve the loss together
• Then refocus on the mission with renewed energy

They offer practical encouragement for church members: stay faithful in attendance, keep serving and giving, protect unity, refuse gossip and unfair comparisons, pray for the search team and staff, love the next pastor, and keep your eyes fixed on Jesus — the true Head of the Church.

This episode is filled with hope and a strong reminder that Overland’s future is secure because Christ builds His church.

Whether you’re an Overland member processing this change or a leader facing transition in your own church, this conversation offers comfort, clarity, and gospel-centered direction for walking through pastoral change faithfully.

Creators and Guests

JH

Host

Josh Hutchens

What is Wisdom for the Wilderness?

Join Dr. Josh Hutchens, director of Gateway Seminary's Rocky Mountain Campus and pastor at Overland Church in Fort Collins, Colorado, as he explores spiritual faithfulness amid life's challenges and suffering. Through discussions on theological questions and inspiring stories, Wisdom for the Wilderness offers guidance and hope for navigating the complexities of faith in a broken world.

speaker-0: Welcome to Wisdom for the Wilderness, a weekly podcast by the pastors of Overland Church, where we talk about the Bible, theology, ⁓ practical things in the world. And this week we're going to talk about one, a topic that is really heavy and really hard and, and it's, well, it does, it stinks. And we're going to talk about helping Overland Church transition from me, founding pastor, to its next pastor. And so this week,

speaker-1: and it stinks.

speaker-0: I dropped a bomb on the church. Some to applause, some to tears. ⁓

speaker-1: No, just to tears, I'm sure. So it hasn't happened while we're recording this, by the way, but. Is that it's it's tears, so.

speaker-0: recording this before it happens. So, ⁓ I want to help our church transition well to the next guy. And, ⁓ here's the reality. ⁓ every church that's going to have a lasting impact and going to be around for a while is going to have multiple pastors. And there was always going to be a day where I wasn't going to be the pastor. And, ⁓ we, you know, in ministry, ⁓ We don't necessarily get to decide when that time is and when it comes. I've never thought that I would just plant Overland Church and pastor Overland to the day I died. I was open to it, be happy to do it, but I've always said, what I won't do is give God GPS coordinates. I won't say to God, hey, here's where I'll serve you. And Jennifer and I have always lived our life in a manner in which if the Lord calls us to the mission field, we can put our house on the market and go. Like we live debt free other than our mortgage for that reason. And there's obviously other reasons, but I mean, that's a huge driving force of that reason. We've always said like, anytime that the Lord seems to be doing something or opening a door, we want to see, is this really of the Lord or not? So I just want to I want you to know, church, that, I have... I love Overland Church. I bleed Overland Church. I think it's an incredible group of people. I'm so proud of everything that... the way in which the Lord has worked in Overland and the way our people have grown. And I have, like, very mixed emotions. I mean, I'm incredibly sad. I've been tormented. I have had sleepless... nights, I wake up at three, I've woken up at three 30 going, God, is this really what I'm supposed to do? How am I going to do this? How am I, how am I going to leave this place that I love? And, ⁓ so if, if you're listening to this and you have that emotion, it's okay to have that emotion. It's okay to be, ⁓ be sad. It's also okay to be hopeful for the future. And I want you to be hopeful. for the future. This is not the same thing of like a dude whose wife is on the deathbed and he's already thinking about his next wife. This is not the same thing. And so I'm a pastor and you're going to have another pastor and by God's grace, if you live long enough and walk with the Lord, you're going to have several more pastors in your life.

speaker-1: Well, I'll just say that when you told me, ⁓ man, it just, was like having my right arm cut off, and it was awful. And I've had my share of sleepless nights since then, and you know, the morning after you told me in my quiet time, I just wept. I just wept and wept and wept. And so, you know, all of those emotions are just... churning in all of us, and I don't even know where I'm going with this right now, but I just want to say that it's just, it's hard. ⁓ But as someone who left a ministry I loved in Malawi, when you told me, immediately I understood, ⁓ and I understood how you can love something and still the Lord making it clear that it's time to leave. And as pastors, we often talk about when these transitions come, there is a push and there is a pull. And ⁓ so, the leaving always hurts when you're leaving a place that you love, you're leaving a ministry you love, and yet, the Lord is so kind in often giving us something to look forward to as well as we are concerned. You know, your time as a pastor and as a minister is not over. The Lord's reassigning you somewhere else, and I think it's good and right for your family to be excited about where you're going. while at the same time you're mourning where you're leaving. And to have that in both directions, there's nothing wrong about that and there's everything beautiful about that.

speaker-0: So I want to walk through a timeline real quick for people. I want you to kind of know how this happened. And, you know, I would go back to like us telling the church that Brandon was going to plant over the north in November. I had no clue this was going to happen. mean, I was at that point still thinking like, who's our next planter after Brandon? That's kind of where I was thinking. How do we send him well? How do we rebuild well? All those things. between November and Christmas Eve, I I left Christmas Eve service going, I think that was the last Christmas Eve I'll ever do here, you know? And in January.

speaker-1: What made you feel that at that service is just an intuition.

speaker-0: Yeah, just the Lord starting to stir things in my heart. so January was brutal. just being tormented like, yeah, I'm moving you from here. You're going to be done here. And I'm Emma, are you sure God? I, know, you know, why are you sure in a towards the end of January, the phone started ringing. I wasn't looking for jobs. I didn't have a resume. The phone started ringing and ⁓ over the course of the next several weeks and months, I got calls from Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina. Like my phone doesn't normally ring like that. I don't normally get text messages like that. I mean, I don't, mean, I can only just say that the Lord started putting these opportunities before me. Yeah. And I don't know if you know this or not, but like a lot of those States I just mentioned don't have elk. They don't have, they don't have, you know, can't own elk in those States. what are you doing? And one particular, but it's really hard to draw the tag. drew a cow tag once I killed it. I killed a cow in, in Kentucky, but

speaker-1: Yeah. Kentucky does have elk. It does.

speaker-0: One phone call was from Jimmy Scroggins, the lead pastor of Family Church in West Palm Beach, Florida.

speaker-1: Boyce College when we went to Boyce

speaker-0: When we went to boys college, ⁓ Jimmy was the dean. Matter of fact, I was his last class. May 08 was his last class. A man that, he had tried to hire me. He's tried to hire me a couple times throughout ministry when we were in college. ⁓ Two years ago, right when you were coming on staff, he tried to hire me. you know, was, though a great opportunity to work with him, it was an easy No, then. And this time when he called me, it just, you know, I already had the stirrings and leanings like that. You're not going to be here. It's time to be looking for your next assignment. So I heard them out. ⁓ what do you want? And it just so happened that we were already heading down there. This is something we've done every, you know, a couple of times now we've gone to a conference at their church. We've learned a lot from their church and He kind of pitched me an idea. Their vision as a church is to plant a hundred churches in a hundred neighborhoods that'll be there in a hundred years. So they're very much a neighborhood church model right now. I think there's like 22, 24 churches, something like that in several different languages. And the job he pitched me was, hey, I want you to come be a Pasture church, you'll be a campus pastor at one of the neighborhood churches. But I need somebody who can really coach and pour into planters and help these churches that help these churches send out planters at a larger scale. Somebody who's done it. And there's also an aspect of which they have some property and they need to build some buildings. And he wants me to kind of bring my knowledge. there to the table. And so it just seemed like a really good fit for what the Lord has done in my life. And again, I'm going, Lord, but there are no elk in West Palm Beach. you know, some people would say, ⁓ he's happy to be moving to the beach. Like, remember, I love the mountains. Yeah. This is, and I didn't move here to plant a church because of the mountains. It's about a mission field in which the Lord has called our family to. ⁓ My family is awesome and they have always just said like where God calls daddy calls us and Jennifer's been there too and so they've embraced the call and it will be a different way of life for all of us. I mean it will be a cross-cultural mission trip for me probably the most. I think the other three will do do fine and I'm gonna be walking into a ⁓ different

speaker-1: Are you going to trade your flannel for floral shirt? ⁓

speaker-0: I'm not. You're not, I'm not, you know, I'm not, I'm not.

speaker-1: Do the Hudson Taylor thing and dress like the Chinese and be, you know.

speaker-0: I'm gonna go to solids, but not pastels. ⁓

speaker-1: Not like a Rick Warren, ⁓ you know, Hawaiian shirt look.

speaker-0: not gonna happen. I will figure out how to contextualize without that. ⁓

speaker-1: We'll see, send us a picture of yourself in two or three years.

speaker-0: Listen, you know, I'm going to go with solids. You go to the culture, use the culture to reach the culture. I'm going to study the culture. I'm going to figure out what, what, what dudes pull off solids. So I'm not, I'm not wearing pastel. I'm not wearing floral.

speaker-1: Yeah, you're gonna have flip-flops though. Okay.

speaker-0: I like flip-flops. I can wear it. I like flip. So yeah, I don't have a problem with flip-flops. So all right, you know, it's hot there. Do you know it's hot and humid there?

speaker-1: I hear it's hot. It's like the catehuchi in Georgia.

speaker-0: The Chattahoochee. The Chattahoochee. All right, that's the country music reference. We're not chasing down. ⁓ Yeah, it's hot there. don't love the hot humid. But you know what? It's not cold there.

speaker-1: I've got to use the humor just to cope with this. That's what I'm doing. So everybody knows.

speaker-0: ⁓ I got you. So I want you to know, you hear us talking about it, that's what we're doing. We're doing it because, you know, I tell our church all the time, do things with your life that will matter in a million years. And I believe what, one, I believe the work that we're doing here, that Overland Church is doing, and will do beyond me will matter in a million years. But I believe this is what the Lord has given to me as my next ministry assignment. And we're going to walk into it and go do the best job that we can. And I'm going to step back from being a lead pastor. I'll be on the executive team, but I won't be a lead pastor in the same way. And hopefully that's going to create the freedom I need to really invest in in church planners. So I just want to say, like, start leading us through this, this transition, the pastoral transition in the church's life is monumental. It's huge. And it can go really well or it can go really poorly. And, you know, there's a great church in our community that we love and cherish, Mountain View Community Church. And the founding pastor, I think his name's Tom, when he left that church over the course of the years, it's had multiple pastors since he planted it, the churches continued to grow and thrive and plant churches. And he's moved and he went and planted another church within their network. And I think he's done it several other times. And now there's a, you know, there's a bunch of those churches and the founding pastor still gets to be part of it and, and, and proud of it, but he's not at Mountain View and he's still planting churches for the kingdom. There's another one in Colorado storyline fellowship that Ben Mandrell ⁓ left to go be, ⁓ the president of Lifeway. ⁓ and when he left the timing could not have been worse. it was COVID was the problem and Ben didn't leave knowing, ⁓ that COVID was coming. So the timing was fun on his end. He planted the church. got it off the ground, but then COVID hit in the interim. And, you know, I don't know what size the church was, ⁓ when Ben left.

speaker-1: before COVID or during COVID.

speaker-0: ⁓ I know it was well, well under a thousand. Yeah. and I know that when JT who interviewed over zoom, ⁓ when in preach his first sermon over zoom, so brutal, takes over that church, but they hired it. They hired the right man for the job. And now that church is in the thousands. Yeah. You know, it runs in the thousands and they're

speaker-1: Facebook Live.

speaker-0: Like a couple of Sundays ago, they baptized like 32 people on a Sunday morning. Like the Lord is just moving and working in that church. And it came after the founding pastor left and a new pastor came. So, you know, me leaving isn't a death sentence for Overland church. And the reality is the people at Overland are phenomenal and we have phenomenal leaders. as the ⁓ elders have talked about who to put on the search team, like, ⁓ man, you're... The people who are searching for the next pastor, they're phenomenal people with incredible ownership and leadership and theological wisdom in the church. So, can feel weighty, but no, this does not have to go poorly. And so, how do we make sure that it doesn't go poorly? How do you as church members make sure that this goes well? ⁓ Josh, give that line. ⁓ that you told me about what our church should do.

speaker-1: Yeah, so, ⁓ you know, I don't know if I said this on Sunday because Sunday hasn't happened yet, but... So, you know, as I was weeping the day after you told me, the Lord just gave me this word, and I'm not a prophet, I don't believe in the continuation of prophecy anyways, but we, you know, in that moment, everybody I'm sure is just sad, and that's fine, but we have about two months that you're still with us till the end of June.

speaker-0: You told me this.

speaker-1: And I think what we need to do is we need to celebrate you and Jennifer and the boys, celebrate the Thurman family, celebrate what God has done through you. And we always say this at Overland. We've been saying this a lot. We have a lot of people transitioning to other places. We don't ever say goodbye to someone. ⁓ We don't let them leave, we send people out. And so, it is our job to send the Thurman's out. And so, we are sending you—you're not leaving us for West Palm Beach or Palm Beach Gardens. We are sending you there. ⁓ And so, we want to take that responsibility. We want to celebrate everything God has done. And then, the first Sunday in July, ⁓ when you're gone, we're going to spend some time grieving. We're going to spend some time mourning, because like I said, you know, we're a body, and it's going to feel like our right arm has been chopped off, and we're going to grieve that. But after we've spent that time grieving, ⁓ then it's time to get back to work. It's time to get back to the mission. And I think the thing that would dishonor the sacrifices that the Thurman's made most in coming here and planting ⁓ Overland Church, the thing that would dishonor all the sacrifices you've made most is for us to lose sight of the mission. And so, there's going to come a point where we're going to get back to work, we're going to get back to glorifying God by proclaiming Jesus Christ, we're going get back to all the things that make Overland Overland, and we're not going to let any of these changes disrupt us and distract us from what the Lord has called us to do. And so, we're going to celebrate and we're going to grieve and then we're going to get to work. That's what we've got to do.

speaker-0: That's good. That's a good word. And it's okay. I want to hear you say this. It's okay to be sad and looking forward to the future with excitement at the same time as you should. I just want to just think that along the way, you guys have to remember Christ built the church. I haven't preached my last sermon yet, but I know what I'm preaching. And I'm preaching the exact same text that I preach my first. And the church cannot be built on a personality.

speaker-1: Amen.

speaker-0: Yeah. It has to be built on the church. And, and if you've been at Overland and you've been at Overland because of me and you, you, you enjoy my preaching, I want to tell you, you just need to, you need to one repent and be there for Jesus. And you just stay, you need to stay. And so, ⁓ you know, here's how I think church members can help Overland thrive in these coming months. And the first is to stay, stay faithful in attendance. Like just go. And you've heard me say this before.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: You shouldn't have, you know, it's, often been said Sunday morning church is a Saturday night decision. And I just disagree with that. It's just a decision you make right now. I'm going to go to church on Sunday every Sunday. It's like sleeping in or not going like it should be a weighty thing that you measure. Like the decision is I'm not going to church to do this other thing. And you're having to weigh the value. Go to church, be, be involved. don't gossip. Protect. unity in conversations. I've mentioned before, know, lot of, lot of, uh, Coloradoans are skeptical. Is this really wise? Is it, you know, is he going because of, uh, more money? Is he, is he going because this or that? And like, can I just tell you something? Like, I don't even have a final written contract when I'm telling the church, I don't even know exactly what I'm going to make. Um, so I promise you that it's not, it's not about money. Is it?

speaker-1: Believe it or not, the community is more expensive than Fort Collins. It is.

speaker-0: Yeah, we're looking at houses going, don't, I don't know, I guess we're to live in a camper down by the river. I don't know. going to, we're to be the people. I don't know. Yeah. You know, I don't, I don't know. Um, but, but we believe the Lord's called us to it. don't, don't, you know, refuse gossip, refuse, uh, speculation, uh, keep serving. Yeah. If you're served, like keep serving and, and be involved, keep giving, uh, giving matters.

speaker-1: in Florida.

speaker-0: I've got to get on to Chris Parrish who last podcast of what makes a good church member. was supposed to say tithing and he was supposed to say it and he didn't, but it was on his paper. I'm pretty sure I saw it. I do believe that. do believe the good church members do contribute financially to their church, but keep serving, keep giving. We're going to have staff members with added responsibility and added leverage. love our staff members well. I'm going to preach a sermon in a few weeks where I really talk about this. It's in the text in 1st Timothy, and we're going talk about how to treat staff, but treat our staff.

speaker-1: Let me just say as a staff member, mean, it just helps everyone to realize like our staff is mourning probably harder than anybody else. I mean, we have such a great team. It's a great team. We have a good time. You know, our staff meetings go long because we're chasing rabbits all over the place. And so it's going to be hard.

speaker-0: That was a great team. Love each other. laughing and hanging out. of fact that the filming of this, most of our staff doesn't know and there's a meeting after this where I'm going to tell our staff and I am.

speaker-1: ⁓ I knew we were having a meeting. didn't know you were too. Get that meeting.

speaker-0: I'm dreading it. I'm absolutely dreading it. So Yep. There's, you know, it's going to be brutal. So love our staff, care for our staff, pray for our staff, pray for, ⁓ wisdom as they lead.

speaker-1: Let me just, maybe you're getting there, but let's expand that out. You know, think about North, think about Durango. As a family, we're going to mourn this as well. And so, you know, the history that you and Buddy had in coming out here together and starting Overland and Fort Collins, you know, it's got to be hard on him and his family and his kids, knowing that their friends are now going to be even further away in Florida. And so, as a family of churches, We've got to love one another well during this season.

speaker-0: So love our staff. You've got a great staff. Every single one of them are just great people that love the Lord and there's such unity. Chase. Even Chase. Especially...

speaker-1: Especially Chase. We give him a hard time, but he's great.

speaker-0: So listen, if y'all get tired of Chase, just let me know and I'll hire him. I'll bring him to Florida. I'll take him off your hands. You know, I want to keep things well in Fort Collins.

speaker-1: You can't have them, so we're not gonna let you take them.

speaker-0: So we do love, Chase is just such a hard worker. I want everybody to hear me say something good about Chase. He is such a hard worker. Yeah. What, what he does not have intelligence. He makes up and work ethic.

speaker-1: he is. Oh, he's smart too. He's smart enough to marry Madeline, so I mean you gotta give him that.

speaker-0: That is true best thing he ever did I tell him that all the time. Yeah, so ⁓ Man, I do love the guy. I'm gonna miss him. I'm gonna miss everybody. So there is gonna be ⁓ a Pastor search team there will be seven people on it ⁓ Andrew McKnight who's one of our elders will be the leader of That search team our bylaws lay out how this all goes down and and who's on it and ⁓ with those seven people, they will do a search process. They'll, they'll be, our staff will be essentially, ⁓ we're going to try to keep our staff as the interim staff and interim function. ⁓ while this is, this is going on, we, we're just, we're a healthy church. We've worked at being a healthy church. know, we've preached on being a healthy church. We've preached on what the qualifications of pastor elder over seer are. We have been set up to find the next guy. And so. ⁓ you're going to receive an ex pastor and your next pastor will not be named Zach Thurman and he won't have all the, yeah, that, yeah, it would, it would be really weird. ⁓ I feel confident he won't be named Zach Thurman. ⁓ and he won't have the idiosyncrasies that I have. ⁓ he probably won't drink diet Mountain Dew all the time. You know, he probably, you know, probably won't be as good looking.

speaker-1: be really weird if he was.

speaker-0: ⁓ he probably probably won't tell us funny of stories, right? ⁓ you know, he probably won't be as good of an elk hunter, but hopefully he'll be a better, a better pastor and a better exposure and preacher and a better disciple maker than me. So in all seriousness, avoid unfair comparison and criticism to him. Don't, don't say, don't find yourself saying, Zach wouldn't have done it that way. Don't be skeptical of his leadership. Expect different strengths, different personality, different styles. Our search team is going to do a great job looking at somebody who fits our church, who fits the doctrine, the beliefs, the missional strategy. But don't make it unfair. Chris mentioned this last week in the podcast about time and trust. Give them time. Don't just bail after a few weeks, but give them time. Let them build trust. You know, I've over and over over talked about what matters more, what matters most, it's character. Like look, you know, look at his character, not necessarily his charisma or his, you know, his giftings, but look at his character. Support him, both publicly and privately. Pastor Chris mentioned just like how much it means when someone comes up and says, I'm for you, Pastor. Pray for your pastor. Pray for your next pastor. Love your next pastor. Support him. ⁓

speaker-1: In the meantime, pray for that search committee. Pray that the Lord gives them wisdom, that the Lord gives them patience ⁓ for making this monumental choice in the history of our church. ⁓ They need your prayers, and this needs to be a prayerful pursuit of the next pastor as the Spirit leads us to ⁓ this unity around who that is.

speaker-0: Yeah, that's good. That's really good. You know, avoid, just avoid those criticism and those things and be a part of the momentum. Even, in the interim, still bring people to church, still share the gospel, still look for God to do great and amazing things because God will continue to move. ⁓ I've, I've got a pastor friend who was doing an interim last year and the church grew by like 200 people during the interim and the next pastor came in and the interim had the church set up and the church did well. And so don't think that like we're just hearing a lame duck season because you don't have to be. It's only going to be a lame duck season if you make it. If you decide not to show up, if you decide not to serve, if make it awkward and you make it like, well, our church was centered on this personality and that's why we went to the church. And we don't have that now. It's going to be lined up. But if you're going to church to hear the word preach, well, guess what? The word's still going to be preached. If you showed up to worship with your brothers and sisters in Christ, guess what? You're still going to be able to show up and worship with your brothers and sisters in Christ. So there's some things that you should avoid. Nostalgia. And we're not like so old that there's a ton of nostalgia, but there is. Yeah. You know, there will be.

speaker-1: I especially those people who are there at the beginning, and there was a special season for you guys as you're starting over and seeing all the things God was doing. And so, I think the nostalgia is good in the sense of remembering what God has already done and knowing that we still have the same God. He's going to do the same things in the future, but you can't live there. You can't idolize the past. Right.

speaker-0: Yeah, so avoid nostalgia, avoid suspicion, like just trust that search team. You know, like it's good people and everybody on that search team is going to be people that have incredible buy-in and commitment to the church. You know, that's who the elders have talked about putting on it. It's like, well, who's got the most at stake here? Who's got the most buy-in? That's what we want, those kind of people. And so trust them. You know, I would say... Don't treat this like a crisis, but an opportunity. know, this isn't a crisis, an opportunity or next thing in growth. And just like it was for Mountain View, just like it was for Storyline, just like it has been for a lot of churches, like this is opportunity for the next season of life for our church.

speaker-1: That's classic in terms of transitions. ⁓ know, even in the business world, they talk about how transition is an opportunity for creative solutions to be born. We get into such a pattern of doing things the same way as things are going in a normal way. But when we have these major transitions, those are opportunities to think creatively and to find creative solutions to issues that have been in front of us the entire time. And so, ⁓ you know, just that, take it, let's take advantage of that, and let's see what the Lord is going to do there.

speaker-0: Yep. I would remind you of a few things and a few reasons you can have confidence in an Overland Church. And it's because Christ is the head of it. Shout out to Jason Miller, who has always kind of helped me think through some bus principles.

speaker-1: That's

speaker-0: Zach, what happens if you get hit by a bus? know, and because he's always helped me think through those bus principles of what happens when you get by a bus has pushed me to think like, well, you know, I'm not going to be the pastor here for eternity. And our church is built on the lordship of Christ. He's the head of the church. God still works. The Holy Spirit still empowers the church. The Holy Spirit is still drawing people to himself. The foundation has been laid. somebody else is going to get to come and build on that foundation. know, I've often just looked at churches of going like, yeah, I mean, I've got the ball on the zero yard line and I've moved it down the field and I've got it to the 35 and I'm going hand the ball off to somebody else and they're going to move it down the court. And I'm going to go somewhere else and I'm going go pick up the ball. somewhere else and it's, we're passing the torch that this, foundation has been laid and God is at that, that found foundation. ⁓ know that, know and believe this, that Overland Church can continue to flourish. But for it to do it, it needs to stay healthy. And we've talked a lot about what a healthy church looks like. So make sure that you, the people are keeping the church healthy. It's not just the next pastor can't do it himself. And if the next pastor, just like if it were me, starts teaching something that's going to make the church unhealthy, well, there's also things in place to get rid of the next pastor, right? And so, It's the church who has to care enough and be committed enough to keep the church healthy. man, that's my encouragement. Remember what you've been taught. You know, remember all the sayings that we're trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. Remember the things that the Bible teaches us about how we are to live and steward our lives for God's glory and then do that. So I want you to hear me say this today in closing. It has been an incredible joy to be your pastor. Planning Overland Church has been hard. Church planning is hard. We have gone through hard seasons. There have been hard things. know, a lot of our church growth were just times where I was walking with a limp. You know, a lot of our church growth happened in spite of me, not because of me, right? But in all of it, it has been a joy. I love you. want you to hear me say that it's been a high privilege of my life and me leaving isn't a mark on my care for you. I still care for you. I still hope to get to come back and I hope one day I'll get invited to preach at a college retreat or something. had that on my list for a while and I can't get the invite. Maybe I'll be able to come back. Just as we celebrate when we send out, I'm asking you to celebrate us as you send us out. Just as we welcome back, the same way Buckrun did. Buckrun celebrated us when we went out and they welcome us back. I'm asking you to be that same kind of church. I'm asking you to be mature in this as a church. I mean, I know as soon as we make this, we make this like we, our plan is to stay and to help the church transition. But if you say no thanks, see you later, pastor. Like we'll do that too. ⁓ that's up to you. I'm just asking for maturity, unity. I'm asking you to be hopeful and I'm really just asking you to just keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. Well, you got any, you got a final word of wisdom?

speaker-1: Yeah, amen. Well, I just would say to you from my own experience, Malawi, I always thought Malawi was my dream job. And then coming here, ⁓ there was a time of mourning, as I felt like my dream had been just, you know, taken from me. And as I've settled in here the last almost two years at this point, ⁓ I've got a new dream job, you know, working with Gateway, serving Overland. ⁓ You know, I couldn't imagine something that fits the way God has gifted me better than serving this church and serving the seminary. ⁓ And so, just, I know that's going to happen for you as well, and you know, you're leaving one dream job for another dream job, and the reality is, when we're serving the Lord, that's the dream job, and wherever He puts us, that becomes the dream job.

speaker-0: Church, I love you, thankful for you. Thank you so much for joining us for Wisdom for the Wilderness. There will be more episodes. We haven't even talked about all that will entail with that and what we're going to do in these coming episodes. Don't worry, they will not be... they will be good to listen to, normal episodes as we go, but thank you so much for joining us. ⁓ As always, you can email us, wisdom at overlandchurch.org. We'd love to answer your questions and until next time, go and be blessed.