{"id":3496,"date":"2016-01-21T20:46:35","date_gmt":"2016-01-22T04:46:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/?p=3496"},"modified":"2016-01-21T20:46:35","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T04:46:35","slug":"when-a-pastor-gives-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2016\/when-a-pastor-gives-up\/","title":{"rendered":"When a Pastor Gives Up…"},"content":{"rendered":"

This evening I feel twinges of nostalgia and sadness. And perhaps a twitch of a whiff of bitterness? No, I overcame that a long time ago.<\/p>\n

Twenty-five years ago this evening, at the Mennonite church in Santa Mar\u00eda (Sonora, Mexico), the first national minister of that congregation was ordained.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a><\/p>\n

As I recall, my Dad (James Roth) gave the charge. And as I recall, the church’s “founding father” (Joe Mast) as well as two members of BMF Missions (Merle Kropf and Wilton Smucker) were there from Oregon as well. I was the congregation’s pastor.<\/p>\n

I continued in that role til I resigned in March or April (as I fuzzily recall) so Manuel Torres could take over. My family and I had to leave the field (in May, I think). <\/p>\n

Manuel soldiered on, with little help or training from those more mature in the faith. There’s really little excuse for that. Too bad. He finally resigned in December 1997. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

It could have been so different, but for… No, I won’t use this public venue to go on a rant, so relax. And I won’t use a private venue either. Most rants are dumb, hurtful, and unconstructive. (Sinful<\/em> fits too often as well.)<\/p>\n

But where was God in all of that? Right where He always is. But somehow, He got missed or overlooked. That happens, you know.<\/p>\n

Well, may God bless Manuel for his service to that little congregation. He must be in his seventies by now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

who will weep, who will shoulder the blame?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,11],"tags":[72,561],"class_list":["post-3496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lessons-for-living","category-on-this-day","tag-christianity","tag-church"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prJUJ-Uo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}