Remembering Pastor David Foster

As I have been crying and reading the posts the last few days, I feel compelled to share the way in which Dr Foster has changed my life.

After moving to Nashville, in an effort to run away from my problems and start anew after a rather ugly divorce, I came upon by chance a mailer that said something like “Get up out of your lazyboy and dare to dream a big audacious dream!”

I thought, hmm..that’s different than the Pentecostal “you are going to hell” message I heard growing up, so I took my broken self down to the movie theater that Sunday back in 2007. Was the band really playing rock riffs and who was this animated man who really seemed to say whatever he thought? The honesty and music were just what I needed and have not thought the same way since. I mean, I was so happy to realize that Jesus wasn’t a polyester, feel good guy, but a renegade, a manly man? That’s the Jesus I want on my side..Wow, this really was good stuff!

While I have since suffered even greater losses of loved ones that made the heartbreak that drove me to move here from over 800 miles seem like nothing, I believe God put David Foster in my path. I never tired of him praying for someone here who is suffering and lost hope…yeah, it always seemed to be me he was praying for.

I was that person who always tried to sneak in quietly on Sundays and not speak to anyone, afraid someone would see the pain in my eyes..sometimes I did not even have the courage to attend but would watch online. One day, Dave said “I know you people who come in and don’t talk to anyone! The Gathering is about connecting to God and each other..”

But you see, while I’d become an actor projecting this person as having it together, I am or have been all of those messy people that Dave just spoke about and struggle daily not to become bitter and worn out. I have resolved the devil will not win but have been so slow in developing my relationship with God.  I hate to think the person I would still be if had not come across this church when I did. Although, I know there are many lessons yet to learn, I have become a better person and more considerate of others – I would return a grocery cart in a hailstorm 🙂 .

It was always my dear mother’s wish that I would find a church home and a deeper relationship with God and am so grateful to the Fosters for their vision of this church to enable lost people like me to do just that.

While I am still a work in progress, I do have a big audacious dream and will never forget that God put David Foster into my life just when I had given up. I want to MOO out loud instead of sitting in the shadows!

Thank you, Dr. Foster for not being afraid to speak the truth and for helping me restore hope. I will miss the way you quoted “great theologians” like Dr Suess and Billy Joel.

Now that this great servant and prolific messenger of God is no longer physically here to help guide messy people like me, it is my hope the Gathering will continue its mission. It will be strange without him but Dave would not want us to give up this mission (or each other) and I do believe now that God really can use us messy people to change the world!

I can hear Dave pumping his fist (wings) from heaven saying, GO GET’M!!