Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Indianapolis, Indiana
Gustavo A. Crocker, Eurasia regional director, was elected the 41st general superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene.Crocker addressed the assembly.
Your vote is a demonstration that grace exists. I could give you a list of reasons why I am the most unlikely person to fill the office of general superintendency for the Church of the Nazarene. I could give you a list. In fact, that list could become part of my resume one day of the reasons why not.
A boy, from the small town of San Jeronimo in Guatemala was a candidate to be aborted because of poverty, but his mother chose to keep the eighth child. And because this woman believed, thanks to the teachings of the Church of the Nazarene, and the sanctity of life, I was carried through.
I'm very delighted because my journey has not been the most fine path that any person could have in the journey to leadership in the church.
As I was meditating with the Lord, I gave the Lord my list of reasons and he said to me that I was right.
And I said to Him like Gideon once, what can the youngest of this poor family of the weakest clan of Guatemala do for the Kingdom? And he said, "You can do nothing – unless I am with you."
And all I can do is ask you to pray that the Lord who called me as I was threshing wheat in the winepress to keep it from the Mideonites, that that God is going to protect me, anoint me, and give me the wisdom to serve Him and all I can say to you is that I have made mine the mission statement of our Lord. For the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor; to proclaim Jesus, our Jubilee.
A week ago there were rumors about a potential election and knowing that I had bought my tickets twice for a roller coaster season called General Assembly, I did not know and I did not prepare a speech.
I was wondering what my answer was going to be. It was not until tonight as we went on our knees that both my wife and I – sitting in different sides of this auditorium – received the very same message from the Lord: "Give it all and serve all for me."
I don't want to ask you to go through the night with the agony of what I'm going to say tomorrow, for I promised the Lord on my knees that whatever the church was going to say, I would say "yes," for I am a churchman.
Nazarene by choice, Guatemalan by birth, global by ministry.
May the Lord be with you.
[Applause]
Grateful... and humbled to belong Exclusively to God and His Church
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