I don’t know Brian Burkett, and I don’t know the details of the situation, but I do know how awful it is to leave a ministry under bad circumstances. Being asked to resign from a pastoral position throws your whole world into an uproar. Not only do you lose your source of income, you lose your local community of worship, your spiritual support network.
It can also be a crushing blow to your identity. Is this what I’m really meant to do? After all of the years of schooling and training, am I heading down the wrong path? After Gretchen and I left our previous ministry, we basically dropped out of church life for a year or so. We were so burned by the whole thing that we wanted no part in ministry, in corporate worship, in anything even resembling a local church.
If you have a minute, maybe pray for Brian and his family during this time. We don’t know him, but we know something of what he’s heading into.
I don’t really know you either, except through your blog, but I want to say that visiting and reading here has been a blessing to me. I appreciate your encouraging words here at Addison Road and over at my blog, and I appreciate your prayers.
Thanks, and God bless. If there is anything I can ever pray about for you, I would consider it a privilege
Brian
Having been through the same thing as well, my prayers are with you guys. It’s one of the more difficult and hard-to-explain things i’ve ever gone through, but certainly something God has used to teach and refine and “re-fit” me.
Mike,
Your story sounds like ours. We had the same issues of not wanting to have anything to do with church or serving anywhere for awhile. Saying a prayer for Brian and his wife. It is a hard place to be when something like that happens.