164- From Senior Pastor to Poimen Team Member (with Shaun and Sheila Sells)

164- From Senior Pastor to Poimen Team Member (with Shaun and Sheila Sells)

(0:09 - 1:02)
Welcome to Strength for Today's Pastor, conversations with current senior pastors and leaders which will strengthen and help you in your pastoral ministry. And now, here's your host, Bill Holdridge of Poimen Ministries. 

Welcome to podcast number 165. I'm here in Pahrump, Nevada, sitting in the same room with Shaun and Sheila Sells, who are my guests this afternoon, and excited to have them because they are relatively new additions to our team of pastors and wives with Poimen Ministries. And so we're going to get to know them, and we're going to hear their story of their recent church transition. So stay tuned because this is going to be full of encouraging words and very interesting and important things to remember.

So welcome to the program, you guys. Thank you, Shaun. Thank you, Sheila.

(1:03 - 1:16)
Well, thank you very much for having us on the show today, Bill. We're excited to get started with Poimen Ministries and excited to share our story with you guys. We're just thrilled to be with you, and the time that we've been able to share with you, just getting to know Poimen has been great.

(1:17 - 2:50)
Yeah, you know, you guys came in on Tuesday, and we have spent some fun times together. We've eaten a lot of food together. We've had lots of great conversations, lots of good planning, a lot of behind-the-scenes things that you guys have already put in place, and it's very much appreciated by me and I know by our team.

But your story is such a cool one to hear because, you know, you're relatively young. You're not as old as me or most of the guys and their wives on our team. You came into this ministry after extensive ministry experience, but still at a relatively young age.

So we want to talk about that. Why so young? Why did you turn your church over at the age you are? I'll let you reveal those numbers later. But before we do all that, you guys, I just would like you to tell our listeners who you are, how you came to Christ, how you met, your lives moving into getting married, having two children, being part of a ministry life, the military, you're retiring from the Air Force, effective January.

But anyway, all of those kinds of things. Just start telling your story. And let's hear it straight from the pastor’s and wife's mouths.

(2:50 - 3:06)
Yeah, you did allude to a lot of things that have happened in our world. And of course, it's all just been part of God's plan. But at least for me, I didn't grow up in a home that especially devoted itself to the things of the Lord, didn't have regular church attendance.

(3:07 - 7:21)
But in high school, God brought some people into my world that invited me to church and really just started surrounding me with just some of those influences. And as a teenager, those are your biggest influencers or your peers. And so that is where my faith journey started really just solidifying.

I accepted the Lord as my savior as a senior in high school, literally just a few weeks before I went off to college. And so began my faith journey there, but didn't really get into any type of good discipling journey. So my faith walk was a little stuttered a little bit at first, but met Shaun in high school in terms of when we started dating, and we went off to college together.

And just the way God just so gently guides us through our immaturity and our preconceived ideas about what faith is. And he just gradually started putting people in our path that got us on the right track together. We got married and then started pursuing the things of the Lord just through, of course, him putting a call on Shaun's life, but then how that played out.

We ended up traveling to Missouri. We moved there to finish our college degrees. And I would say that is where God really got ahold of us and started surrounding us with just, I would say, more intensive discipleship.

And as we were faithful to hear from him and to follow him and start to devote ourself to him, he started opening up opportunities of ministry and specifically things that he shared with Shaun. So I'll let Shaun talk more about what he did in those early years, and you'll get more insight into how that unfolded for us. Yeah, my salvation also was essentially junior high school.

My mom was a believer. She did pray and read her Bible for a while up until about fourth grade. She was going to church, but she was going by herself.

I think it was hard for her. And so I had a very minimal understanding, a couple VBSs and some understanding of church, but not really invested in any way whatsoever, didn't comprehend what was going on. But then in ninth grade, the Gideons were outside our junior high school handing out Bibles.

And a friend of mine, everything was a competition. And so my friend Gabe said, hey, I see that they've got multiple colors of those Bibles. Let's see if we can get every single color that they have.

And so we just kind of pestered them until we got all the colors, as far as we knew all the colors that they had. And so from that, that was just one step of the competition. Immediately following that, we had another competition that started.

He challenged me to see which one of us could read the Gideon New Testament first. And I don't know that either of us ever finished that competition, to be honest with you. I don't think I made it through the book of Matthew in that competition, but I did find in the back, along with the Pledge of Allegiance and some other things, I found the Lord or the sinner's prayer.

And so I began praying that every night. I really didn't have a comprehension, but just praying every night that God would save me. Shortly after that, another friend of mine, Scott, started inviting me to spend the night at his house.

We've been friends for years, but then started inviting me every Saturday night to spend the night. And then on Sunday mornings, his mom would wake us up, no matter how late we had stayed up the night before. And she would say, okay, it's time for church now.

And so on Sunday mornings, we would be at church. And that's where I always started to understand the gospel. I think God was responding to those early prayers, but began to understand the gospel there at North Cheyenne Baptist Church.

And there made what I would say is a public profession of faith, followed by baptism. And that's really what got it started for me. Just at that point, really starting to understand that the gospel was for me, really understanding that I did need to be saved.

(7:22 - 8:08)
Wasn't just kind of a cool thing that was out there. And then you're in high school at this point and you're starting to formulate what you think about the world. And with that as a backdrop, all of a sudden, everything started to make sense.

I could understand, when we would go to science class and they would talk about evolution, I could understand from a Christian viewpoint, like, yeah, but the problem with evolution was in the beginning what? And the Bible starts out with in the beginning what? And so I could start to see that bigger picture, how it all came together and began to form sometimes in immature ways, but my own understanding of a Christian worldview. So from there, I had some starts and stops with college because I was not really academically inclined. It just kind of felt like the next thing to do.

(8:09 - 9:04)
But eventually decided that I wanted to be involved in ministry somehow. I wanted to minister specifically to teenagers because that's when I came to faith. And at the advisement of somebody at the college who ran the Baptist Student Union suggested that we go to Southwest Baptist University.

Sheila and I were married at that point. And so we kind of changed our world, went from practically free college to really expensive private Christian school in Bolivar, Missouri. And there we found other Christian couples to mentor us.

We found a few older Christian couples that were investing in us through some Bible studies we had been a part of. And our faith really grew academically. For me, the smaller school feel, things like taking attendance and all of those things really helped me stay on track with my education.

(9:05 - 10:24)
There were a lot of weird things that happened. I was unable to get into the ministry program initially, and then I did get into the ministry program, and then it fell apart. So ultimately, I ended up seeking out a different degree field altogether because I was already volunteering at a youth group and eventually hired to work at a church as a youth pastor or youth minister at that time, youth director, I suppose.

And then from that, the Lord really started to allow us to grow in our faith and our marriage and our ministry together. Well, you both have crammed a lot into your years. Sheila, you've got your master's degree in physical therapy.

You also are finishing your career as a National Guard with the Air Force. Shaun, you were in the Air Force as well for seven years. You've been involved in ministry in numerous churches.

Tell us a little bit about those other non-ministry things that have happened in your life that ended up becoming ministry, I'm sure. Well, I actually did a full career. I was retired from the National Guard very much just to pay bills for me.

(10:24 - 11:36)
It was really just, you know, I had kind of gone broke in ministry, and my wife was expecting. I had tons of student loans, trying to figure out how to do ministry, and so I started doing the one-week-in-a-month thing at the Guard just to make a little bit of money, but then I went completely broke by the time all this came to an end. But it did allow me to have the opportunity to be around people that were not believers, and I kind of stood out like a sore thumb as much as you can in the military.

So like with so many people that go into ministry, you were bi-vocational for a long time. Yeah, yeah, and to me that was very helpful, I felt like, because, you know, if I'm teaching something on Sunday morning, where do I get to apply it in my own life? Well, when you're bi-vocational, you're like everybody else. You're going to work.

You're going to interact with unbelievers on a regular basis. I found that when I wasn't bi-vocational, although my life in some ways got easier, my ministry life, it was harder for me to maintain those connections. So I had to do other things like coach kids soccer teams and try to find ways to be involved in the political community and things like that, just so I still felt some sort of connection to the city of Cheyenne.

(11:36 - 12:10)
Yeah, Bill, and for me, really, I felt called to be at home with the kids. So when we first began our ministry journey back in Cheyenne, of course, John mentioned I was expecting our first, and really just decided that my call was going to be to him and to the family, and support him as best as I could. Now, I also admit I have a drive side of me that really does enjoy engaging in professional, you know, skills and projects and things like that.

(12:10 - 21:04)
So I really was eager to take advantage of the guard when it came along as an opportunity where I could serve as a drill status guardsman with that obligation of just the one weekend a month, and the proverbial two weeks a year, and still be able to stay home with my kids during the week, which that's actually more common than we realize with military women sometimes. So the guard was a great fit, but what I didn't understand was how God was going to use that to really give me a place to share my faith, to minister, to really just put him on display, because like Shaun said, when you're so immersed in the life of the church, sometimes you have to be very careful because your world can become insulated just by church people and church environments. And so the guard was a great place for me.

I worked as a personnelist when I first enlisted, and then I became a chaplain assistant for five years, so I would joke that I was a pastor's, I was a chaplain assistant both at work and at home to the pastor, so that was a great way. I had a great wing chaplain who encouraged us to live out our faith even though we weren't allowed to proselytize per se. He said, I want you to be ready to answer for the hope that lies within you if asked, and so I think that really helped me gain courage and fortitude in my mission there at the guard.

And then I went ahead and accepted a commission, so I became an officer, and that puts you in a different role and different levels of responsibility, but I felt like that really opened up some unique places where I could actually support people spiritually, whether they were saved or not, and hopefully that has impacted them in some ways, and I think God just provided those opportunities, but, and being willing to step out in faith a little bit and do things that you might, you're where you might get in trouble for, but God's like, you need to go do this, so just do it and trust that I'm going to protect you. So I really have enjoyed my time in the guard. I was able to still homeschool my kids for a lot of years, and now that they're out of the house, I've done some other roles with the guard, but I am excited to wrap that up and retire.

My ceremony will be next month, and then I will fall off their books after the first of the year, so that'll free me up to really dive into Poimen with Shaun and see where that takes us. The Lord never wastes anything, does He? In everything He does with His servants, He's using what's now for what's going to be, and I think that's something that we all in ministry need to learn, isn't it? That, you know, sometimes we can get impatient with the current moment or the current season, and we don't recognize at the time that this is so much about character development and so much about developing the way of being, the way of interacting with people, the way of connecting, and all those kinds of things. And then leadership skills and all the things that you learn in the military, and I can't even imagine.

I never served in the military, but I love it to hear the stories of those that have. So, Shaun, you were thrust into roles that you hadn't anticipated you would be thrust into in ministry. Like, for example, when you were in Missouri, you told me the story of all of a sudden you went from youth pastor to lead pastor.

Talk about that a little bit. Yeah, I mean, it seems like God knows how to get me to go forward by putting me in situations where I have no other choice. And so in Missouri, I was a youth pastor.

It was a part-time job. I was going to school. I was working another part-time job, but in the church, our senior pastor had been in a pretty bad car accident and was out for a number of months.

And so the church just asked me to take on his responsibilities. Well, at this point, I'm making, you know, $400 a month. It's a part-time job.

We live 75 miles away. And trying to balance that, and I wouldn't have guessed that doing that would say, hey, that's also going to be your entire future. But after our time in Missouri, we moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and very similar, the same thing happened.

I started out as the volunteer youth pastor. Eventually, I was the full-time associate pastor by vocational at that time with the guard. And one day, we were out of town.

We were in Washington, D.C., and I got a phone call that said the senior pastor had left the church overnight, and I needed to come home and figure out what to do next. So here I was with my degree that ended up not being in ministry. It ended up being in sports management, and very little actual experience or mentorship over the years, but kind of thrust into this role.

And so I came back, and we had one elder at that time. I was the last board member standing because the board was the pastor, his wife, and myself. And we began the process of kind of rebuilding the ministry team so that we could figure out how to go forward.

And that involved a lot of Googling things. Just, you know, something would come up, I'd never heard of it before, and I would Google it to figure out what it meant and how to respond, and I would read through a number of different people's ways of handling them. I remember when the scariest one, when I look back, at the time, I didn't know to be scared, but I got a phone call from our bank that said, you know, just so you know, your church has a balloon payment that's coming due soon.

And well, I didn't know what a balloon payment was, so I just kindly said, well, thank you for letting me know that, and hung up the phone and quickly Googled what is a balloon payment. And that's when the terror kind of struck my heart and realized that, you know, we had to figure out what to do about this balloon payment for this 15,000 square foot facility that we had just built before the pastor left. And we had to do that with funds that had really, there wasn't much there in the bank, you know.

It was a fairly new church, had grown quickly, but grown in numbers, but hadn't necessarily grown financially or administratively. And so, really just trying to figure those things out, getting on the phone with other pastors and saying, what do I do about this? Speaking to local experts, you know. We eventually built a board of directors that had men and women that we would say would be qualified as deacons as far as spiritual qualifications, but we were really targeting those who had worldly knowledge as well.

So we had, on our board of directors, we had a businessman, we had a lawyer, we had an accountant, and we really had to go to them for some of these legal administrative matters that I would have had no idea how to handle. And then, of course, we're building up our elders at the same time. And so, we brought in, we had a couple of retired pastors in the church.

They're suddenly elders now in the church and other godly men throughout that. But even as that, I wasn't thinking to myself that I'm going to be the senior pastor of this church. I'm thinking, I'm going to try not to wreck this before the real pastor shows up.

And so, that was kind of my goal. Like, let's just kind of go through this process. And we had two other pastors on staff that were fairly new as well.

And one day they just came to me in my office and said, Shaun, we need to talk. It's time for us to get a senior pastor, and we think you're it. And so, we're going to call a meeting of the board and the elders together, and we're going to ask them to hire you as the senior pastor.

And of course, I was kind of shocked by this. It wasn't a goal that I had. It wasn't something I thought was going to happen.

And so, they had that meeting. They let us explain, you know, our view on the thing. And then they asked us to leave the room basically.

And they said they would discuss it and get back to us. And about an hour into the discussion, I finally went back in the room and I said, guys, enough is enough. You clearly don't know what you want to do.

Why rush this? And they kindly said, you can leave the room. We'll call you when we need you. And within 20 minutes more after that, they said, yeah, it's unanimous.

We decided you're the new senior pastor. And that's really, it was a shock. It was not as much as a shock to them though.

What they were seeing were things that I couldn't even see in myself. I remember we had a meeting with a group of elders that we had just formed this group of elders. And I said, okay, we have a solid number of elders.

(21:04 - 21:40)
Now, let's plot a course for the future. How do we get to the next steps? And so, I invite them all to a Mexican restaurant for lunch. And we sat down and I said, all right, who's our leader? Who's going to lead us through this? And one of the elders said, well, you are.

And I said, well, how did I become the leader? And they said, well, you made the phone call. We all followed you here. I think by nature, you're the leader.

And so, it was just things like that, that I wasn't recognizing that other people were recognizing in me. Of course, a lot of that growth meant that I was making mistakes. And people were very gracious because they knew I didn't have a lot of experience.

(21:41 - 25:10)
But that consistency they were able to keep on Sunday morning. The number one decision I made from day one is Sunday morning is going to look no different. And so, we picked it up.

We did one Sunday, explaining that the pastor had left. And then I said, if you want to talk about that again, make an appointment with me at the office and we can have a conversation. But Sunday morning is about Jesus and his word.

And so, that's what we did. We just picked it up where he left it off. And we just kept going.

And although there was an initial large portion of people that left our church, probably over 100 people left the church pretty quickly. Within a year, many of them were back and the church was growing again. And so, God, I think, blessed just that consistency of just working through.

So, how is that for you, Sheila? I mean, now, all of a sudden, you're not the wife of an associate pastor. You're not the wife of a youth pastor. You're the wife of the senior pastor, the lead pastor.

Were there any changes in you during that time? How did you process that? Yeah, that's an interesting question. And I think looking back, it, again, God just covers everything with his grace and his favor. But I had really been able to establish some relationships with some really solid women, you know, as I started going to that church and was part a little bit of some of the things that the former senior pastor's wife had going, including a retreat that actually was planned for June, and he left at the end of May, as did she.

And so, you know, immediately, I pretty much had to just pick that up and make it work with the help of the other pastor's wife who is around. And so, at first, I thought that it was more just survival, like, we're just going to figure this out. But then you take some time and you just pray about it and you figure, you know, what does this need to look like? There were women in the church that were able to facilitate Bible studies already that had really hadn't maybe had that chance yet.

And so they were very gracious and eager to run, you know, small group Bible studies. And I eventually did lead the women's ministry for a season, but I didn't necessarily know that there were specific things maybe that a pastor's wife was thought that they ought to do. Shawn had always been so good about with the church, just saying, you know, you've hired me, you've not hired my wife, her job is to support me and to support our family.

And I really tried to lean into that as much as I could because our kids were young. And there were things that we needed to do as a family that required me not to be present at church 24 hours a day. And so that was really helpful.

I think, I think just understanding that the role of a pastor's wife, that doesn't put you in any higher place of authority or, I mean, certainly you have influence and that's different and you have to be mindful of that, but you should not just expect that you're going to rule the roost or take on any authority or I guess roles that God isn't calling you to do. And I certainly didn't, I didn't know how to play any instruments. I wasn't on the worship team.

(25:10 - 25:51)
I did always have had a heart for children's ministry and I'd been serving in that prior. And so I just kept doing that. And then, like I said, I did lead the women's ministry for a season, but only as part of a team.

And so it was never all, it was never about me. And then at, there was a time when God really placed in my heart that I was to let that go and have more of a ministry of just availability to my kids, my husband, maybe some other women. And I think allowing that to happen really opened the door for some other leaders, women leaders to step in and lead ministries to women and to really hone their giftings.

(25:51 - 28:18)
And for me just to be an encourager and an equipper, and I thought that was a really good model. And I think sometimes you can be influenced to think otherwise, whether you attend conferences or hear stories, but we're not cookie cutters. Pastors' wives aren't.

We have our own, God's created us for our own purposes and His plans. And so I think that's always been a healthy part of Calvary Chapel Cheyenne, is to just walk in that and not feel like you're required to be any certain kind of way. Right.

That's a great freedom. And as we've talked in our conversations, there is no Bible-specific gifting, or there's gifting for it, but not a calling as or title of a pastor's wife. So that's something that is up to that individual woman.

When I'm hearing you say, Sheila, is that you let the Lord under the leadership of your husband and under His leadership to you, you let Him dictate the pace, the ebb, the flow, the involvement, this or that or nothing, or change gears, focus on this area again. You have to be comfortable in your own skin to do something like that. A woman that attaches her whole identity with her role in the church to have to be something, that's a dangerous thing emotionally and psychologically, I would think.

And you didn't let that happen. Why? Why did you not let that happen? How did you not let that happen? Well, I would not be honest if I didn't say you still struggle with your flesh at times. So certainly those desires or those whisperings of the enemy are certainly there.

But I think if you're in the Word and you're praying and you have the right people around you that are just... I mean, our church really just is a church that loves their pastors and the pastor's wife. And if you just love the people, I mean, I think that was always what I just was reminded of. And I used to actually get a little anxious when I would go on Sunday mornings with my kids because I would come separate because Shaun had already been there for hours, right? And I would start to get anxious about the mass of people that I was going to be engaging with and who am I supposed to be, what am I supposed to say? And the Lord just really taught me to pray just on the way there.

(28:19 - 32:16)
God, you know the appointments you have for me in this building. And so I'm going to trust that whoever crosses my path, whether they need prayer, maybe they just want to encourage me, maybe they are in the middle of a crisis and need some counsel, some biblical guidance. I'm just going to trust that that's you.

And then I can walk in that and not get so worried about what else am I supposed to be doing or not doing. And I think that really helped. And just maintaining friendships.

Don't let, not let this idea of being a pastor's wife cause you any reason to be isolated or take on any martyrdom, if you will, of I'm just, you know, resigned to a life of loneliness. I think a lot of that is your choice. And it's also how you deal with people and how you talk.

Obviously, you know, gossip is a big no-no, but even how you talk about your husband, how you just speak well of the people around you and also be cautious about who your confidants are. And it's not impossible that you could have maybe one trusted woman who's hopefully very, you know, mature in her faith, but they're not there to, I guess, help you make decisions about the church or, you know, sometimes they want to know things about the church. And you're like, well, just go talk to Shaun, like make an appointment.

That's what he's there for. I'm frankly, you know, ignorant sometimes is bliss. And so I think early on I had that luxury where I wasn't so much behind the scenes, but did know enough and, and just love the people and love the women.

I think that really was key. So we're going to fast forward. Now you were Shaun on staff for 24 years or so as the senior pastor, about 20 years and thereabouts, but you decided at some point, so we're eliminating years and years in between these two bookmarks, but you decided to turn over the church.

And so how old were you and how did you make that decision? Why did you make that decision at the age that you are to do that? Because it's not common in our world of Calvary Chapel anyway, that this happens. So let's talk about that. Yeah.

So I handed the church over about three months ago at the ripe old age of 50 years old. And the process for determining to do that, that it was the right thing for me, that it was right thing to the church really goes back to how you make any type of decision about your faith, about life. It, for me, it started with a scriptural spark that as I was going through the scripture, I was seeing a pattern first recognized in the Old Testament in the book of Numbers chapter eight with the Levitical priesthood, that there was this understanding that the, the priest served generically from age 30 to age 50.

And then they stepped aside. And there's some real interesting thoughts behind why that was like that. I have my own opinion that, you know, at 30 is a great age because at 25, your brain's just finally fully developing.

You're not even really all the way physically developed yet. There's an immaturity concern. By age 30, you should have that squared away.

You've probably already got a family in place. And then age 50, the Bible specifically says that the concern was that at age 50, there's an actual, it's a burden to do the work, a physical burden. And I would say for us as pastors, this is not descriptive of, of how it's supposed to be.

It's not prescriptive. In other words, we don't have to do this 30 to 50, but the picture was there. And I really understood that picture of the burden for me was important that the moment I came into ministry, it was by burden.

(32:16 - 35:30)
It was a difficult circumstance. It was painful. It was stressful.

It was, it was, it was heartbreaking in a lot of ways because it impacted people that I loved and people that loved me. And so there is a burden. It's a spiritual and emotional burden that we carry now.

We're not carrying the implements of the sanctuary anymore, unless you're a mobile church. And I guess you kind of are. But there is a burden that goes along with ministry.

And when you carry a burden for a long time, it wears you out. It doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't matter how you try.

It's going to wear you down. It's going to wear you out. And so I saw that, but that's not enough for me to change my life.

And so just like anything else, I, my heart connects to an idea in scripture, but there has to be more. But then I did see kind of a repeated nature in the New Testament, looking at the apostle Paul and the way he did ministry seemed so different than what was normal in my mind. What was normal in my mind is you get into the pulpit and you stay there until you die.

And then someone else will take it hopefully after that. But Paul wasn't doing that. He had a church planter's heart.

And it always seems so weird to me to, to go to a city, be there for a couple of months, maybe at the most two years, and then hand that off to someone. And, and he talks about just like these people are my heart and he's just handing them off. And it just, it seems so weird to me.

But that second Timothy scripture really stuck out in my mind, the idea that the older men would take the things that they'd heard from Paul and they would entrust those things to other faithful men who would be able to teach others. And it showed this picture in my mind of a generational church. A church is about more than just me being the pastor, just me being there.

And it really makes the church go back to being God's when you take it out of the idea of this is, this church has only existed because I'm here. Well, no, this church has existed because Christ is here because the Holy Spirit is here because God the Father has allowed his lampstand to stay there. So that generational picture became very important to me in part because I didn't feel like I had great training or mentorship.

I wanted to be a church that did better at training and mentoring. In part, I think, because of the, maybe the small opinion I had of myself. I think just this, you know, one guy, one time a pastor asked me, he said, so, you know, I'd already told him this was my plan.

He says, what do you mean you're going to hand over the church? I said, yeah, if I, if I've done ministry right, five years from now, this church will continue on and nobody will know who I am. And he's flabbergasted by this. But for me, if the point of the church is to glorify Christ, then it's not as much about me.

And that takes a huge strain out. The other thing that I started to recognize, if you say that you're going to lead this church until the day you die, you're doing two dangerous things. Thing number one is you're telling the younger generation, we really don't have a place for you here.

You're just going to sit on the sidelines. And if you really want to do something for the Lord, you got to go someplace else. The second thing it does is it doesn't prepare your church for the emergency.

(35:31 - 39:11)
You know, like it or not, pastors have emergencies in their lives as well. So whether it's something that's going on in your family, whether it's something that's going on in your faith, maybe it's your own health, maybe you get hit by a car, maybe the Lord just calls you to do something different in your life. If you don't at least start to think about what would happen if tomorrow I'm gone, you're doing a disservice to your church.

So it just kind of got me thinking more generationally. And in our brand of churches in Calvary chapels, I think one of the complication is we're so theologically strong on what we believe to be true, that Jesus is coming back at any minute. And we all believe he's coming back in our lifetime, in our generation.

We forget sometimes that every generation has thought that. Now, I don't think we're wrong to think that. I think the scripture tells us to live that way, but it also tells us to continue to do the work until he arrives, to continue to live that life of righteousness, to continue to serve.

And part of that service, I think a pastor should be doing is preparing his church for if the rapture doesn't happen during their lifetime. It's just a common-sense thing. So that was the second piece that had to be confirmed again in the scripture.

The third piece, and again, this goes back to how you would make pretty much any decision. I would just call it the prophetic word, that I started having other people speak prophetically into my life, even a dream that I had. And I don't feel like I have a prophetic gift, but I had other people confirm these things.

And all of them had this same theme throughout it, was that my future involved pastoring pastors as opposed to just pastoring the church. And I had made attempts to try to make those things come true as a senior pastor, but it was a distraction to the ministry of the church. I couldn't do both.

And in fact, a great and godly elder team convicted me of this. I had this in my mind, kind of perfect plan, that as the senior pastor who's going through all this traumatic stuff at church and some things we don't need to talk about, but some traumatic things going on in the world around me and my own family and things like that, I decide that I'm going to start taking every summer essentially off from the church to do a school of ministry in the summers. So I bring this to the elders and they were overwhelmingly against it.

And now I have this crisis where I'm like, okay, on one hand, I really want to do this. And I think it's important for the church as a whole to have this idea. And I even feel like there's a prophetic background to it.

On the other hand, I have a group of godly men who I've chosen to help me lead this church who I believe each one of them is filled with the Holy Spirit. And they're collectively telling me now's not the time. In my pride, am I going to assume that I'm right and they're wrong? I had to set that aside for a time.

I had to wait for a time for that to become clear. But that prophetic word being confirmed by other people who were able to interpret some of these things and others who were speaking directly into my life. So the word itself wasn't in question that the Lord gave you, it's just the timing of it.

Absolutely. And your elders helped you with the timing of it. And you had to be somebody that was willing to listen to that.

Boy, what a novel concept that is, a senior pastor listening to his elders, to his board. Good for you. Yeah, yeah, it shouldn't be a novel concept.

If you've done the work to bring in the right guys, it shouldn't be a novel concept. I totally agree. But, and then that just kind of led to then you start to get the advice of other people.

(39:12 - 40:58)
And so I would have other people who would specifically come to me and ask me to mentor them in ministry. Part of it was a longevity issue. You know, most churches outside of our brand, you're not going to be at the same church for 20 years.

You're going to be gone within seven years and you'll just move on to the next church, which meant even as a young man, I was one of the longest serving, longest tenured pastors in our city. And so I was in a habit of praying with other pastors in town. We have a weekly prayer time at our church for evangelical pastors.

And we would, a new guy would come to town, take him out to lunch, get to know him, invite him to prayer, which then opened a door for them to ask me about how to do ministry stuff. Oftentimes these guys are 20 years older than I am, but they're new to Cheyenne and I've been in the same church for, at that point, you know, a number of years and it gave them a confidence to trust in me. So I started seeing the pastoring pastors become very practical for me and very helpful for them.

And so seeing that and asking other people, when I'd go to pastors conferences, I would explain, like, I really feel like I want to pastor pastors. And across the board, every pastor I would talk to and say, that's so needed. And then they would follow it up with, but I'm not going to do it.

I'm busy, you know? And so just- And they are too busy. They are too busy. Absolutely.

You're trying to do so many things. It's so difficult to truly pastor today. And then lastly, is to commit it to prayer.

That was one of the mistakes I made, that I was so sure of it, that I was ready to go forward. And so I started telling the church about this before I ever mentioned it to my wife. And so about, I would say, you know, it's disputed maybe 10 to 15 years ago, I just started telling the church, this is going to happen.

(40:59 - 41:03)
Okay. So wait a minute here. So you told the church before you'd even told Sheila.

(41:03 - 41:08)
So she heard this at church? Pretty much. That's hilarious. That's great.

(41:09 - 44:05)
Well, kind of just to clarify, he would bring it up in messages. So when it kind of came up in scripture, he would just say, oh, and by the way, this is, you know, when I turn 50, I'm going to be transitioning out and a new person will come in. So it wasn't like this official announcement, you know, everybody, guess what? And then I'm sitting in the front row, you know, eyes wide open.

No, it was more just this undercurrent of messaging. By the time it was officially announced to the church, we definitely had had many talks about it. Well, you know, that's so great, though.

You talked about it in one way or another for a long time. So this wasn't brand new to your elders. It wasn't brand new to the congregation that have been with you studying the word under your ministry.

This was something that they were kind of, I'm sure some of them were pushing it out of their brain. Like, I don't want to think about that. You know, we're going to lose Shaun and Sheila.

I don't want to even have that as part of my thinking. But it was there in their thinking. And so you were intentional about this whole thing.

So when 50 hit, you were ready to do it. Yeah, it was actually very helpful because I could point back to some of those messages and I could say, well, go listen to my Leviticus study, go listen to my Second Timothy Chapter two study so that they could hear these things in the course of scripture. Now, there were those who just disagreed and they would just say, well, that's that's nice talk, Shaun, but it's never going to happen.

You're going to get to that point and you're not going to do it. You're just not going to do it. But as it got closer, it became very clear to me.

A big part of that was going to Sheila and saying we should be praying about this more regularly until she got to the point where she was comfortable with the idea as well, which I think was important. I wish I would have done better at that earlier. But it was important that we would have that kind of same concept in mind because it's a big change for your life in ministry.

I would say one of the reasons that pastors don't plan for transition is because they can't comprehend, one, what they would do after they're a senior pastor and two, how they can afford to live. Like these are two big concepts. You have a responsibility to your family.

So how do you manage those things? So it does take the time to think it through and plan it through and come to some conclusions. And if you're not going to think about that until you're so overwhelmed that you're already in an emergency, it's too late to have those conversations. So then ultimately what happened through prayer, I just continued on doing the ministry as always, looking for the next guy, investing in the pastors that I had.

But about five years ago, I finished the Bible, which I know it sounds weird, but I finished the Bible, not as if I was done with it, but I had preached through the entire Old Testament and New Testament by teaching twice a week. And I made it through. It was a Sunday morning.

(44:05 - 44:55)
I remember going back to my office after I had preached, I don't know, probably three services that day. And I sat my Bible down and I closed it and I had this immediate release. And the release was a realization that I had done everything that I had been called to do at that church.

And so kind of the three things I looked at, number one was stability, because my ministry there was born in instability that the pastor had left suddenly for his own reasons, for his own purposes. But that didn't matter to the people. They had gone through this traumatic event.

And so stability for them and really for the city of Cheyenne, the other churches that they needed to see a better model. And so I was I was I was really dedicated to that idea of stability in our church and leadership. The second thing I saw that was there was that our reputation had been repaired.

(44:56 - 45:05)
And I had a way to maintain that reputation by handing the church off in a thoughtful way. You're talking about the reputation of Calvary Chapel Cheyenne. The Calvary Chapel Cheyenne.

(45:05 - 45:23)
That was repaired. Yeah. But even the body of Christ to a certain extent, you know, when a pastor leaves suddenly, it's a story to a lot of people and everybody wants all the behind the scene details and all that stuff that oftentimes isn't their business, but they're looking for that train wreck to watch.

(45:24 - 54:55)
That's what they want to see. And they want to marvel over that. And I said, let's marvel over survival.

Let's marvel over stability. Let's marvel over increasing instead of decreasing. And so that reputation was important for me, for our community.

And then lastly, finishing the scripture, it was like, I know I need to teach the word. Well, I taught the whole council of the word of God. And so that for me kind of started a countdown to now I have to, for the next five years, be serious about this.

And so starting the planning process and commuting, communicating more regularly with the pastors and elders of the church. And so, yeah, my challenge to other pastors would be to start thinking this way, start thinking what would happen in an emergency. Will I do this forever? Is God calling me to do this forever? Who are the people around me who maybe aren't perfect right now, but could probably because they're gifted by the Holy Spirit, because they love the Lord and they're able to teach, they meet the qualifications.

Who can I set in place now and say in an emergency, this is the guy and who can I be investing in now to really begin to kind of prepare themselves for that, have these conversations openly. Everybody's afraid they're going to chase everybody off from their church. If they're at the church because of you, they're already have a misplaced faith.

There's already a problem. There's already a difficulty. You want them to be at the church because they love the Lord and you're talking about the Lord every Sunday.

So if it's all about you, there's already a problem there. Yeah. The idea of preparation for an emergency, preparation that the reality is, is that somebody else is going to pastor our church unless Jesus returns or unless, you know, somebody else is.

So why not pastor as though that's actually going to happen and prepare for it? So you have a guy that is now in the senior pastor role. He was like you in one sense, is that you were surprised when they said you're the guy. He was hesitant at first, as I understand it, to be in that role.

But over time he was able to overcome through prayer and input from others his reticence, and he felt called and sensed that he was supposed to do it. Isn't that interesting? Within the fellowship there was a successor for the founding pastor. Within the fellowship there was a successor for the one that helped stabilize the church over 20 years.

That's a great model in and of itself. Yeah. And I do think that's one of the missing elements that if you're not ever thinking that way, you're not preparing anybody to do it.

And if you don't prepare anyone to do it, when you finally leave, for whatever reason, there's nobody there that's ready to do it. There's nobody that anybody trusts to do it. And so you feel obligated to go through essentially a business practice, right? We're going to, we're going to go find a hired gun that can come in here and solve this problem.

Well, how about we just don't hand off a problem? How about we hand off a healthy church to a healthy person that's raised up in our ministry? You know, I still have this habit of just for fun, when people ask who the new senior pastor is, if I run into him around town or outside of the city of Cheyenne, I'll pull up a picture of Doug, our new senior pastor from his third grade picture in our church directory. And I'll say, it's that little guy right there. And, you know, partially making fun of his age, you know, because he's a little younger, but not terribly younger in Calvary Chapel years, he's 29.

You know, a lot of Calvaries were started by guys a lot younger than that. Not that that matters to somebody who's 60 in your sanctuary that Sunday, but to those who grew up in the Calvary Chapel ministry, that's not a young man. But just to kind of show though, this guy knows things about our church because he's been around the people of our church.

People know who he is. People know who his wife is. They already understand his character.

He was our worship leader for a number of years with no intention of him ever being a pastor, let alone a senior pastor of the church. But investing in him on a regular basis, just one-on-one, it started to become clear to me and others that he was called first to be a pastor. The way we recognize that he was called is his lifestyle matched it, but his giftings matched it.

He was so good at that right combination of things, of shepherding people, which he was doing with the worship team, amazing things, ministering to the life of the people on the worship team. But he also had enough of his head on his shoulders to think through things strategically, logically on the administrative side. Sometimes as pastors, we can be so out there on the things we want to do in ministry that we never do the math.

But he had that right ability to be process and people oriented. So that just kind of started a conversation with him about bringing him into ministry, which was something he was really against initially. And then through ministry, applying to be the senior pastor and really kind of against all odds.

There were people in the hiring group that we had formed that before his interview literally said, there's no way I'm hiring this guy. And then after the interview process and going off and praying about it, those same people coming back and saying, this is the guy, the Lord has told me this is the guy. And so what a beautiful picture of somebody who came from our fellowship, grew up under the word in our fellowship, and now is leading that fellowship.

That's a generational church. Well, an example that I have used and that we kind of use a little bit with Poimen is the example of a heart transplant. The closest thing in a church setting, especially if there's a strong senior pastor model of leadership to the human body is the heart.

And what are the chances that this new heart that comes in to follow the founding pastor or a succeeding pastor, what are the chances of that body rejecting the heart or accepting the heart? And so what you've done and what the Lord has done in healthy situations is created and developed a man to be, it's an organ reception, not an organ rejection. And that's what you've got. And he came from within.

And we have churches that don't have an emergency plan except for this one. Well, we're just going to call Poimen Ministries. Well, what that means is it's probably going to be somebody that comes from outside of the church, most likely.

But we've also had a situation, Shaun, where we've gone in and they've had that attitude. We're going to bring in Poimen to be transitional for us. They're going to help us locate the next pastor.

And we discover something that they hadn't discovered. And that is that the man is right there in their midst. He's standing over there among the equipment and that kind of thing.

And it blows their minds. And usually the same recipe happens that happened with Doug. I don't want to do it, you know, or whatever his language was.

But the Lord has his ways and they're doing great. But they have a learning curve that they've got to go through. But like you, in your ministry, prior to becoming a senior pastor, as you were a youth pastor, as you were interim pastor there in Missouri, you looked around.

You went to your good friend, Mr. Google, and you went to other people that you knew, and you found out what you now knew you needed to learn. And that's an important factor too. The younger guys that we're trying to work with need to be teachable, and they need to be hungry to learn.

Anyway, I'm rambling at this point. But such a good model for transition. I love it.

And I love that it was intentional. So if I could just add two things for those pastors that are listening. The first would be this, that if you are a founding pastor of a church, it's always going to be harder for you than it is for other pastors.

Because these are your people in a sense. Because many of them you led to Christ. Many of them you baptized.

Many of them you've been in their homes when somebody was sick or somebody died. You sat with them through funerals. You did their weddings.

You've been every aspect of their life you've been involved in. So it really is your heart. And so from that perspective, I can certainly understand why it's hard to think that way.

But I would just add one piece to that, which is when you're thinking about transition, you're thinking of it for their benefit. That's why you're doing it. Because you love these people.

Because they're your people. You want to make sure at your loss that it's not so traumatic for them that they can't go forward. Because sometimes people will see the loss of their pastor and their faith follows it.

They just can't deal with it because they were never prepared to. So that's one of the ways you're equipping the saints. The other thing I would point out is, you know, I came up with the age of 50 for my situation.

(54:55 - 55:56)
Those ages are really irrelevant. A lot of people didn't start senior ministry until their 50s. For me, it was just the matter of the timing of everything connected to the direction of the Lord.

But there's just a lot of pastors who are unwilling or afraid to even ask the question, Lord, how long am I supposed to be here? And that's where I think we need to be thinking as we minister now, preparing ourselves in the church for the future. I was 52, I believe, when I retired from Monterey after 27 years. It was life circumstances combined with other things.

But then, you know, move along after that and Poimen Ministries got started. I thought this is a better plan that the Lord has had for me in my life now and in the future in terms of potential influence for the body of Christ. I could stay at this one church and some have said, you've got another church in you to pastor.

(55:57 - 58:14)
My son even said that to me. I said, well, I don't know if I want to actually do that. You know, I know I don't.

I mean, I do partly because of the thought of pastoring again reminds me of when I was 35 and I'd been there 10 years and I really love these people. And like you said, you know, they're my peeps and I'm one of their peeps and that kind of stuff. But that's more of a romantic dream in some ways than it is the reality of what should the Lord, what is the Lord calling us to do? Yeah, my dream was slightly different because I had so much peace the day I retired from the church.

You know, everybody was saying like, oh, Shaun, you're going to cry all the way through that service. I had a blast at that service. It was a wonderful service.

I didn't cry once. I was nervous about, you know, what is it going to be like walking out of the church that last time after that Sunday? So I was nervous about that, but that's not what I had. What I had was release because it was the leading of the Lord.

I had confidence and I was comfortable in it, even though I had no clue what the future had on how we're going to work out everything that follows after. I knew what I was supposed to be doing, but the details of working all that out wasn't quite as clear as the things leading up to that point was. So for me, when I think about future ministry, I don't think about senior pastor ministry.

I think about setting aside all the things about senior pastor ministry I did because they had to be done, but I wasn't skilled at and not having to worry about those things and just picking the pieces of ministry that I was gifted at and called to. So I'm ready to preach anytime, anywhere, because I love preaching the word. I'm willing to sit down with somebody and give them a big overview of how they can think about the vision of their church and the ministry things.

Man, I do not want to sit down for tedious hours working out every little detail of the plan. I want them to bring it to me and me to laugh at the points that don't make sense and congratulate them for the things they did well and say, now go rewrite it. You go do that hard work.

I don't ever want to think about a budget again. I mean, for me, just working through the budgets and asking these questions, like which ministry is more deserving of money, knowing that you have a limited amount. There's only so much you can do.

(58:14 - 59:32)
Obviously, you trust God for the things you can't afford, and he came through time and time again, but there's a burden with that. And I've done hundreds of funerals. I'm glad if somebody else wants to do funerals for a while, I'd like to take a break.

So to me, being a senior pastor, again, God's going to have to do some healing in my heart and in my spirit before I would be ready for something like that. But the thing he called me to was to pastor pastors. Well, you're describing some of the weight of the role of senior pastor that not everybody understands what that really feels like, what that really looks like.

But it's true. Some of it, I call it ministrivia, is what it is. It's necessary.

But to me now, looking back, it feels trivial. And I don't want to be in those meetings again either. But what you're also describing is what Richard Clinton calls convergence, where the gifts and the calling are being mixed together very nicely with the opportunity.

And that's what's happening with you both. I think that it's just really going to be wonderful. And other people start seeing, yeah, I can see Shaun and Sheila doing that.

(59:32 - 1:00:21)
And I'm sure you've had people saying that. They said that to me. And it just makes a sense.

And then another comment that they make is, this is so needed. This kind of ministry that you guys are is so needed. Can you talk to my pastor? That kind of thing.

Can you come and make a visit? I'm just kind of kidding. But it's that kind of an idea. And it's great.

So you're in a place now where we're going to camp on these ideas here for a second. But you're in a place now where you're almost like you were at the beginning of your ministry life. I mean, you were bi-vocational, both of you, serving in professional careers with the military and other places before, I guess.

(1:00:22 - 1:02:17)
But now you're stepping from a fixed income. And you're retiring in January. You're off the books with the Air Force and the National Guard.

So you're going to be walking by faith again. Not that you weren't walking by faith before, but I'm just saying it's a difference. You're in the same season at a different time.

So this is the time when you're praying for people that believe in the mission and believe in your calling. And they want to get behind it in prayer and with financial support and that kind of stuff. What does that feel like for you guys? Well, I guess I'll go first because I'm very simple in a lot of ways.

And so I just look at very simple practical terms. To me, it's exciting to be living on faith. But there's nothing that says that if I have to pay a bill, I can't just go drive for Uber for a while and make up the difference.

I mean, it's just a very practical place. Now, part of that was because I was thinking this through. We were very diligent about getting as much debt in our life.

Just get rid of it. Just get rid of that debt. So we didn't have to worry about that when God was calling us to the next thing.

We were planning those things. We're investing a little bit so that someday maybe we can have some retirement income. So we did what we could when we could while we were paying off those massive student loans and trying to figure out how to pay medical bills and all of those different things.

So that planning helped as well. We have, other than our mortgage, we have some freedom where our living expenses aren't as bad as they were at different times in our life. So for me, it's not quite as scary with the exception of knowing that my lifestyle will have to drop at some level unless the Lord does something amazing.

(1:02:18 - 1:04:00)
But just adapting to that. But I honestly think that it'd be really good to hear from Sheila on this point because she's tied to this as well. Yeah.

So I agree with Shaun on pretty much everything he said. And it is exciting. It's what you preach, what you profess throughout your life of stability because for so many years, nothing changes.

You might get a small raise here and there from the church, but you always know what the income's going to be. And it does take us back to the early days when I did decide to stay home with the kids. We really didn't have enough money to live on.

And yet God really did provide everything. It was amazing to see how he made it stretch and how we were never without. And that's his business.

It really spoke to my heart as we are now, of course, trying to generate supporters. When we were regularly attending Calvary, it was part of the Sunday night prayer time and just asking for prayer, just about discernment. Like, do I need to now go maybe look for a remote part-time job or a remote job that we can take with us? And one of my sisters in Christ, she said, well, why aren't we just praying that you don't have to work at all? Like that God will just provide exactly what you need.

And just having those people around you that they're in your corner, they're cheering you on, they're seeing the same faithful God and just remind you continually that he's there to provide. So yeah, it's going to be an adjustment. I think it will be good and we're excited to see what God does.

(1:04:00 - 1:05:13)
And I admittedly, I'm a little more practical and because I'm the one that's always paid the bills. So the bottom line is always very much right here in the front of my mind. Whereas I think I've afforded Shaun a little bit of luxury not to have to worry about that because he was so, he was worrying about the church, you know? And so just trying to take that role of managing the home and now we get to do it a little more equally.

So that's good. Now that we're both able to focus together on appointment and the operational side of it, us being able to address the finances equally, I think is going to be good, good for us. But I think just spending time with you and Sherry, meeting some of the other appointment couples and hearing their stories and just seeing how God provides in such a personalized way, I guess, really, I think, encourages me.

And I know a big takeaway from just the more and more I get immersed with the things of appointment and allowed to be a part of it. It's just, just be steady. Just walk one step in front of the other.

(1:05:13 - 1:05:48)
And I think we've been telling God we're ready to do that. And now it's just a matter of trusting that he's illuminating that path, you know, one step at a time. So, and I think it's good for our church to see this because we are now back in fellowship at Calvary.

I'm after, I'm spending three months away to not be a distraction of any kind. And so it's good. It's good for our church to see it.

It's good for our kids to see it. And just to, you know, I guess, be young again in the sense of exercising those faith muscles in this, this similar way. So.

(1:05:48 - 1:06:15)
Yeah. May the Lord help us have that perspective, all of us, no matter what our age is. You know, I feel for the men who opted out of Social Security and they feel like they can't retire from their churches because they have no income sources and their churches weren't large enough to provide a good retirement plan, a 403 B9 plan or whatever it might've been or Roth IRA.

(1:06:17 - 1:09:29)
And, they're afraid. And I understand why, you know, they're apprehensive to, to turn the church over. And so they're doing what they never would have done at the beginning of their ministry lives.

They would have never continued in ministry for financial, for financial reasons, but now they feel pressed in a corner to have to do that. So, but I think that Matthew 6 33 applies to them and to us and to everybody who serves the Lord. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

So we keep our nose to the grindstone, our hand on the plow, and we keep, like you said, moving forward. And like Warren Wiersbe said in one of his great books, In Praise of Plodders, you know, he considered himself just a plodder, you know, one day at a time, putting one foot in front of the other. And I like that.

I think that's kind of what we do. It's really great to have you. It's really great to have you on the team.

Looking forward to how the Lord's going to use you. So yeah, welcome to appointment. Well, thank you very much.

We're excited to be a part of this. I'm excited to do this with my wife. That one of the things I think that gets forgotten as ministries try to help pastors who are in crisis or churches who are in crisis, that oftentimes those pastors have a family and the family is both trying to maintain the reality of their family and they're in crisis.

Even when they go to church now, their church is a crisis place for them. And so for my wife to be alongside me in this, that if I go into a church and I see there's a crisis, I can have her talk to a pastor's wife and that pastor's wife have somebody that gets it, that can relate, that can hear from them. It's really a huge benefit, I think, to the church.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We're just really excited for the new season and looking forward to see what opportunities God opens up for us as we're now ready to jump in.

So thank you for having us. Yeah. Well, I wanted to just introduce Shaun and Sheila Sells to the community of podcast listeners who are connected with Strength for Today's Pastor.

It's a great story. It's an intentional story. It's a story of a life and a career and a calling and a gifting and all of that rolled into one.

And all for the glory of God and for the strengthening of His church. Because I know you guys agree with me that there is no organism on the planet that equals the church in terms of its beauty, its strength, its influence, its power. We're the only organism, organization, if you will, of which it is said that we are the pillar and the ground of truth.

There is no other. And it's a great thing to be involved in what God has called us to do. Amen.

Amen. Well, you've been listening to Strength for Today's Pastor. We've been with Shaun and Sheila Sells.

We will have notes. We'll have a transcription of this podcast interview. And there are opportunities to connect with the Sells through our website.

(1:09:30 - 1:10:01)
We have a website that the announcer will give to you at the end of the program. But you can contact us through that medium for support toward the Sells ministry. There's opportunities for that as well.

It's just a great thing to be serving the Lord as we do. So continue on and soldier on, as they say in the UK, and be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. And may the Lord bless you as you serve Him in Jesus' name.

(1:10:29 - 1:10:33)
As you serve Him, His pastors, and His church.