Dr. Crawford Loritts Announcement

hi this is crawford and karen laritz here and you know this is a little bit bittersweet what we have to share with you back in 2005 uh karen and i left campus crusade for christ after serving for 27 wonderful years and we left primarily because of god's initiative in our lives and his calling in our lives and for no other reason just other than god was leading us and he had placed in my heart especially a desire to preach and teach in a shepherding context and he led us here to fellowship bible church and i got to tell you that's these past 15 years have been just incredible for us it's been a joy uh how god has worked in our hearts and lives how he has worked in our church and what he's done in this ministry is absolutely wonderful about three years ago however i began to sense a little rumbling in my own heart sort of some people call it a holy discontent i began to sense as if god was beginning to give me a new assignment and that my assignment here at fellowship was coming to an end well i do believe that god is wrapping up my assignment here at fellowship and uh now don't get me wrong i i love our people i love our church i tell people all over the country that i would rather i would i don't want to preach at any other place other than fellowship bible church it's my favorite place to be i love what god is doing in the hearts and lives of our people and the team that he has bought here it's been absolutely incredible and and so this sense of me moving on there's nothing negative involved here there's i'm not reacting to anyone i'm not angry at anyone or any issue or that kind of thing it's it's a good place that we're in however i do sense that the lord wants to raise up a younger leader someone that can take us to the next level as a church and take us to that next place where he wants us to be and i still have plenty of vision for fellowship and the thoughts and ideas that we have but but someone else needs to come and help shepherd not just those thoughts but those ideas that god has placed on on his heart as well well where the church is today is a great blessing there's a sense of great unity here in our church that um god has given us an incredible team especially our elders a sense of oneness in our church and uh i am just thrilled with the clarity of our our mission and vision where the lord is taking fellowship bible church it is absolutely marvelous and i have to tell you especially during this whole pandemic um i've said this countless times here to see the favor and hand of god on our ministry is an indication that this is not one person's ministry this is not an individual's ministry the people here at fellowship have wrapped their arms around the mission and how they love one another and share with one another and so i'm not leaving because of negative factions or any of that kind of thing this is a season of great blessing in our church but i need you to understand something that every pastor is an interim pastor and let me just say it again every pastor is an interim pastor every leader is an interim leader every servant of god is an interim servant of god god's purposes continue god raised a fellowship and did an incredible work in this church long before karen and i got here long before we got here and we just picked up at our stage in in the ministry and god says okay this is what i want done during this season and we're going to pass a baton to the next season so what god does he's going to continue to do you know when a man of god dies or leaves nothing of god dies or leaves uh god's work continues and so we're we're thrilled we're thrilled about that now more than uh a year ago i began meeting with uh rob consoley who's the chairman of our elders and um jim reese and jeff osborne these guys are also past chairman of our elders because i i wanted i wanted to to get some input on what i sensed god was saying in my heart about my season being up here and uh and so we we met together and began praying together and thinking together and uh they gave me great godly advice and input challenged my thinking about a few things and uh but coming out of that time we i felt with great confidence from the lord that now is the season to change now originally i was going to make this announcement back in april but we all know what happened in march with uh covet 19 and i felt as if hey look um the church is far more important uh than me obviously and so we felt like we needed to pull back and and shepherd through this season and the season's not over yet quite frankly but we felt as if that now was not the time we didn't know what was going to happen we didn't know about attendance and giving and all of these other things when i say attendance we didn't know if people were going to fall off or what was going to happen but god has blessed uh god has blessed in a great great way now in terms of timeline uh we believe that we want we we're targeting to make this transition i will preach my last sermon here lord willing on easter sunday and that's april uh 2021 and so i'll be here for a while and i need to tell you this uh we're not going to lame-duck this thing because i served before the lord i mean i'm not mailing it in i'm not going to be working just uh two days a week and that kind of thing the rest of time playing golf no uh we're going to be faithful and finished to the end i plan to serve and lead into the last second of my tenure here at the church because that's what god has called us to be about but we want to give time for things to settle in and we we want to give time for uh the work to take place now we presented uh um a proposal uh to our elders in terms of what the process should be like and look like and the elders accepted that proposal and so you're going to be hearing more about what the process looks like uh we've uh we've we've made an arrangement with uh with a search firm that is going to help us to to find god's person that god's person is out there and we're trusting the lord to do that and we're believing god we want him to be here lord willing sometime in march so there can be a little bit of a transition time now you might be saying well crawford what is what are you and karen going to do here well i got to tell you we're not quitting ministry um i have said to people all all through the years about 90 of the time no one should ever leave a calling because of negative reasons or leave a calling without being called to something else you know there's some exceptions to that but we usually you call from something to something and here's what uh the four things that's on my heart what i feel like god wants me to pour my heart into number one i want to spend more time with our family we've got 11 grandkids and they're all over the country and i'd like to spend a little bit more time with them helping to to to just enjoy them and speak into their hearts and lives and just have fun with them but we're not going to be spending all that time with grandchildren no so um the other things that i'll be doing number two is that i i'll be speaking and preaching at events and conferences that are dear to me that that represent causes and issues that are important and heavy on my heart and i i want to say yes to these things uh thirdly uh there are some more writing projects some more books that i would like to to write and give myself to so i'll be spending my time doing that but number four and this is a thing that probably is the centerpiece uh i want to spend the bulk of my time pouring myself into encouraging the next generation being a cheerleader for them and blessing them and so this is how we're going to shape shape that time now pray that these things will come together and the plans will be more solidified in detail but those four things is what we're believing that god is calling us uh to focus on now karen what's on your heart how do you think about all of this well it's going to be a great assignment um i'm not usually good at changing but in 2005 god let us off a staff of crew camps crusade for christ after 27 years and we've seen the faithfulness of god through all these 15 years we've got some new friends a church that loves us um all kinds of good things that come has come out of that so we're looking forward to not retiring we don't use the word retire we are refired we fired so we want you to rejoice with us pray with us as we pray for you and just see what god's going to do because he's going to have some good things to say yeah and by the way you're not going to get rid of us fellowship is our home this is our church i want to say again this is our church so we're not we're not going anywhere we're just moving to a new house right down the street that we're yeah that's that's right that's right i don't want to spend any more gas money going to a church is further away so no this is where god has called us and so this is our home church and this is where we're going to be frankly i think in the better part of wisdom it's going to be whenever the new person comes we're going to pull back and we may not be around for a while allowing that person to to solidify but we we're we're going to we're going to be here uh we love you guys and uh and we're going to continue to be blessed by the ministry here here at fellowship bible church i i want to um i want to share this with you i my first message that i preached at fellowship back in 2005 the very first message that i preached was from joshua chapter one verses one through nine it was a call to courage and i want to challenge each one of us here those of you listening to me and those of you associated with fellowship bible church god has more assignments for this church and i'm so excited about the groundwork that he's laid but it requires courage uh when there's a fear of the unknown there's stuff that we don't know about where is god going to take us what's going to happen here all these questions swirling around our heads well as you know god's not up in heaven sipping maylocks over our our situation he knows exactly what he's doing and he has plans for fellowship bible church he has the leader that that's out there that he's going to bring there and but what we have to do as members and leaders in this church now is time to press in to courage encourage rest to find four pillars from joshua chapter one verses one through nine number one it's a clear assignment from god there's clarity which implies that we have to

Channel: Fellowship Roswell

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Keywords: fellowship roswell, worship, weekly update, pastor

Id: 9rwIEZfHxbk

Length: 11min 3sec (663 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 14 2020