Every pastor (or Interim Pastor) needs a deacon like Stephen.\u00a0\u00a0I had him twice.\u00a0\u00a0Not only was he an Attorney but was repeatedly re-elected as a County Judge.\u00a0\u00a0A life-long resident of his home- town, he was a forty-year Sunday School Teacher at his Church.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s where I met him.\u00a0\u00a0He was the Chairman of the Deacons.\u00a0\u00a0I was the Interim Pastor.\u00a0\u00a0It was a difficult time in the life of the church.\u00a0\u00a0At the conclusion of a lengthy interim, I said to Stephen, \u201cWell, we made it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0His response was, \u201cThanks to your faith.\u00a0\u00a0You trusted God and believed in us.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0My response was. \u201cI couldn\u2019t have done it without your support.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The second time I was Interim Pastor of that same church, Stephen was the Chairman of the Pastor Search Committee. When the Committee handed me their top ten prospects and asked me to review them, I set one aside.\u00a0\u00a0Stephen asked why and my reply was, \u201cI don\u2019t think you can get him – he lived in a larger city, successful pastor of a larger church, probably had a larger salary, happy where he was.\u201d Stephen said, \u201cI think we can get him\u201d. They got him.\u00a0\u00a0On my last Sunday, I thanked Stephen for his faith – believing in God\u2019s direction and the church\u2019s response. His response was to thank me for my support – when other committee members had questions, I stood with Stephen\u2019s belief that they could get him.\u00a0\u00a0When you can get faith and support together, you usually have a winning team. Last week, in a packed auditorium, we memorialized my friend, Stephen.\u00a0\u00a0At least twice, we were a winning team.<\/p>\n
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Every pastor (or Interim Pastor) needs a deacon like Stephen.\u00a0\u00a0I had him twice.\u00a0\u00a0Not only was he an Attorney but was repeatedly re-elected as a County Judge.\u00a0\u00a0A life-long resident of his home- town, he was a forty-year Sunday School Teacher at his Church.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s where I met him.\u00a0\u00a0He was the Chairman of the Deacons.\u00a0\u00a0I was the Interim…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3582,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3581\/revisions\/3582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}