A Wonderful Plan For Your Life...

In seminary my mentor (who also was the professor of church growth, planting and renewal) was Dr. Phil Douglass. Dr. D, as we called him, considered it his job to know us well enough to direct us in our future endeavours in ministry. He was, in fact, so detailed in which direction we should take that people began to quip: Dr. D loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Dr. Douglass had a plan for me. He told me I should be a youth minister until I was 35 and then I should be a church planter. Well, today I turn 35. I have worked with youth, just as Dr. D planned, but now, instead of becoming a church planter I am going to labor along-side a church planter. Though this is not the direction that Dr. D had chosen for me, I'm sure he is happy to know that I am still laboring within my "Divine Design" as he calls it.

Eric Liddell says it best in the movie Chariots of Fire when he says to his sister, "God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure." This is Eric's response to her urgings to forget running and return to what God had really called him to: Missions in China. Liddell wasn't denying that he was made for missions, but because God had so uniquely gifted him in running, he knew it was something he had to do.

Perhaps one day I will plant a church and return to Dr. D's prescribed path. For now I know that God made me to work with kids and when I do, I feel His pleasure. Knowing Dr. Douglass, I'd have to say, that that is the very definition of Divine Design.