My Journey | Pastor Kevin Sanders

The Big Blur

2021 wasn’t a bad year–plenty of good things happened. But it kind of feels like one big, ambiguous blur to me as I look back on it. I don’t know how else to describe it.

I believe one reason the year felt this way is I had to re-adjust to life after formal studies. Going back to school was a big, challenging part of my life from 2018-2020.

Maybe 2021 also felt the way it did due to the continuing issues with Covid. I’ll address that next.

Covid Madness, Version 2021

I was hoping this would be the year the world recovered from “Covid madness,” as I call it. I hoped things would be closer to normal: the end of all lock downs, etc. That didn’t happen (not completely, at least).

Some progress was made: effective vaccines were developed, which was a huge step. I also vividly remember the day the CDC released a statement that vaccinated people don’t need to wear masks (back in May). My wife and I went to the store the following day with uncovered faces and have done so ever since (except for those few weeks when our local government tried to re-impose mask mandates).

It seems most schools are meeting in person now, which is a good thing. I still believe shutting down schools was a terrible thing to do to children–especially poor children.

But the virus did continue to take lives and dominate the headlines. I hope and pray that 2022 will be different in this regard (or at least end differently). Time will tell what life looks like after the new variant has swept through, but there is reason for cautious optimism.

Church/Ministry

Someone on Twitter asked if it was harder to lead in 2021 than in 2020. “Yep, its like a war of attrition,” I responded. Seems like it’s been a constant struggle to get any momentum going (at least from my limited, earthly perspective). This is not a criticism of my church–what I’ve described seems to be a nearly universal sentiment among pastors and church leaders.

Having said that, we have much to be thankful for: God has allowed us to continue being part of what He’s doing here in El Paso. I’m thankful for the faithful believers that have continued to attend and serve. I’m also thankful for the new people that have joined us on our journey.

Books

Here are a few of the notable books I read in 2021:

One of my most cherished ministry mentors gave me a devotional called God’s Best Secrets by Andrew Murray. The book has her signature in it, which adds to its sentimental value. I’ve used it as a daily devotional and regularly quoted from it on my Twitter page.

I finally got around to reading The Hiding Place, which is Corrie Ten Boon’s harrowing account of living in Holland during the Nazi takeover (World War II). The book’s title is based on the hiding place her family had built in their house to hide and project Jews from the Gestapo. Corrie, her father, and sister were all eventually arrested for their part in assisting the Jews. Her father died ten days after his arrest. Corrie and her sister were eventually sent to a concentration camp where they managed to conduct Bible studies (with smuggled Bibles). Corrie’s sister died in the camp–Corrie was the only one of her immediate family to survive. It’s an amazing testimony of hope and forgiveness in some of the worst circumstances imaginable.

Corrie Ten Boon’s home and the hiding place.

I read God’s Smuggler, which is Brother Andrew’s testimony of coming to Christ and spending much of his life smuggling Bibles into closed countries. What struck me was Brother Andrew’s complete faith in God. He trusted God to get him through security checkpoints with a vehicle packed full of Bibles. This expanded edition of the book includes an interview with Brother Andrew on his continued work through Open Doors, the organization he founded.

Last but not least, I read The Color of Church: A Biblical and Practical Paradigm for Multiracial Churches by Rodney M. Woo. The author describes his journey of leading a Houston church through change in order to reach the surrounding community. This process, which began in 1992, resulted in predominantly Anglo church adopting a new vision and becoming a multiracial church.

A News Diet

I just mentioned the decision I made a while back to avoid online debates. I also decided long ago to cut back on watching the news–especially national/world news. I do try to scan news articles and stay informed at some very minimal level. But I’ve become increasingly weary of the fear-and-hate inducing headlines that relentlessly come at us every day. I think this video nicely sums up my concerns:

Family

Our boy continued to grow up before our eyes in 2021–he turned three back in March. For the record, whoever coined the phrase “terrible two’s” apparently didn’t understand the real drama that was coming at three years old. Joking aside, we have enjoyed his third year–Clark keeps us on our toes and keeps us laughing.

Mare Cris and I celebrated 9 years of marriage the day after Clark’s birthday. I’m looking forward to the 10-year milestone in 2022!

We did our usual visits to Alabama around Memorial Day and Thanksgiving. Clark got sick with parainfluenza on our first visit (in May) and that put a bit of a damper on things. But the Thanksgiving visit went extremely well. He constantly talks about going to “paw paw’s house.”

Future

I think I’ll sum things up with a quote from Corrie Ten Boone herself (copied from The Hiding Place): “. . . this is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for a future that only He can see.”

Boone was right: everything my family and I experienced this past year was part of God’s master plan for us. I will obey Him and trust that He is working everything out in accordance with His will for me and my family.

Happy New Year to all my friends, family, and blog readers! I’m deeply grateful for all of you.

We are visiting Pinson, Alabama, this week—the place I loosely call home.

I say “loosely” because I’m not 100% sure where home is, and I haven’t been for some time. My soul has been stretched across the globe. Now “home” is not so much a geographical location as it is wherever my beautiful wife and son are.

Semantics aside, this small town outside of Birmingham is where my parents raised me. It is a place where I am never far from the bones of my paternal ancestors.

This is a place where childhood nostalgia lingers in the air.

I spent my first two decades of life here, not realizing just how much bigger the world was and how little I understood it.

I drive by my childhood home and remember turning over rocks in the back yard in search of creepy crawlers. The less fortunate ones would end up captured and put in a jar for an indeterminate amount of time. We had a large outdoor light that illuminated the back yard after the sun went down. I would sit up at night and stare out the window when I was supposed to be sleeping. I remember one night spent imagining that I could interpret the noisy exchange of neighborhood dogs into human language. My sweet mom had the unenviable task of trying to get me out of bed every morning after these nighttime vigils.

Speaking of yards: driving around these familiar streets reminds me of my first job as a teenager—cutting grass. I mowed the lawns of my grandmother, great aunt, and two unmarried sisters that lived down the street (all of them have long since passed away). Our 1974 brown Ford pickup (which I affectionately called the “Dr Pepper can”) was the way I usually moved our equipment from house to house once I was old enough to drive. I worked and worshiped in these yards under the hot Alabama sun, always armed with my yellow, waterproof Walkman. I listened to countless hours of Charles Stanley sermons or my favorite music while marching behind the lawn mower. I’m sure there was also some daydreaming mixed in with my perspiration. That lawn mower, by the way, was bought at Sanders hardware, owned by my dad’s cousin.

Thoughts of these long-gone years bring a smile to my face. But they are mixed with memories of teenage angst that leave me with no desire to turn the clock back. I was a hopeless romantic and an aspiring athlete, both of which were sources of bitter disappointment in my high school years. I always seemed to fall for the girl that was just out of reach. My physical skills (or lack thereof) were not a good match for football, my favorite sport.

I also cringe when I think about some of the sermons, devotionals, and Bible studies I wrote and presented during the latter part of this era. I’m thankful that only a few survive as cassette tapes buried in a drawer. I’m deeply grateful for the church that nurtured my faith and endured some of my first attempts at teaching and preaching. I knew God had called me, but my understanding of both the Scriptures and life was fairly superficial back then.

I graduated high school and attended a community college located just a few miles away (Jefferson State Community College, which we called “Harvard on the hill”). Not exactly an adventurous move, but a thrifty one that did result in a slight change of scenery (new faces, at least). There I connected with one of my most cherished mentors, Momma Jo Randall.

Jo introduced me to a like-minded group of students in an organization known as the Baptist Campus Ministries (BCM). This rag tag group of friends would prove to be some of the best people I’ve ever met. Quite a few of them have become pastors, and most of them are faithfully serving God in some form or fashion. A couple of them are my closest friends to this day.

There they are—a few random memories from my first two decades.

The life I have lived looks radically different than the one my naïve mind had envisioned back then.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Category: My Journey

2021: The Year in Review