Farewell Cambridge

I still remember our first Sunday at Cambridge.  Bryan was simply filling the pulpit while we traveled home to visit family and friends.  We were living in Clinton at the time.  Bryan was a youth pastor, and I was working as a pediatric nurse.  I remember bringing my flute and asking Mrs. Peggy if I could play along with her during the worship service, and I remember her warm reception.  I remember leaving the service and turning to Bryan in the car and agreeing that God was clearly calling us there next.  We were so sure that we drove around Gautier looking at possible houses that were for sale and praying over our future.  We just knew that was where God wanted us, and we had complete peace about it.  Sure enough, the next day, Skip, the chairman of the deacons called and asked if Bryan would be interested in submitting his resume and interviewing to be the pastor of Cambridge Baptist Church.  Months later, we moved into Gautier and made our home here.

It was over three years ago now.  We've grown up a lot since that first Sunday.  Cambridge has been pivotal in helping us mature as believers, as a ministry couple, and as husband and wife.  We birthed a child during our ministry and lost another.  We saw deaths, baptisms, and salvations.  We experienced Christian community done well and Christian community done poorly.  We were loved well and hated well.  Today was our last day of ministry at Cambridge.  Since Abby and I were both sick today, we were unable to see Bryan preach his last sermon there, which was a blessing in disguise for me emotionally.  So it is with a sad heart that I bid farewell to the church that I sincerely believed we would be part of until the day we died.  It is with a hopeful heart that I welcome the future with open arms.

Oh God,
You have seen our journey, and You know our hearts.  Help us to learn from our past but not to live in it.  Help us to rejoice in what You have done so far and to embrace our future.  You are the God who brought us to this city, and we know You are not finished with us until You call us home to be with You.  Help us to be as brave, meek, kind, and forgiving as Jesus.  May we be faithful to the end.  Give us the grace to finish well.  We want to hear "Well done" when we meet You face to face one day.  Do not waste our pain.  May it bring forth a new ministry that is even more beautiful than we could have imagined.  May we see good come forth from our suffering.  Oh Father, we want to see You work in our city in a new way, so that those who have no hope could know Your hope, so that those who feel unloved will find Jesus, the Love, so that those who feel unforgivable could know Your forgiveness.  Reap Your harvest Father.  We are willing and ready. Because of Jesus, we come to You now and ask these things.  Because of Your great faithfulness, we can stay in the fight and not give up.  Receive much glory.  We are humbled to be Yours.  You are worth everything.

Welcome to My Shoes

This Sunday is Bryan's last Sunday at Cambridge.  It's been tough waiting out the two weeks from his resignation.  I have a lot I want to say as we go through this, and a lot I shouldn't say.  This journey has been painful and difficult.  One of the things that has surprised me the most has been the general apathy from some people.  What has happened to all of us that we have forgotten what it is like to still "feel" and use our hearts?  

I know some of you are wondering what it feels like to be a pastor's wife going through a situation like this.  Honestly, it's like a nightmare.  You love and give your life away to people for three years, and in the end, you find out it impacted few.  It makes me appreciate what Jesus did for us more.  He had the same response, and He was perfect and loving in every way.

As we break away from a community that we poured ourselves into, grief has inevitably become part of our journey.  Some moments I am sad, others I am angry, others I am broken, and others I am numb.  My greatest fear right now is to become bitter or hardened, because I have seen so many pastor's wives close off their hearts forever because it simply hurts too much.  

One of the greatest lessons we have learned from this is how important it is to protect and nurture your marriage and family in ministry.  God called me away from certain "good" ministries over the course of last year, and now I know why.  If I hadn't refocused and become more invested at home, we wouldn't have made it through this trial well... or maybe at all.  Because God has been doing an incredible work in our marriage, we have been able to walk through this storm facing the worst together as as husband and wife... as one.

I find great comfort knowing that God has prepared us so we could walk through the fire and not be destroyed... only purified.  It hurts... a lot.  I have seen spiritual warfare on a level that is surreal in the last month, but our God fights for us.  We are His children.  God is meeting our needs.  One day, when I look back on this valley from the mountaintop, I will be able to see even more clearly how tenderly God has carried us.  Thanks for being our prayer warriors and for caring about what is going on in our lives.  We love you.  Watch and see- our God is in control.  We will see good from all this bad.  He does not waste our pain.

"Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD will be a light to me." Micah 7:8

Jesus... No Matter the Cost... We Will Follow You

John 15:18-19  “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.


Tonight, I'm broken. I have watched my husband faithfully love and serve at a church that has rejected him- just as the world rejected Christ.  My husband is not perfect, but he loved the church we were called to serve and still does.  I have watched him be verbally abused and falsely accused, and I have wept for hours over the sin of those who feel they righteously crucified him.  My toddler still has nightmares from what she saw.  After much prayer, much struggling, and much wise counsel from pastors around us, Bryan resigned from being the pastor of Cambridge Baptist Church tonight.  I was so proud of him.  He kept his integrity to the end.  Here's his resignation that he read to the church tonight.

To the Body of Cambridge Baptist Church:

I, Bryan Cirlot, hereby regretfully submit notice of my resignation, effective March 8^th, 2011.  It is my hope that God will be glorified and His Word reverberated from the ministry He has allowed me to have at Cambridge for the last three years.  It is not my aim to harm or defame anyone during this time of transition. 

There are two types of education that all ministers need to receive.  The first is academic.  This education requires time and money.  It requires reading and study.  It requires writing and disciplines.  The second type of education is gained in quite a different manner.  It cannot be achieved through study or reading, or any of the disciplines of the academic world.  It comes from only one source—experience.  I would like to thank this body for being my other seminary—for being the place where I could receive three years worth of the second type of training.  You have taught me well, and though I still have much to learn, I know that my ministry at Cambridge has produced much fruit in my own life.  For this I am grateful. 

As with all learning, education and experience gives one focus.  My time at Cambridge has proved to focus my thoughts and ideas about what ministry and church should look like.  It has forced me to dig deeper and deeper in the Word to unearth my own understanding of the Church and its mission.  It is at this point where my path and the path of Cambridge Baptist Church has begun to take slightly different courses.  And, as with all small changes in direction, the further we each move down our own paths, the farther apart they will become.

In this way, my leadership and the leadership of the church at large have reached a point of tension in the direction the church should follow, as well as with the means and methods of pointing the path of the church in that direction.  The differences are more than personal preference.  They are differences of principle, and in this area, I am unwilling to walk in a direction not in keeping with convictions my study of God’s Word has inspired.    

So, with much heartache, hours of prayer, and mounds of wise counsel, Anna and I have decided it is best to separate from this ministry to begin looking for something more fitting for the gifts and talents that God has given to us.  I am deeply grateful that you took a chance on an inexperienced, twenty-four year old, first-time preacher.  You will always have a place in my heart. 

In His name,

Bryan Cirlot 

Please pray for our family now as we heal and seek God's direction for our lives.  We have no Plan B.  We haven't given out resumes.  We simply prayed that God would change hearts, and it turns out His plan is different than ours.  Pray that God meets our needs.  Pray that God saves the lost.  Pray that He heals what is broken.  Pray that our suffering will not be in vain.  We love Jesus.  We have given everything for Him as of tonight.

"Lord Jesus, give me a deeper repentance, a horror of sin, a dread of its approach. Help me chastely to flee it and jealously to resolve that my heart shall be Thine alone.
Give me a deeper trust, that I may lose myself to find myself in Thee, the ground of my rest, the spring of my being. Give me a deeper knowledge of Thyself as saviour, master, lord, and king. Give me deeper power in private prayer, more sweetness in Thy Word, more steadfast grip on its truth. Give me deeper holiness in speech, thought, action, and let me not seek moral virtue apart from Thee.
Plough deep in me, great Lord, heavenly husbandman, that my being may be a tilled field, the roots of grace spreading far and wide, until Thou alone art seen in me, Thy beauty golden like summer harvest, Thy fruitfulness as autumn plenty.
I have no master but Thee, no law but Thy will, no delight but Thyself, no wealth but that Thou givest, no good but that Thou blessest, no peace but that Thou bestowest. I am nothing but that Thou makest me. I have nothing but that I receive from Thee. I can be nothing but that grace adorns me. Quarry me deep, dear Lord, and then fill me to overflowing with living water. " - Old Puritan Prayer

What is Your Bride-price?

An awakening is happening. God is calling His sleeping beauty, the Church, out of a deep slumber and back to her created purpose. This week at the SBC convention I was amazed by our God. The past couple of months God has been strongly dealing with me in several different areas that are sensitive and controversial. I have really been struggling with the Spirit over everything. God is God over all- not just me.

This week at the convention speaker after speaker began to share what God was personally doing with them, and I listened on the edge of my seat. God has been convicting them of the same sins and has been challenging them in the same ways. As a convention we repented of being far too much in love with this world, we voted on the Great Commission Resurgence report's recommended goals to become more effective as believers and Southern Baptists.

Persecution and trials will come. Jesus has assured us of this. I welcome them both. Maybe then the Church will remember her first love again. Maybe I will too.

God is calling each of us to wake up. Countless souls are dying into eternal damnation every second we sleep. We are accountable. Just as the Nazis were accountable for the Holocaust, we are accountable for our apathy and self-indulgence as millions die without basic needs met and without the knowledge of the Savior who died for them. The sin of omission is just as deadly as the sin of commission. Jesus said whatever we do unto the least of these we do unto Him.

Wake up.

Church we were bought for more than this.

Ta-dah!

Introducing Cambridge's new website....

http://www.cambridgebaptist.net

What do you think?

Introducing the new logo of Cambridge Baptist Church

I really love doing graphic design work- I'm having fun using it to boost our ministry at Cambridge.