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Pastors, Prize Winners, and Pre-November Reminders

Although Pastor Appreciation Month ends tomorrow, appreciating your pastor should be an ongoing pattern of behavior. Emphasis months, theme weeks, holidays, and days of recognition were not created to imply that those dates are the only times that the organization, cause, or person should be celebrated. Instead, their purpose is to remind, reiterate, and reinforce the fact that honor is due.

If you are on Facebook and “like” the Petals from the Basket Facebook page (after reading today’s post, come back and click here to visit the page), you will receive a reminder in your News Feed each Saturday to “Pray for Your Pastor.” I hope that it will be a gentle reminder to give your pastor the gift of prayer on a weekly basis.

Thank you ten thousand times over to many of you for your participation in the survey this week. The response was astounding, and I appreciate it greatly! In December, I’ll share the importance of the information that was gathered.

Five winners were selected by numbers chosen through a third party. Each entry was assigned a number by a third-party source, and then those five winners were named at 12:01 a.m. today! A packet of seven “Petals from the Basket” cards (check out these and other cards in The Card Store after reading today’s post) are being mailed today—along with a bonus Christmas card!—to the following:

* Jessica S. from MN

* Janice C. from NY

* Tabitha T. from WI

* Roxann B. from MI

* Sue Ann P. from SC

Congratulations to each of you! This set of cards would make an excellent Christmas gift or would be great if used individually to send thank-you notes at various times during our Thirty Days of Gratitude, which starts this Friday, November 1.

If you haven’t already downloaded your FREE guide for the Thirty Days of Gratitude, please do so soon (link below)! Once again, thank you for your input via the survey and for allowing me to use October to tell how my life as a “PK” influenced the gratitude I have for pastors who are sincerely serving God in the pulpit—and at home.

Click here to download your FREE guide for the

Thirty Days of Gratitude!

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By Petals from the Basket | October 30, 2013 | Contests, Ebooks, Events, The Card Store - Letter-Writing, Thirty Days of Gratitude |

Do you have time for one question?

As the readership for Petals from the Basket continues to grow—and thank you for that, by the way!—it would help me to know two things:

1. How do you most frequently access the blog posts on Petals from the Basket? (Even if you don’t read the blog posts, you can take the survey and enter to win!)

2. From what region of the country (or international location) are you accessing this site?

Below is a link to a one-question survey that will help me with this information. It will take approximately one minute of your time. (Yes, you know me well—I tested it!)

The survey expires tomorrow night, Tuesday, October 29, 2013, at midnight (CST).

To thank you for your input, I am giving away five sets of “Petals from the Basket” cards from The Card Store (one set each to five separate winners). The set includes seven identical cards (value: $9.50). And I think Ed is even throwing in a bonus card for you to use this Christmas! Winners will be selected at random by a third-party service on Tuesday night at the conclusion of the survey. Winners will be announced in Wednesday’s post!

So, in advance, thank you for taking a moment to assist me by taking the one-question survey, accessible through this link:

One-Question Survey

 

 

By Petals from the Basket | October 28, 2013 | Uncategorized |

What Do I Do Now? (When Pastors Relocate)

Lorraine Strohbehn

Today's post is from Guest Contributor, Lorraine Strohbehn

Today’s post was written by my mom, Lorraine Strohbehn, a pastor’s wife of many years, an author, and a mom, grandma, and great-grandma! She contributes a memory with a Biblical lesson on the last Friday of each month.

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New places, new people, and new circumstances are frightening. Learning that things can be accomplished in new ways is exciting; however, it is a growing process, and growing sometimes causes pain.

When my husband accepted the pastorate in a new location, setting up our home in a new community was a major move—just as it is for any family. Our four children would soon begin the school year in new schools, and my husband would spend even more time in his office and out becoming acquainted with the members in this new church. But as the mom and pastor’s wife, I realized that I had many adjustments as well, not the least of which was that I found myself unfamiliar with shopping places and where to find all the necessities for our new ministry home. I felt very alone in this challenging new setting.

One of the ladies who attended the church called and invited me to go into the major shopping area of our city, have lunch with her, and then visit some of the stores that carried the essentials for our family. I eagerly accepted her invitation! We got acquainted over a lovely lunch and then headed to various stores to find some great sources for future buying. I decided that this was a pretty neat town to which the Lord brought us!

I returned home refreshed, feeling certain that the Lord brought us here for a ministry that would be used in the way of His choosing, and I was also reminded that, of course, there were things available for our needs and stores where we could purchase the things that we needed in this new city. And not only that, but someone had graciously taken the time to introduce me to them. It brought a new calm that I needed.

I have many memories of delightful things that were done for our family as we served the Lord as the pastor and his family. As we reached out to our church family, went through many of their trying times with them, and sought to teach the Word of God faithfully, in the process, we grew spiritually ourselves.

What a privilege through the years to serve our faithful God and see Him use others to encourage us as well. First Timothy 3:2–7 speaks of the qualities of a pastor or bishop, saying: “A bishop must…have a good report of them which are without, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.” He and his family must understand their new community so that they can carry out the work in a way that will reach this new area of ministry. We are thankful for the great church families through the years who helped us to see that happen.

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Now it’s your turn to comment:

Have you ever made a major change in location? When you moved, what was the most difficult part of the transition for you? How did God use that in your life? I know Lorraine would love to hear your replies to any or all of those, so please feel free to “leave a comment” below!

_________________

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By Petals from the Basket | October 25, 2013 | Family, Guest Posts, Life Changes |

How I Learned to Call It “Home”

Missionary Jim Elliot, one of the missionaries killed in Ecuador on January 8, 1956 (five years later, I was born on that day), stated the following:

“Wherever you are, be all there!

Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.”

—Jim Elliot

As a fresh-out-of-college music teacher in the Detroit area in the mid-1980s, I was actively involved in the music ministry of my church. It was there that I met a quiet, humble, gracious, lady—and she truly was a lady—who I will simply call “Judy” in this post. Judy sat beside me in the soprano section (yes, I was a mezzo-soprano back then), and I loved talking with her during the breaks in our weekly choir practice. She, too, was a single woman, though several years my senior, and perhaps the contentment that was reflected in her quiet, calm spirit was what most intrigued me about her.

Judy would wrap an entire life lesson in a simple sentence that was overflowing with wisdom and grace. It was one of these sentences that struck me and stuck with me.

Because I attended private high school and college in the same location (and lived in the dorm for eight years because of that), my friends were scattered all around the country. I wasn’t “settled” yet, and I probably saw everything as temporary. Besides, I was in my twenties, dated a lot, and knew I’d be leaving at some point to get married—after all, isn’t that what happens after college? So why plant deep roots, right?

I talked with Judy one evening and mentioned that I just didn’t feel like I was having an outreach in this new location and didn’t feel like I was being accepted in my new church. In my (what I now see as) immaturity, I mentioned with great casualness (i.e., I flaunted it with my words) that it didn’t really matter because I would be leaving town to go “home” for Thanksgiving, so who cared if they didn’t accept me.

In gracious tones that I can hear to this day, Judy smiled, paused, and gently spoke these words:

“They’ll accept you when you accept them and call this your home.”

We often use the excuse—and yes, we use it as an excuse—that “home is where the heart is.” While that is true on many levels, the Christ-follower should have a different definition:

Home is wherever God wants to use me.

It doesn’t matter if you are in a pastor’s family, work in vocational Christian ministry, work a secular job, or follow God’s plan for you by serving Him faithfully within the walls of your home on a full-time basis. You must consider where you are to be place where you are supposed to be.

In fact, don’t just be there—live there. Or, as Jim Elliot added, “Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.”

Embrace where God has placed you. Look for the reasons He wants you there. Yes, by all means, maintain, miss, and treasure your friendships and memories from previous locations, but use the lessons God taught you through those friendships and memories to help you foster new ones.

So thank God for where He has placed you today, then look in the mirror and say, “Welcome home.”

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Now it’s your turn to comment:

When facing a new location or a new situation,

what helps you to finally call it “home?”

_________________

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the blog posts—no spam—and we won’t give your information to anyone else!
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By Petals from the Basket | October 21, 2013 | Family, Friends, Life Changes |

A PK’s View of the Family of God

As a PK (“pastor’s kid”), I often felt that others thought I was supposed to be perfect. The voice that spoke this expectation the loudest was my own. Yet my dear parents helped me to learn that while I was indeed to live a life dedicated to God in word and deed, it was to be the result of being a surrendered Christ follower—not because of any role my parents or I played in the leadership of the church.

I failed miserably. And I do mean miserably. And I failed often. And I do mean often. Yet God’s grace reached out to me just as it did to anyone else. He loved me. He forgave me. He rescued me from the separation from God that came because I was born into a world of sin. He saved me!

So why is there a tendency on the part of church-going people to watch the pastor’s family so closely? Is it because they think the pastor’s family is supposed to be sinless—that they have a stricter set of commands from God that they must follow? No. I don’t believe that’s why. (Although, some pastors’ families live with that sense of martyrdom and piety, giving authority to those thoughts rather than proving them wrong.)

I personally believe that the pastor’s family lives by the same set of commands for Christlike living that are given to all other believers. But there’s a reason God gives specific guidelines in His Word to pastors. They are to be an example, to show what it looks like to live out these commands, and to equip others to do the same. This is true not only in making right choices; it is also true when sinful choices are made, and the pastor and/or his family can demonstrate that God’s grace is greater than sin.

That’s why the evil one tries so hard to destroy pastors and their families. Not because they’re special or “better” than others in the church, but because they are the ones called upon to demonstrate the Christian life to other believers in the church and in the community. The evil ick wants nothing more than to destroy that example and, in doing so, to try (unsuccessfully) to mar the name of God.

However, it’s imperative to note here that he is seeking to destroy any believer that he deems to be a threat to his cause. While this often happens through forces outside the church itself, it can also happen within the church (the family of God) and even more personally than that: in our physical families.

Families that the evil one can’t divide by adultery, lawlessness, or divorce, he spends extra time trying to divide by pride, gossip, anger, resentment, and falsehood—both perceived and real. Family matters. Protect it with unconditional love and loyalty—for the glory of God.

You were placed in your earthly family for a reason. Ephesians chapters five and six talk about the role of various members of the family because this is where the unconditional love of God is to be demonstrated first! It is where His mercy and grace are to be carried out on a daily basis. It’s also where it’s the hardest to serve Him with our entire body, soul, and spirit because it’s where we can “let our hair down,” where we can “vent,” and where we think people have to love us, so we must be able to treat them however we want to.

Yet that is not the command God gives to all believers. He warns us in Proverbs 13:10 that “only by pride comes contention.” When contention arises in the home (or in the church), pride is present. Period. He further reminds all believers to “love one another” (John 13:34–35). And then He lists the qualities of that love in I Corinthians 13:4–8.

So whether you’re a pastors’ family, a family within the church, or simply a family seeking to know and live for God, protect the wonderful privilege God has given to you to demonstrate His love, mercy, and grace—and start by doing it at home.

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Thank you for taking time to read today’s post. Please feel free to click “leave a comment” and share your thoughts.
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By Petals from the Basket | October 18, 2013 | Family |