Chapter 11:

SPARKS OUTSIDE THE FIREPLACE

 

The Lord had called me to be an evangelist, but that call didn’t seem to be taking the shape I had thought it would. Even when I had humbled myself and given my ministry over to God, opportunities to preach around Bremerton were scarce. Then one day, Steve called.

“Hey, Ken,” he said, “a pastor in one of the local churches here in Bellingham is looking for a Youth pastor. It’s a non-denominational church, but the pastor is Assembly of God. Are you interested?”

I started out as a Youth pastor, I thought. I don’t really want to step back down to that. (At that point, I hadn’t yet come to a full understanding that there are no levels of ministry—we all serve God, and some servants merely have more responsibilities than others.) But I am ready for a change. This could be God’s next step for me. So I decided to give it a shot. I sent in my résumé and scheduled an interview.

Theresa and I soon drove up to Bellingham to meet the pastor, Dale Smith, and his wife, Tina. We immediately hit it off. They were a wonderful couple, and I found myself excited at the thought of serving with them. We visited the church, which was meeting in a rented space while they were building their new facility, and they gave me the chance to present my ministry there. The Smiths liked us, and it seemed the church liked us too. It wasn’t long after we got home that they called to offer the Youth pastor position. I accepted.

This new position did come with a downside: the salary only paid fifty dollars a week with a love offering once a month. But money has never been an issue for me when it came to ministry. I’ve always known that God would provide. Case in point, I soon got another call from Steve, who said that his dad had told him about a temporary position opening up in the university’s Central Stores division. He said, “The job is yours if you can be up here next week.”

After the initial How am I going to do that? reaction, we set to planning. Steve agreed to let me stay at his place while we wrapped things up in Bremerton, found a house in Bellingham, and moved Theresa and the kids up there.

So I went up and got the job, a Driver’s Assistant position. I loved it. I would ride along with the primary truck driver and help him pick up and deliver equipment, move furniture, and fill supply orders around campus. And while he made off-campus deliveries, I handled the routes on campus myself in a different truck. I found it a great way to meet people, and I really got in shape! When I started, I had to take the elevator frequently, but after awhile, I could pull a hand-truck full of paper reams up several flights of stairs with no problem.

 

The day finally came to move the family up to Bellingham. Neighborhood Christian Center held a farewell service for us, and we had planned to leave immediately after it. Theresa would drive the car, and I would drive the U-Haul truck. As I walked to the U-Haul in the church parking lot, Joan came up to me. In tears, she wrapped her arms tightly around me and said, “I don’t want you to go.”

That moment triggered something in me. Suddenly, I realized I had grown attached to her. Whereas before, she hadn’t entered my mind—we were just friends—I now found that it would really hurt me to leave her. That moment stuck with me, and for the entire three-hour trip, I couldn’t get her off my mind, even though I tried.

We arrived in Bellingham and began settling into our new home. Soon our daily routine had developed. Every night, I found a reason to go to the church. It seemed to all that I was truly focused on making this new ministry grow. When I got to church, though, I always ended up dialing Joan’s number. I talked to her every night, spending more time on the phone with each call. Our conversations grew more and more intimate as they grew longer. They soon became very personal: we went from flirting to innuendo and from friendship to “I love you.” I knew it was wrong. I knew I shouldn’t pursue Joan, but I felt like I couldn’t stop myself. She became my mistress in every way but physically.

And it was only the grace of God that kept me back from the cesspool of physical involvement. One day, overcome by the need to see her, I asked for some time off work, claiming I felt ill. I drove an hour and a half to the Edmonds ferry, crossed to Kingston, and drove another half hour to where she worked. Surprised by my appearance at her office, she hesitantly agreed to go to lunch. After lunch, we sat in the car, talking. I asked her for a hug several times, but she said she didn’t think it was a good idea. I dropped her off at her office after our conversation, and then I drove home and arrived about the time I normally got home from work.

Christ tells us that we can’t serve two masters; we’ll end up hating one and loving the other (Matthew 6:24). In context, He’s talking about devoting yourself to God rather than wealth. But the idea applies here as well: I could not love two women. As I spent more time thinking about Joan and talking to her, I made fewer efforts to cherish Theresa. I grew distant and cold. It got so bad that I couldn’t even touch her—I wore sweatpants and a shirt to bed!

Naturally, as I became a different person, Theresa felt something was wrong, but she didn’t know what it was. In the beginning, she hadn’t suspected anything. I dodged any attempts at questioning, and she soon realized she had to directly confront me about my change in behavior. She caught me at a time when I couldn’t avoid her, and we sat down to talk.

Soon, hoping for a quick denial at the laughable idea, she came to the question I’d been dreading: “Is there another woman?”

After a brief pause, I said, “Yes.”

Unless you’ve been there, you can’t imagine how devastated she felt. Her questions cut me to the quick—“Why did you bring me all the way up here just to do this to me?”—but I had no answers. She immediately called Pastor Jim, but I couldn’t talk to him. I needed someone else. I hadn’t known Dale long, but I felt I could trust him. I brought the whole situation before him, and we tried to work through it. I wanted to change; I wanted to make things right. But the bonds I had forged were strong: my mind kept hammering me with thoughts of Joan. I couldn’t break them with my own effort.

So God provided an external force to break them. One night, I got a phone call from Rick, my old Children’s ministry partner and Joan’s brother-in-law. Rick was livid, and it shocked me—I had rarely seen him angry before, and certainly never at me. His words—the plain-spoken truth—ripped me up one side and down the other, telling me how I’d betrayed him, how my actions were sinful, and how I’d better not continue. He never threatened me (he wasn’t that kind of guy), but as his words hit home, I couldn’t help but see the image of him tearing my body in half like I had seen him do to so many phonebooks.

I loved Rick like a brother. And as the enormity of my actions dawned on me and I realized just how much I’d hurt him, I found myself thinking, I would have preferred the phonebook treatment. Somehow, in my fantasies, I had imagined that Rick would be happy, that if I got together with his sister-in-law, it would bring us closer. It suddenly hit me that I’d been thinking that, and what a ludicrous thought it was! How could I imagine that getting his sister-in-law embroiled in scandal (destroying both our marriages in the process) would give us a closer friendship? That was how badly sin had clouded my judgment.

Rick’s call provided the catalyst I needed. Joan and I never spoke again. Soon after, the bonds broke. They hadn’t gone as deep as my sin had made me think. Sure, it took hard work with Theresa, talks with Pastor Jim, and a lot of prayer to move on, but once the process had begun, we moved on quickly. The whole relationship had been a fantasy, and Rick had snapped me out of it. Praise God for friends!