No News is Good News! Right?

We've all said it at one time or another when waiting for the result of an important decision, "No news is good news." As long as we don't know that our desired outcome has slipped away without becoming a reality we still have hope that it will somehow work out. Our hope may be in vain, but as long as we don't know that we hope in vain we still have the prospect of good news.

For the past 2 months and 13 days I have adopted a "no news is good news" attitude toward my circumstances. On July 29 I was told that the job for which we had left Ohio and moved to Florida was no longer mine. "It's not going to work out", I was told. I was done!

The emotions coursed through me - anger, fear, anxiety. My head was swimming. It was the first time in my life that I had to come to my wife and tell her that I was unemployed. It was the first time in thirty years of ministry that I wasn't surrounded by a church family.

But I have changed churches before. I have put together a resume and successfully landed jobs. I know how this is to be done. I just need to get on the job sites, check in with a few friends, get some talk going and it wouldn't be long before a church somewhere would be calling to tell me that they believed I was just the guy for whom they were looking. So I started sending resumes to those churches that  looked to be a fit. I made contact with search committees and senior church leaders who were looking for staff. And the answer I got (when I was given the courtesy of an answer) was "no news yet - we're having a meeting soon or we're talking to several candidates or we're not sure the position we advertised is the position for which we want to hire." And so I wait.

Every day is becoming the same. Each morning, and several times each day, I check my email. "Surely today I will hear something from someone," I say to myself. I have breakfast with my wife before she heads to work and then I scour the same websites to see if someone somewhere has posted a  church ministry job to which I feel led to apply. If nothing new presents itself then I start on the secular job market. I'm going to have to make some money some how and soon. If convincing a church to hire you is a tough deal, trying to get a secular employer to take notice is something else altogether. I have skills of administration and management, finance and communication, but I'm beginning to think that when a potential employer sees my resume all they can see is a middle aged pastor type with little real world experience. I can't blame them, I mean really, who wants to take a risk on that.

So tonight I still have a few active prospects - the ones that have actually acknowledged receiving my application and say they will get back to me when they have something to report. And because they haven't yet said no, I choose to  to continue to believe that no news is good news.