Pastor to Pastor

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Tim Harlow: What I'm trying to do in this season is try to learn how to be a child of God again. When you're in ministry, you just feel like I'm an employee of God. I'm a worker for God. I'm doing stuff for God. God doesn't really care about that. I mean, He does, but your worth to God is not built on how many baptisms you had last year.

Dave Stone: Hey everybody, welcome to Pastor to Pastor with Dave Stone. I am your host and my name is Dave Stone. Thank you for joining us today. If you haven't already, make sure that you subscribe to Pastor to Pastor wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Our guest today is a really good friend of mine. His name is Tim Harlow. We've been friends for 25 to 30 years. He is a pastor who recently retired after 33 years as a pastor of Parkview Christian Church outside of Chicago, Illinois. To stay in ministry that long is no easy feat these days. To be at the same church for over 25 years means he's outlasted a lot of his critics and he also has been the type of person that has been open to God's leading as he's helped them lead through change.

Tim shares some words of advice for those who are struggling with the idea of staying in ministry. He'll also share some pretty cool stories of just some connections that he and I have through our parents. I can't wait for you to listen to this conversation with my friend Tim Harlow. Hey Tim, thank you my friend. It is great to see your smiling face. I take it that you’re down in Nashville area?

Tim Harlow: Yeah, hanging out. Grandkids. It really is. COVID drove my kids all to one place. You take the good with the bad, and so I have eight grandkids in one subdivision and two more on the way. Obviously, when it came time to let go of the church, that was the place to go. That's where we are.

Dave Stone: I want to talk about the early years because 33 years at Parkview Christian, just incredible growth that took place through that time, but the first 10 years were very difficult years. You came to this church of about 150 people and just started preaching the gospel. Talk to me what it's like to try to change a very traditional church and some of the battles that you had to fight and how it is that you came out standing.

Tim Harlow: I don't think I would do it again. That's my first answer. I was 28. Denise was 26. We were ready to go take a lead role, been in youth ministry. I didn't have a ton of experience. There weren't a lot of places beating down my door and this church didn't have a lot of people that they were looking at either that wanted to go there.

It was very dysfunctional at the time. A 40-year-old church, 150 people, but it was super dysfunctional. There were two groups. A group that wanted to move into at least the 20th century and a group that wanted to keep doing things the way that they were. They were at odds. There were no elders. It was being held together by the Chicago District Evangelism Association. That's it. A church planting organization. It was just being duct taped together.

And yet, here's the thing I'll say and for what it's worth for all of you. We had that first interview and Denise and I felt the call of God in a way that was just unbelievable. A call of God like, oh, do we really have to do this? Not realizing that it was going to turn into what it was going to turn into. It just looked like a hard project, but it felt like what God wanted us to do. We didn't know anything about the suburbs of Chicago. I didn't know much about Catholicism going to a 70% Catholic area. We just did the call of God.

Short version of the story. We got some leadership. It wasn't great. Early leadership was very divided, very disunified. Seven years in, I developed some good leaders. It’s one of the smart things I did. Seven years in, we took a vote to relocate the church because we were still under congregational bylaws at that point that did that. The vote passed 56%.

Dave Stone: 56% is not a strong mandate. It's not a 94%. Right. However, by that time we had developed and put the right elders in place. Instead of elders that were looking out over Canaan going, they look like giants and we can't do it, they were the Joshuas and the Calebs and all we needed was 51%. We pressed forward with what we believed was God's plan. It took five years from that point on to actually relocate. The building was just a microcosm of the problem. Some of the people just didn't want to make the sacrifices to grow. That's all there was to it. They just didn't want to do it. From that point on, my hair was on fire. I mean, just unbelievable stuff going on.

Good for you to still stick with it. 56%, as I jokingly said, is not a strong mandate. And yet, still, at the end of the day, it is a majority. So now you've got to try to convince 44% of the people, "Hey, get on board." So what was that like for you to try to reach that tipping point, but you still have a lot of people who give, a lot of people who attend, a lot of people who are saying with their arms folded, "Okay, convince me."

Tim Harlow: I probably didn't do a good enough job of trying to convince them because at that point, I really wanted to focus on what we were going to do and where we were going to go. They could come or not. I didn't spend a lot of time going back. The leadership didn't spend a lot of time going back to the people and saying, "Here's why we need to do what we do." I'd spent seven years doing that.

This is just really something that should have been very obvious to everybody. If they didn't want to come along, we tried. The problem is those are your givers, those are your saints, those are the people that have been with you, been with the church longer than you have, spiritual fathers and mothers. But at some point if you're going to lead, you got to lead.

Dave Stone: When did you feel like things really began to change and you saw some traction? Because I've heard you say it took a while to get that traction. So tell me when you felt like that happened.

Tim Harlow: Part of the problem we'll probably talk about here is our identity being rolled up into what we do as pastors. For me, I could look every year we would grow a little, even in those early years we would grow. The one year we didn't was 1998 when we lost the 44%. That was the one year that we didn't actually reach more people or have more baptisms or do any of the numerical things that you try to keep track of.

After that year, we solidified and we went from 600 in attendance to 6,000 in attendance in 10 years. Once God saw that we were going to actually be a church that was interested in reaching His lost sheep, He took the lid off the thing and we couldn't build, we couldn't find space fast enough. But it was a really hard year. Matter of fact, I thought about leaving during that hard year as well as many of the years before that. Thankfully, that didn't happen.

You make these decisions and you say, "This is from God, this is what God wants us to do," and then everybody's mad at you and you start to second guess yourself. I don't know if you've had that happen to you, Dave.

Dave Stone: Just about 10 times in my ministry. That's where Satan tries to beat us down. That's one of the values of this podcast is we have guest after guest who can encourage those who are weary and who are in that season. It's not always the fact that a church is going to grow from 150 to 6,000 or beyond as your story. But it's the fact that we want to be faithful. We want to be where God has us at that particular time. Maybe the numbers won't be what come, but it's weathering that storm and saying we're going to help to make the changes that need to take place in this church so that we can be a healthy, productive evangelism and in the area of evangelism and discipleship.

Tim Harlow: I can say now that I'm out of it long enough and I realize how insecure I am as a person more than I ever did before. I don't think I was too shallow for God to leave me in a place where I didn't see visible fruit from what was going on.

What I applaud are the people like my dad, your dad, people that plodded along year after year after year and saw some good things and saw some tough things and were faithful to the end and it didn't really matter how everything else showed up. I'm too shallow. I'd be selling insurance right now probably if that had been me. I'm also an entrepreneur and a type A, and let's go take the next hill. That's just what God called me to, but the people that gut it out day after day and the 44% people stay at their church and drive them nuts for another 20 years, God bless you. You are a more faithful servant than I ever could have been.

Dave Stone: I say all the time that I think that some of the people who serve in the churches that get very little fanfare and have a role as a volunteer or bivocational pastor, whatever it might be, just slugging it out day after day, year after year, and they don't get to see a lot of that fruit. And yet they stay faithful and they remain and they serve and they are a beacon of hope in that community that is reaching people that some of the churches that we have on here would never be able to reach those people.

Tim Harlow: And you don't know what the next stories are. People out there listening, you need to understand that Dave's dad and my dad were in the same youth group in Albuquerque, New Mexico when they were in high school. That's how far back we go. I think about whoever it was at Ridgecrest Christian Church that brought up a generation of some guys who went out and were faithful in ministry and now the next generation are you and me trying to encourage the next generation. That all started in one little small church in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One youth group.

Dave Stone: And to think of the ripple effect just because we had faithful dads that preached the gospel in season and out of season and didn't get a whole lot of attention. And yet God used them in dynamic ways. Maybe the greatest way is just in their discipleship of us, of the way they pass the torch on to family members in a variety of ways.

I want to play off of that because 33 years, the longevity piece, what were the benefits of being at a place for a long time and what were some of the challenges that came with that?

Tim Harlow: The benefits, and I didn't grow up in the same place all my life. I moved a lot. My dad moved every four or five years. It made me who I am. It's okay, but Denise and I really hoped and prayed that we could raise our kids in one spot. It happened to be a good spot. Good school systems, good youth group.

We made the commitment when we went there. Rachel was two and a half and then we had two more kids along the way. We made the commitment when we went there, if we didn't have a good enough church, a big enough church to have a thriving youth program, that that's when we would consider leaving because we knew how important the youth program was going to be. Of course, that happened. Raising my kids in one place, in one community, knowing people forever, it's like that old joke. The good thing about a small church is you know everybody and the bad thing about a small church is you know everybody.

You've got those people that have been around a long time and you got relationships with. The hard part is they're going to leave, something's going to happen, they're going to want to go somewhere else. The pain is deeper with the longer term relationships when people leave and I don't think we talk about that enough in ministry. The pain that happens when those things are going on.

I was with a group of pastors just a couple of nights ago and one of the guys was talking about his kids being really good friends with the kids of another church member and they were leaving and moving a little bit farther away and probably wouldn't be around. It just opened up a gaping hole I'd forgotten about in my chest about our girls having good friends and they left and what that does to you over and over again. I really think the good thing about long term ministry is the longevity of the relationships and the trick is you still got those, the pain is deeper when it doesn't go well. So for example, when COVID comes up and you don't know what to do or George Floyd situation comes up or Charlie Kirk situation or whatever, you're going to have a lot, it's a lose-lose in any way you say it.

Dave Stone: You're going to tick off 44% of the people.

Tim Harlow: Anyway you say it. It doesn't matter. And if you don't say something, those people that have been with you for a really long time, those are the ones that, like, come on guys, I'm just trying to do this. And it stings, it stings extra hard. I can remember Ashley Wooldridge, preacher in Phoenix, just talking about how that's the pain. It's when those close relationships go sour or a staff member. Those hurt more than anything, especially when it's people that you've poured into and that they have every reason to give you more and more grace and yet they don't.

So if you're listening to this as Tim's speaking, just take a lesson from this and say, "So this is normal what I'm going through and the wound that I feel and the pain that I feel." If it hasn't happened to you and you've been at your church for six years or seven years, it's going to happen. So just know that and expect that and realize that God will get you through it and God will raise up other friendships for you. And yes, it hurts and it stings and it stings, but there will be something good that will come out of it and it won't hopefully catch you off guard just because you're hearing Tim talk about it today.

Tim Harlow: But the long term benefit is the leadership chips. I said it was seven years in when we took the vote. If I hadn't had the seven years, it wouldn't have worked. It would have been 70% against that move and I would have been gone. To be able to take the church to the next place, whereas even where I'm at now, having been gone for two and a half years, still being able to come in and help with whatever happens from afar. I'm still leaning in and preaching when asked. That's the guy that baptized me, that's the guy that, there's just no substitute for longevity.

Dave Stone: Let's talk a little bit about enlisting people into ministry, whether that be a younger person who's in high school to get them to consider that calling into ministry, or whether that's a person who, as a lot of churches nowadays, they find someone within the church who leads that men's ministry as a volunteer and then all of a sudden it gets so big that they say we need a men's minister. And now you're talking to this guy and you're saying, "Have you ever thought about coming into ministry and being a pastor?"

We see churches right and left that are having aged out pastors and we don't have enough guys who are going to or gals that are going to come in that ministry pipeline. What are some things you think we can do a better job in enlisting those people and also are there some things that maybe were done when you and I were in high school that maybe we need to bring back?

Tim Harlow: It was a different time back when we were who we were. I don't know how you do the same thing today for the young people. I think today it has to be modeled. It has to be something that the people that are doing ministry and even the parents are modeling ministry in such a way that it encourages them to go that direction.

We definitely have a problem. There's more pastors over 65 than under 40 right now. We see all of that. But I think one of the thing, from a church standpoint, we need to do a better job. We need to do a better job of encouraging them. This, you and I can talk about this unequivocally, is the hardest season to be a pastor I've ever seen in my life and I can't imagine what it's like trying to do ministry in this age of complete social media and all the things that are going on. We see it over and over again as I mentioned with a Charlie Kirk scenario or whatever is going on in the world. It's a lose-lose.

We need to pay them better. There, I said it. We need to pay better. We need to encourage them more. We need to do the things that we need to do to make this something that people feel called to and are not afraid to go take it.

On the same vein, I would encourage if you're a young person, even a career change thing, whatever, please don't forget that God is going to take care of whatever it is that you need. Dave, you and I can sit around all day and talk about the providence of God and how God, it's off the charts.

Dave Stone: He is faithful, isn't He?

Tim Harlow: He really is. It's like we preach it, but now that I'm at the older end and I appreciate you having me on. I know you said recently you were trying to get younger people on and I'm two months younger than you, so I appreciate that. We can look back now and go, I can't believe the stuff that I got to do. I can't believe the fulfillment of my life and my personhood getting to do what God called me to do and I wouldn't have traded it for anything.

Dave Stone: I had somebody say to me the other day, I get choked up just listening to you talk, Tim, because having been in a long-term ministry for 30 years, not 33, but 30 years and still worshipping there for the last seven years, I'll have people say to me, like a guy did at lunch recently, he said, "Boy, I am just so grateful for your leadership and all that I learn at Southeast." And I said, "Oh, I'm right there with you." I said, "I got to raise my kids at Southeast."

I got to have them in a program that at a very early age was teaching them God's word and setting godly examples and great leaders that poured into them of the youth program and the more I talk about it, the more I tear up. I got to sit there and listen to Kyle Idleman preach. I got to sit there and hear Bob Russell preach. They were my pastors to me. So yes, there is great benefits and the more I think we can pass that on and light that fire to say how could God use you? I do think that there are people who are listening right now to this podcast who may not be in a ministry responsibility, but they love the church and they love God and maybe they felt that tug. Reach out to someone and say, "I'd like to go have lunch with you and pick your brain a little bit."

It's one thing I really appreciate about you, Tim. You have always taken an interest in younger pastors. You've done that throughout your entire ministry and I think you have a gift of being able to call something out of people and speak truth to them. What are some of the things that you have been intentional about doing when it comes to encouraging people who are younger in their pastoral leadership?

Tim Harlow: Well, as you mentioned earlier, we did hire from within a lot. We did find the one that's doing it and get them some theological training along the way and jump them in there. But it's discipleship 101. It's about looking and seeing who there is out there and encouraging them like Jesus did. I had a men's group every month the whole time I was a pastor there that I would read books with them and I would disciple them and we would work with them together.

But if you're on the other side of that to your point, don't think that there's some kind of a line that is like I'm doing ministry and I'm not doing ministry. If you're out there and you're feeling called to ministry, then go do it. Don't worry about a paycheck, don't quit your day job, just go do it and maybe there's a way in this brave new world we live in. We could talk about all the problems, but there are a lot of ways to be a tentmaker and go out there and have a job and do ministry at the same time.

I look at the people and I might get emotional about this, I look at the people like Bob Russell who would come up and put an arm around me. I still remember a Southeast Leadership Conference. It was probably '95, '96 when I was finally starting to get some good elders in along the way and I still had some that weren't really sure and I brought them all five hours down to Louisville. Bob Russell did the "you got to keep the main thing the main thing" speech and he didn't know me from a hole in the wall and he didn't have time to talk to me. He was doing other stuff.

I just wrote on the back of my business card, I can see this moment in my mind, I wrote on the back of my business card, "I think you just saved our church," and I just handed it to him while he was walking in between two things. It doesn't take much for me to talk to a younger person and go, "Hey man, like you said, these are all the mistakes I've made, this is all the dumb stuff that happened to me. It's not easy. You're on the right track." So that's what I look for.

Dave Stone: And Bob took time for you and followed up and it's those little things, that arm about the shoulder, that encouraging word, someone noticing that something's taking place in the church and just a letter. It's amazing how snail mail letters now will show up at their house or something and I'll see it three years later. So why is that? It's because somebody noticed something and it's the smallest act and it can bring huge dividends.

Tim Harlow: I just got a note from our friend Gene Apple and he had kept a letter that I wrote him after he spoke at the North American Christian Convention, probably '92, '93, something like that. I didn't remember writing it. He stuck it in some file and as he's moving stuff around, he found it. You just don't have any idea. And I've got all of those. I got those from my mentors, the Ben Merrells and the Bob Russells. I still got those letters. I threw all the other junk away, but I've still got that stuff. So important to me.

The other thing, and this is interesting, Bob discipled me in preaching because I listened to his sermons and stole more than a few of them. He discipled me that way and I think about that. I would always give him credit and of course you did that too because I stole some of yours. But what we do now with social media, that's something that I'm just really starting to lean into. Let's take the good with this. Let's just get content out there. Let's just get stuff out there that will help the younger people. They don't have to wait for a cassette tape to be mailed to them anymore like I used to. So it's a lot easier.

Dave Stone: Yes, it's a lot quicker and you've got a great social media following. What's your Instagram handle?

Tim Harlow: It's @TLHarlow. H-A-R-L-O-W.

Dave Stone: Last couple weeks you've had a lot of traction on that and God's doing good stuff through social media. A lot of good stuff. I heard you speak a few weeks ago, I think you were at an event out in Missouri that you spoke at and you referred to a book called *Anonymous*. You read some quotes from that and it really hit me, brother. It was powerful. I'm not the greatest reader and that's why I bought the book because I was getting ready to go on vacation with Beth and I'm two-thirds of the way through the book now, Tim. I'm a slow reader and it has really ministered to me. I know that we have people who are listening right now who might be in a season of ministry or of life where they do feel like they're in the background, they're in a spiritual winter, if you will. Tell me a little bit about how that book has impacted you.

Tim Harlow: It was the entire experience of giving up my ministry and moving eight hours away and starting all over again. Someone recommended the book *Anonymous* by Alicia Britt Chole. It was a book written about, "Hey, did anybody ever notice that Jesus had 30 anonymous years before he had three years of ministry?" And what was it like for Jesus to be 28 years old and see someone with leprosy or see some kid that had blindness and realize that he couldn't do anything about it? It wasn't his time yet.

And so for me, in a reverse way, there's just been this just trying to figure out who I am and how much of my ministry was done for God and how much of it was done for me. Great question for all of us to wrestle with, but you'll never really fully wrestle with it until you're done, done. And so it's been quite a journey for me. One of the things that she says in this book is at his baptism, God said, "This is my son, I'm pleased," before he ever did anything.

Dave Stone: He hadn't done anything to prove that He's the savior of the world. He just said okay to being baptized.

Tim Harlow: That was it. I've used the line over and over again, what I'm trying to do in this season is try to learn how to be a child of God again because when you're in ministry, you just feel like I'm an employee of God. I'm a worker for God. I'm doing stuff for God. God doesn't really care about that. I mean, He does, but your worth to God is not built on how many baptisms you had last year or whether your sermon was a B plus or a D minus. It's not built in that. That's just been really hard for me to come to grips with.

Dave Stone: I can relate to a lot of the things that you're saying. I think that in our Western civilization, doing is rewarded higher than being, if that makes sense. We get wrapped up in what we're capable of accomplishing as opposed to just soaking in the presence of God and being the person He wants us to be.

Tim Harlow: There was another book I read by John Stark called *The Secret Place of Thunder*. He's talking about Jesus and disciples and disciples go to cast out demons one time and they can't do it. It's in Luke chapter 10 and they can't do it and they come back and they say, "Hey, we couldn't do it." And Jesus says, "It's okay. This kind only comes out by prayer and fasting." Don't know what He meant by that necessarily.

But then not too long after that, they come back and they're so excited. In their ministry world, they've just had a great Christmas Eve service or whatever it is. They said, "The demons, we've gone out and the demons have submitted to us in your name." And Jesus says, "I saw Satan fall from lightning," which is a funny way for Jesus to go, "I saw it in the spiritual realm and you guys were awesome. Satan was going down. Way to go you guys. You threw down on Satan." And then He says, "Nevertheless, don't rejoice in the fact that the demons submitted to you. Rejoice that your names are written in heaven."

I mean, I have to get up every morning and tell myself that all over again because it's too easy for us to be caught up in the performance side of Christianity and every one of you out there listening knows how easy that is.

Dave Stone: This is such good material for me, this content that you're sharing, Tim, because I do think that for many years my significance has come from what I do rather than my relationship with Christ and the fact that I'm a child of God. It's just that simple. We complicate it with our numbers and our achievements and our resume and I think the Lord's up there saying, "Yeah, okay, that's fine, but I don't really care about the resume." You love your grandkids more than anybody that I've ever seen. Beth will always say, "Boy, Tim, you pour into your grandchildren."

Tim Harlow: I loved your grandkids before I even had any. I was going to say before I had one. My very first grandchild, we're at a dinner together and you're holding my grandson during the meal so that my daughter could eat. My wife is giving me dirty looks and elbows because for some reason I should have been doing that.

But here's my point. When if I were to start saying your grandkids' names, there would be a smile that would come across your face and you could do the same with me and the same with our children. I could say Becca and all of a sudden your face would light up and you could say Savannah and my face would light up. Those are our kids, those are children. To think that we can be called a child of God, sons and daughters of the most high God, really, that should be enough for us, shouldn't it? You don't care how much real estate Sam sold last year. It's just a relationship. That's what means everything. And if we could get a hold of that, we're just so free. It's just so free to know that God's looking down, we haven't done anything and He says, "That's my son, that's my daughter, I'm well pleased."

Dave Stone: Well, I close every episode with a story and you just gave me the story that I'm going to tell at the close of this one and I'll make you wait for a few minutes for it, but I commend this book *Anonymous* that you commended to me by Alicia. I promise you that if you read it, it will be a big help to you because it goes into those seasons when Jesus is away.

I think about the section where it talks about the temptations of Jesus and what she really brings out is that how was Jesus able to handle temptation? It's because of the years of preparation of being anonymous and not being in the spotlight and that prepared him for the times when Satan is attacking him and it also prepared him for the times when he's got 5,000 people that he's teaching as well. So I learned a whole lot from it and it was really helpful to me.

Share with us the journey that you've been on of success and significance now in this chapter of being out of the grind of a lead pastor position and God still using your preaching, God's still using you pouring into younger pastors, He's using you in a variety of different ways, but how are you finding your significance in Christ when you aren't leading a church?

Tim Harlow: It's pretty simple and it kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier. I'm looking at significance now through the lens of my kids and my grandkids. I'm a professional grandfather now and the churches that I'm able to help, but also really through the church that I led at Parkview. You're experiencing this, you're seeing you gave to this body and no church is going to last forever, but the season that Southeast is in right now is so good and so healthy and as the dad or the grandpa you can look back at that and go, "This is good."

The church that I served, Parkview, went through a transition that didn't work and is now moving into another one. And yet whenever I'm there, which I will be again next weekend, whenever I'm there, it's just amazing to see that God didn't, everybody thought it was important to have the right guy as quarterback or whatever. God didn't need me. He didn't need that. There's been so much great ministry that's gone on without them having a lead pastor for the last year. Figuring out where I am in the role of God's child helps me find significance. All those times when I thought I had to just preach one more sermon or do one more thing or I just needed to go that extra. That's all great, but that wasn't what God needed. My significance is there one way or the other and God's going to take it and multiply it like He did the loaves and the fishes and it's not my problem.

Dave Stone: And the beauty of it is that even when a church goes without a pastor for a while, sometimes that's where the ministry of the previous pastor really begins to shine because you see that God has orchestrated and He has brought spiritual depth through that previous ministry, through your pouring into people, through the men's group that you were alluding to and those people step up to the plate and now they're the ones who are shining. You're pleased because you're seeing the ministry go on.

It's a good lesson for all of us just to think about that yes, we're all dispensable. Take a bucket of water, put your hand in it and pull it out and see how much water's gone. God's going to continue to use us, but 100 years from now they're not going to remember our names, but if they remember the name of Jesus then we've done our part.

Tim Harlow: Amen. I think the significant thing too for me, in the Bible there is not a lot of run-in for how you leave leadership. It's usually "and they died." But in the book of Numbers, God tells the high priest at age 50 he is supposed to resign as the high priest and assist the brothers. So for me, significance now is about not being the guy and making sure that everybody else succeeds. That's just how it's got to work.

Dave Stone: "Assisting the brothers." That's a great place for us to wrap up. I say it with a smile on my face because you're doing it. I love you, brother. You've been a kindred spirit with me and you've been a big help when I've gone through difficult times in ministry. For those of you who are listening, I hope you have a Tim in your life. I hope you have someone who is raising up your hands in prayer when you're going through a difficult season of ministry. This man has done that for me time and time again and I'm glad to have a faithful friend who continues to spur me on to love and good works, especially with His conversation today. Thanks so much. You've helped a whole lot of us.

Tim Harlow: Thank you for everything you do, buddy.

Dave Stone: I love that conversation with Tim Harlow, partly because I love him, but because he's always very honest. He's brutally honest with how he's feeling and some of the ups and downs of ministry. The hard part of long term ministry is when people you have relationships with want to leave and he was quite candid in his discussion with that. If you haven't experienced that, you will. You just will. So you have to be prepared for that, you have to understand that, and nobody enjoys it, but God will work through it.

There's those long term relationships that do last, so hold on to those. One of the things that really caught my attention was just hearing Tim say that there are more pastors over 65 than under 40 right now. That should have a way of jarring us as Christian leaders into thinking how can we help along those lines of encouraging younger people to think about ministry? At times, yes, we do feel like an employee of God and we forget that we're a child of the King, that we're His child, that we're His son, that we are His daughter.

I told you in the midst of that conversation that it just reminded me of a story that I wanted to share. I've got three adult children. None of them lived anywhere close to Louisville for quite some time. We thought we might never have grandchildren who live in town with us. But then our son moved to Louisville and he lived about 30 minutes away with his wife. We loved being in town with them. We thought that was great. We constantly made that trip back and forth, as did they.

But then after a couple of years of living there, we got a phone call from our son. He said, "Hey, we're looking at a house and just be praying about this." We said, "Well, where is it? Can we see it?" He said, "No, let's just see if the loan goes through and if everything comes together." We hung up that phone and we started to think, "Okay, I wonder where it is. It's got to be closer or he wouldn't have said that. It has to be closer than 30 minutes." We drew a circle 15 minutes, about a five mile radius all around our home, trying to figure out where it might be.

Two weeks later he calls up and says, "Hey, meet us up at the mall." We only have one mall in Kentucky, so it's pretty easy to find them. He said, "We want to show you the place that we're going to try to buy." We're pumped up, we're excited. Beth and I go up to the mall. They put us in their car. They blindfold us. Okay, our hearts should be beating now. They're banging very quickly. We're like, "Okay, this has got to be within a seven to ten minute drive from our house."

They drove around. They went about five minutes and we knew exactly where they were, but then they started doing donuts around in circles and they threw off our equilibrium. The apple does not fall far from the tree. After about another 10 minutes of driving, they stopped the car and they said, "Okay, we're going to help you out," and they took the blindfold off. And we were six doors down from our home. They were right down the street.

I couldn't stop crying. Beth couldn't stop crying. We're hugging, we're excited, we're pumped up, it was crazy. I'll put the video in the show notes. It was incredible. The more we processed it over the next day or so, I pulled my son aside as only a father can do and I said to him, "Hey man, are you certain that you can afford this home? Because I think you've got to be stretching." He put his hand on my shoulder and he said, "Hey dad, what if we can't? You know what we'll do? After a year, we'll sell it and we'll move some place else, but we'll always be able to say that for one year we lived down the street from our parents."

I said, "Okay." So now I'm making the house payment for him. No, I'm not. He's doing fine. He's helping us with ours. What's the point I want you to get from that? It's the very point that Tim drove home. The relationship means more than the residence. The love is more important than the location. We're making some incredible memories and we're loving every minute of it. I know that might not work for every family, but in this particular case it's worked really well for us.

I share all that because the bottom line is you don't care about your daughter's accomplishments or your son's accomplishments. What you care about is the relationship that you have with them. You find ways to work at that and your children even in adulthood can be an incredible blessing to you. That's what we want to be in our relationship to God. We want to please Him. We want to do His will and we want to put a smile on His face by doing His will. But He's not impressed with what we do at our church. He's not impressed with what you do for the nonprofit that you serve at. He's impressed with the relationship because you're His child.

Thanks for listening to the conversation with Tim Harlow today. Great words of advice that he shared. I hope that he's getting the rest that he deserves. Speaking of rest, we know that being a pastor can be mentally and physically draining and that's why we want to come alongside and support you by offering you a free, F-R-E-E, let me say it again, free pastoral getaway for you and your spouse.

Enjoying a relaxing three day all-inclusive stay at one of Focus on the Family's beautiful retreat centers. These places are unbelievable. Spots are limited so book your free mini-sabbatical today at thefocusedpastor.org/getaway or click the link in the show notes. As always, thanks so much for listening to Pastor to Pastor. We drop a brand new episode every Tuesday. It's designed to encourage, to inspire, and to challenge you. Because we know that leadership can be lonely and that's why we call this Pastor to Pastor. It's for a reason. It's to remind you, you're not alone. So until next time, I'm Dave Stone saying God bless.

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