Gordon shares a letter about recent changes in his role with the Phoenix church.  Click below to read more...

As early as 2007, Theresa and I started discussing with our leadership group in Phoenix the idea of coming off the church staff.  There were two basic reasons for this discussion.  One was that our church was simply not large enough to continue to support all of our ministry staff and we didn’t feel right about taking any of the younger leaders off staff.  As I told the other elders at one point, I was going to have to help them fire me (which in essence I did)!  The other reason was that upon reaching retirement age, I did want to focus on what I love most and do best, which is teaching – through speaking and writing.

2009 has been quite a year for me and my family!  January began with me already in my “retirement” stage of life, having come off the church staff in mid-2008.  I normally tell people I am semi-retired, meaning that I am old enough to be retired without the money to retire!  That is all a part of God’s plan to help me keep busy serving him and his people, with no temptation to slow down and take life easier! 

It has been a learning year for Theresa and me.  Establishing a company entitled “Gordon Ferguson Teaching Ministries” (GFTM.com) has been a much more elaborate process than I anticipated.  My gifts do not lie in the areas of administration and accounting, yet I have had to function in both roles out of necessity.  Not knowing how much income I would generate was a challenge to my faith in the early going, especially in an economy that took a toll on my retirement investments.  That challenge has been replaced at this point of the year with that of trying to maintain a relationship with my physical and spiritual families in Phoenix while traveling all over the world.  Making a living is one thing; making a life is another.  But in the midst of it all, God has blessed me with many opportunities to preach and teach his Word, and that is my passion.

It has also been a year of evaluation.  I have had to evaluate what it would take to make the needed amount of income to support our (thankfully) frugal lifestyle.  I have also needed to evaluate what I should be focusing on in my new life with a teaching ministry.  Many unexpected opportunities have come my way this year, involving leadership training, church strengthening, leadership consulting, and speaking engagements of many types.  While it has all contributed to meeting our financial needs, it has been very demanding and led us to evaluate more closely what I should say “yes” to and what I should say “no” to in the future.   

After much discussion with many good friends, and an honest evaluation of my gifts, it is obvious that my focus should be on leadership training and the production of written and recorded teaching materials.  Both of these efforts are multiplied into helping thousands of people, and both are commensurate with my gifts and passions.  These conclusions will mean that I will have to say “no” to serving in other ways, which will mean in turn that other brothers with different gift sets can meet those needs.  Anyway, that line of thinking has helped shape my plan for 2010.  I will continue to conduct leadership training here in Phoenix, in Asia (through the Asia-Pacific Leadership Academy) and in Kiev (through another program similar to the Asia-Pacific Academy, as yet unnamed).  My other teaching will be done primarily through producing written and recorded (audio and video) materials.

The purpose of this announcement is to share with the Phoenix Valley Church another result of our ongoing evaluation. For much of this year, my travel schedule has severely affected my ability to serve the church here as an elder. While my teaching role both here and in other places has blossomed, my ability to serve as an elder has been too limited to allow me to remain in that role.  The teaching role is the reason that we are able to keep Phoenix as our home base, but at the same time, it does limit what I am able to do in Phoenix.  I deeply appreciate having been able to serve as an elder for the past five years, and both Theresa and I will continue to serve here in all ways possible for each of us.  However, I am resigning as an elder effective immediately, for reasons noted. We have total confidence in the leadership of the church that God has now built and look forward to a bright future for our church family here in Phoenix.  Thank you for your support and encouragement during the nearly six years that we have lived here. We look forward to sharing our future with you as Phoenicians!  We love you all very much!