August 2022 EXCLUSIVE ARTICLE

Introducing Rodney Arnold …

You may recognize Rodney as the emcee at recent SHIFT national conferences. In 2019, he was also elected to a position on our General Oversight Counsel (GOC), and just this summer GOC appointed Rodney to serve as interim vice president until the next Missionary Church national elections in July 2023. 

Rodney, the founding and lead pastor of OneLife Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, graduated from the University of Tennessee with a degree in communications and moved on to receive a master’s degree in church planting from Liberty Theological Seminary. OneLife Church has grown from 12 people (in his living room) in 2009 to a collection of micro church campuses around Knoxville, with more than 500 meeting weekly while at the same time helping to launch several other autonomous church plants. OneLife’s vision for church multiplication has led Rodney to be a coach and speaker in multiple venues. Rodney has a passion to see churches equip their members to live on mission at home, school, work, and play — so that more people can discover Jesus, and how their “one life” can make a difference.

Learning to Move with the Unexpected

Walking into the courthouse with sweaty palms and a pounding heart that was about to beat out of my chest, footprints from the dusty streets of that Montana Indian Reservation town were the only thing that I could find leading to the door of the courtroom. With less than five minutes to go until the hearing began, I opened the door staring straight at the empty judge’s bench and quickly noticed that no one else was there except for the three of us that had just walked in – my wife, a one-year-old little native boy, and me. More than 1,600 miles away at home in Tennessee, our four-year-old daughter was with Mimi praying that Jesus would send her brother back home to her.

But none of us were sure.

I looked around that modest court room waiting for the judge to arrive not knowing what would happen next, when all I could help to think to myself was, “I never expected to be here.” No, not in a million years.

Just ten months prior to this moment, our little family of three became a family of four literally overnight thanks to a “random” phone call with a family friend that led to a series of Facebook messages and ended in a 21-year-old single mom flying across the country with her 10-month-old son. The plan was for the two of them to live with us in Tennessee just to help her get back on her feet – finish her GED, get a job, recover from addiction, help take care of her son – when only two days later she asked a question that still shocks me to this day. “Will you adopt my son?”

She hadn’t come to get help for herself. She had come to find a home for her baby boy.

Sitting on the front porch of my house when she asked me that question, everything paused. It felt as if the clouds stopped moving and birds stopped chirping, turning every bit of attention onto this one, unexpected moment. 

And I couldn’t help but think, “I never expected to be here.” No, not in a million years.

The journey that followed from my Tennessee front porch to a tribal courtroom in Montana was full of more ups and down, twists and turns than all the roller coasters in the world combined. But not only did the judge finally arrive and answer our prayers of returning home with our son as a family of four, but three years later that same young lady would message us again.

“I’m pregnant,” she said. “And I want her to grow up with her brother.” 

The hardest words an expectant mother can say, I’m sure. But now living homeless on the streets of Billings, she said she wanted what was best for her baby. And a mere six weeks later (who needs nine months to get ready?!) we were back in Montana, but this time in a hospital room holding our 16-hour-old little native princess.

And I couldn’t help but think, “I never expected to be here.” No, not in a million years.

We have all had those moments, though they look different for each of us. Maybe it’s the city you live in or the job you go to each day. Maybe it’s the relationship you have, the financial situation, or the medical diagnosis. Maybe it’s a pandemic that changed everything for your business or your church. Or maybe it’s the freedom and redemption from the consequences of sin, either your own sin or someone else’s, that had your world turned upside down. 

And now you find yourself thinking, “I never expected to be here.”

The good news is God’s Word tells us something about God that can’t be overlooked.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. ”As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).

The hidden gem in these verses and the often-missed attribute of our Father is the reality that if His thoughts are higher than mine, I will never have Him figured out. If His ways are higher than mine, I will continually be blown away by the unexpected and miraculous movement He is stirring. But the moment I reduce His thoughts and ways down to my own, life will be marked by the simple redundancy of the expected.

My thoughts for my family were to have more than one biological child. But God’s thoughts were far different and far more incredible. My ways for the future of my church were to have more staff and more attenders now than two years ago through continued growth. But God’s ways were to have more organic multiplication through a pandemic, which was immeasurably more miraculous.

I may have never expected to be here, but He definitely did. 

Now I find myself – and we all find ourselves – in another similar situation. Four weeks ago, you got an email announcement about a change in the presidency of the Missionary Church. You may have thought to yourself, “I never expected us to be here.” Two weeks later I got a phone call telling me I had been nominated and then appointed to be your vice president for the next twelve months. And I can assure you that my very first thought was once again a simple refrain. 

“I never expected to be here.” 

But God did. And as we look forward to the next twelve months, I am more excited than ever about the future of our family of churches if we allow Him to blow us away by the unexpected, anticipating what will happen since His ways are higher than our ways, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Just imagine the countless disciples that are going to be made and the hundreds of churches that are going to be planted if we allow Him to continue moving us forward. Imagine the army of missionaries that will be sent out and the countless lives that will be changed if we allow His ways to move us into the unexpected.

Without a doubt, it will continue to be uncharted waters. And without a doubt, if it is His thoughts that guide us and if it is His ways that move us, we will continually be repeating – and rejoicing and worshipping as we do – that same phrase again. “We never expected to be here.”

No, not in a million years.