I think all pastors and leaders go through occasional "I quit" times in their ministry experience. I was going through one of those a few years ago. One Monday morning, after a long weekend (we were doing seven weekend services at the time  that's right, seven.) I had just had enough of hurting, struggling people.
I announced to my wife, Janie, "That's it! I'm getting out of the ministry. I'm getting a real job!"
She suggested I think about it a bit before I made an announcement to anyone. That sounded like good counsel so I went for a drive by myself and decided to have a long talk with God.
I whined for a long time to him about all of the hurting people he was sending my direction. It seemed like every fruit, nut and flake in the city was ending up at my church. I told God that I wanted a normal church with normal problems and that I was tired of all of these off-the-wall people that he seemed to be sending to the Vineyard.
While I was driving around Janie called me on my cell phone and asked me to pick up a burrito supreme for her at Taco Bell. (I could tell that she was into my plight!).
As I sat in my car waiting for the drive-thru window, I got an anointed thought. Some would say that God spoke to me, but I'm not sure I want to be that dramatic about it. It was just a thought that came to me out of the blue. The thought was this: "Open your car door and I will give you a gift."
At first I dismissed it, thinking that there was no way that anything of value could be under my car door at the Taco Bell drive thru. Finally, my curiosity got the best of me and I opened my car door.
Low and behold, right there was what seemed to be a black piece of gum, but as I looked at it more closely I could tell it was a penny that had been run over so many times it had been embedded into the asphalt.
I took a key and pried it up, complete with a big chunk of asphalt still attached to the penny. (I still have the penny on my desk after several years.)
As I held the penny in my hand I had a startling revelation  all of those hurting people that were coming to my church were like so many discarded pennies that no one wanted. They were like pennies that weren't worth bending over to pick up, like pennies that were so dirty that no one wanted to put them in their pockets for fear of messing up their clean clothes.
I immediately repented for my hard heart. I told God, "Send me all the dirty pennies you want  I take all of them!"
I sensed God speaking to me at that point saying, "If you open your heart to the discarded pennies I am sending I will make you a rich man."
Interestingly, we began to grow dramatically as a church right after that. We doubled in attendance for two years in a row. We were truly a Luke 4:18,19 church: "'The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.'" The brokenhearted were coming.
Ever since that penny day, whenever I wonder if my life and ministry is making a difference, nine out of 10 times I will look down at that moment and find a penny lying at my feet  no kidding. I have found literally thousands of pennies over the past few years. Some days I find 10 or 15. One day I found 43! I guess I still need a lot of reassurance that God is still upon my work.
Steve Sjogren is the founding pastor of Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati and author of numerous books on evangelism. Sjogren now speaks at conferences and consults with churches interested in the sort of outreach anyone can do. See www.ServantEvangelism.com or contact Sjogren at stevesjogren@mac.com.
