It is great to connect with you on this page. Thanks Effectual for the opportunity. My name is Wanda, and I am a Pastor’s wife. I will like to use this opportunity to share my learning in alignments; how we should discern how to align and exactly who we really should be aligning to.
Years ago, when we just became Pastors of a local assembly sent by a much larger congregation where we had worshipped for years. I knew somehow that it was what God wanted for us; considering that He (God) had spoken to my husband Richard and I that he was going to send us out to tend to a flock for him. We were excited, and we seriously looked forward to what God had called us to do.
However, before we took over the reins of the local assembly, Richard had asked that we be given time to seek the Lord as to what exactly it was He wanted us to do when we got there. We were given one month to seek God’s face, two weeks of which my husband spent at a retreat far away from every distraction because we were very keen on receiving a blueprint from God on what it was that he wanted us to do.
While Richard was away, I was also on a fast at home, and we had agreed that whatever we heard the Lord speak, we will write down and when he returns we will compare notes to be sure we heard correctly. This strategy was informed by our previous dealings with the Lord when our family needed to make major decisions. Usually he will use one of us to confirm what he had told the other.
At the end of the two weeks, Richard returned home as he drove in, I could tell that he had met with the Lord and that this next season was going to be really interesting and fruitful. It was just the icing on the cake when the scripture Richard had received was the same scripture the Lord had given me amongst other things he had spoken to us individually that provided clarity and confirmation for the journey ahead.
God gave a very vivid blueprint for what we were about to do for him even to the sequence of our services. He told us of some of the people we were going to meet there and what role they were meant to play in what he had called us to do. This should make anyone who has been called to work for God very excited, and to tell you the truth we were excited. It felt like Moses in the wilderness and how God told him every step that He was going to take the children of Israel to.
Richard also just happened to be a very great Administrator by his profession, so he meticulously put everything in writing to ensure that we fulfilled the injunction in Habakkuk, to write the vision down and make it plain so whoever sees it can run with it. The next step after doing our homework was for us to resume at the new place and see what obtained there already.
What we found was amazing! It turned out that every single satellite campus or assembly of our denomination had to take total instructions from the headquarters; this wasn’t any big deal if these instructions met with the needs of the local assembly. We realised that the local assembly Pastors had no need to prepare sermons; the head pastor prepares them and sends them round for them to read out to his people. Immediately, we realised that we had been had. We were meant to be puppets for the main man; which probably wouldn’t have been a problem if God hadn’t told us what he wanted for his people here. Suddenly what was meant to be a thriving in the will of God became a striving in his will. My husband started to implore God to release us; but He wouldn’t.
We were torn between the devil and the deep blue sea, as they say, will we follow the injunction of man or will we follow what God has called us to? No one was going to be easy. So rather than be joyful serving God, it became a drudgery. Did we pray? Did we fast? Did we seek counsel? The Lord will not release us, and man will not make way for God.
Alignment in Ministry is a very tricky terrain. Sometimes we forget that we have been called by God ultimately even though ordained by man. Sometimes we forget that no two congregations are alike and should, therefore, never be forced to feed in the same way. Sometimes we forget that God prepares his people, and he enables them to take the territory He has called them to.
Eventually, we had to press to make the changes that God had given us to make, it was, to say the least, like a battle ground; the head pastor felt like we wanted to take what he had built and turn it into ours by changing so many things, and there was nothing we said to him that could convince him otherwise. After four long years of not moving forward he finally called us one day and told us, we could go ahead and implement the changes.
What a relief? It took us for years of wrestling with man before we could obey God! And exactly one year to the day when we started with the changes, the Lord told us it was time to leave. What??? Why didn’t he let us do so all these years I wondered?
His words? ‘So that your obedience might be complete’.
Today we are somewhere else following his will as much as we know how, and God has never been more faithful. However, it took the grace of standing in the same place He asked us to even when the heat was fierce to be able to manifest the complete obedience that He required of us.
My point is, sometimes, aligning will take fighting for what the Lord spoke into your heart. Question, therefore, is; ‘do you know His voice and can you hear what He is saying to you?’, because from where I stand alignment happens when we obey.
God bless you.
—Wanda