No Longer a Stranger in a Strange Land
I preached my first sermon at Community Church of the Hills one year ago last Sunday, July 10, 2015.
Never, in a million years did I ever expect to be pastoring a church in the middle of Texas, especially since I’m a native born—ahem—guy from the west coast, from the second largest city in America. (Is that vague enough?)
Oh, but what a wonderful change!
I didn’t move to Texas like other Californians because of huge profits from the sale of their homes and getting double—triple—the value in the Lone Star State. I didn’t move as some sort of left-wing conspiracy to change the political climate of this Red State (I’m a conservative). I didn’t even move here as a protest against the Golden State and its strange brew of crazy, nonsensical, burdensome, ridiculous tax and social laws.
No, I came for one reason and one reason only: God called me.
I didn’t hear any voices, no angel trumpeted from Heaven nor did a lightning bolt strike a special place in my Bible. A series of circumstances aligned themselves together to cause me to pray about uprooting my family, leaving a church where I had been an associate pastor for fifteen years, abandoning a pension that I would receive in just five years, and, of course, saying goodbye to everything familiar, including family and friends.