Several weeks ago now, John Crowder, pastor of First Baptist Church in West, TX, where the fertilizer plant exploded, wrote a moving and very useful column about ministry in the aftermath. He mentions a number of lessons he drew from the event, and several are useful for pastoral ministry. Here, in his words,  is one that stuck out to me:

Another lesson I’ve learned is that it helps for a pastor to be somewhere for a while. It helps build the trust of your community. Then when disaster strikes, you’ve got that trust, and the community knows it can depend on you. If you’re always moving to work your way up to a big church, you lose that opportunity to minister to folks. You haven’t been there long enough to build trust. I’ve been here for 18 years. At times I’ve thought, I wonder why I have to stay in this little church, this little town. I wish I could move on to bigger and better things. But now I know that God was having me build a long tenure so I’d be ready for this. (emphasis original)

Thanks to Mike Garrett for pointing this article and this paragraph out to me.