An Unmistakeable Call

Peter Baker | 21:05, 20th December 2012

Mixed because it will be very hard for us to let go of you all, the Church, which has become our extended family during long years of change and growth. 

We have invested so much in generations of relationships, the development of the Church's ministry and the vision of Highfields as a place where we reach, build and send. We are grateful to God for being allowed to be part of this unique era.

But in releasing all of that, we are at the same time aware of an unmistakeable call of God to begin a new phase of ministry and a new chapter of our lives. That sense of call has been something with which I have wrestled long and hard, testing it in all manner of ways over the weeks, until I became quietly confident that this is the Lord's will. 

The assurance, that if this is what God wants for the Bakers, it must also be what He wants for Highfields, has helped ease somewhat the call to be obedient. God's sovereignty is our security. However, I am aware from all the conversations, emails, texts and social media comment, for which I thank you, that none of us finds the prospect of this move a comfortable or necessarily obvious one. 

So I want to pay tribute to my elders and staff for their patient kindness during these confusing weeks and their willingness, however painful, to let us go. 

We will look back with mountains of memories on the triumphs and struggles of faith, the willingness to embrace change for the sake of mission and the gospel and our rich diversity expressed within a tight unity. Truly God has done great things among us. 

But we will also look forward to what God will yet do among Highfields. For in the Christian life the best is yet to be. So we will pray for the Lord to bless you and cause His gracious face to shine upon you and give you His peace. 

Pray for those elders and staff, especially Phil Jenkins, who will assume greater responsibility in the coming transitional months. And pray for us as a family. Sian and Emma have shown remarkable grace and maturity in all this. Not once have I felt they were kicking and screaming behind me.

But nonetheless this is hard for them and I am so aware of how fortunate I have been and am to have their support in ministry. Senior leaders are dependent upon networks of loyal and generous support and a wife and children (Laura too!) are paramount. Team work makes the dream work. 

Finally pray for me, that I might finish well. I have a number of projects I would like to progress and of course some I will now have to relinquish. I want to help the Highfields leadership and the wider church, in the most relevant yet sensitive way, to begin what is rightly an extended process of exploring the Lord's will for my successor and the kind of leadership structures needed to facilitate the future vision of Highfields. 

I would like to think that I still have some famous last words to offer from the pulpit and all other communication channels. But I want above all to remain a servant of the Church and the Gospel wherever the Head of the Church directs me. 

And that is the calling of every Christian believer, not just people like me, until we are all promoted to Glory. So join me in the race to finish well, looking to Christ the one who waits for us at gates of gold and whose Spirit is in us to bring us home.