Newest superintendent shares her story
I’ve always found the passage in Matthew 4:19 a pretty amazing call story. "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." I wish that I could visit with those disciples so I could understand how, on the basis of less than a dozen words spoken to them by Jesus, they leave everything and follow him.
My own calling goes back to the years right after college. I was in the midst of a successful career, although success meant something completely different to me at that time.
And then we moved out of state, away from everything we knew.
I volunteered at a nearby church. I enrolled in Disciple Bible Study, and somewhere along the way I was asked to start a Saturday evening worship service.
Honestly, I don’t have a clue how it all happened. But something — someone — reached down, took hold of my heart, and didn’t let go!
The church, and everything about it, became my life. God used the church to open my heart to the call.
Today I look back. What if I had never moved to Corning, New York? I never would have met the man who became my husband. He encouraged me to become all that God wanted me to be.
What if I had not attended a certain United Methodist church in Lake Charles, Louisiana? I would not have met the senior pastor who first saw something in me that I couldn’t see in myself.
If I hadn’t taken that first step of reading scripture in worship one Sunday morning and then another step, to start and lead a Saturday service, I would not have found myself sitting and talking with a district superintendent. I never would have had the courage to go home and call Perkins School of Theology that same day, learning in that phone call about a dinner Perkins was hosting the very next week for potential seminary students. I never would have felt led to work on the staff at a church north of Houston while enrolled in seminary classes — and still trying to figure out what in the world I was doing there.
Now I am both humbled and blessed most of all by the leading of God’s hand into this new journey in serving Christ. With the encouragement of my family, friends, and colleagues in ministry, I look forward to walking alongside the clergy and laity of the Council Oak District and the Cabinet of the Oklahoma Conference as we serve Him in the work of the kingdom here in our midst.
The church, and everything about it, became my life. God used the church to open my heart to the call.
–Cindy Havlik