I got bucked off the full-time ministry bull at the end of my first rodeo. I was leaving for the mission field and needed to fall back on my RN degree. I climbed back onto the bull during my second rodeo, and got thrown even harder. This time it was when I “had it all” as the evangelist at Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s church “Sandfields” in the UK. I’d been working as their evangelist for a year straight, doing all the gnarly stuff nobody ever wants to do but then 9/ 11 hit, and all charitable giving in America dropped by 50% and I became a walking statistic, forced to work in a factory to pay my bills. After a year of fruitless hardcore ministry, it only took a few weeks on the factory floor working alongside the rough-necked blue-collar workers to see three people come to Christ.
From that job at the factory, I went on to become a firefighter in the next town I pastored in. Finally, the Starbucks story happened. What’s the point?
