Why I Am a Student Pastor: Part 2

I knew I was supposed to be a pastor at a very young age.

Heck, I’m even named after a pastor. I was named after Dr. David Cavin, the pastor of the High Street Baptist Church in Springfield, MO where my dad was attending Baptist Bible College.

Decades before I would present my first formal sermon in front of those 8 students at the First Baptist Church of Pipe Creek, if you hit the “rewind” button about 30 years, you’d find me preaching my face off while standing in the big picture window of our living room.

My mom said that I would preach powerfully as if every couch and coffee table in that room was about to gasp its last breath and sink into the eternal flames.

I would yell from the top of my lungs “Jesus!” “da-Bibol!” “da Cross!”

I remember the feeling I got from preaching in that window and enjoyed the occasional “Amen” that came from my mom in the other room.

I was really just emulating my dad. As I grew older, my wish to be “like my dad” began to wane as I noticed the words he shot from the pulpit to the congregation were inconsistent with home life. The divide between his platform and real life only widened further into my teens.

My dad then sealed the deal by ending his 26 year ministry by finding a younger woman to “make time” with and he walked away from church, away from my mom, and away from us.

By the time I was 17 years old, I jumped the church band wagon too and it wouldn’t find me coming back until over a decade later.

During my 20′s, I enjoyed my status as a backslider. I wasn’t doing anything bad but seemed to have developed an unnatural love for sleeping in on Sunday mornings.

In 1995 I got married to my wife Sarah, and had our first son, Dave Jr. a year later. Around that same time, we started a band called Lady Jane Grey. We made beautiful music together. We sold a good chunk of CD’s, traveled the country, and paid our bills playing music.

We did this until the bottom fell out.

There were really high hopes attached to our 2nd CD “Love and the Search For…”. We had fired our long time manager and decided to promote and push the new project ourselves. We got investors and then got the best studio musicians money could buy. I worked tirelessly by writing the majority of the music on this CD so, needless to say, my heart was heavily wrapped up in this project.

The time came for us to release our much anticipated 2nd project and to put it simply, it flopped.

That sucker flopped so bad that we couldn’t give the CD’s away. Our playing opportunities dried up and I was forced to get a ‘real job’ working for a place called Princess Beauty Supply, in San Antonio.

Can I just say that I had to swallow a lot of masculine pride to work at a place called Princess. So, I went from “living the dream” to taking hair color orders over the phone.

On January 31st, 2002, I woke up with major heart problems. This was a first for me.

After driving an hour to the emergency room, I was told I was experiencing “tachycardia/a fibrillation”. In other words, my heart rate was in the 160′s, blood pressure through the roof and the chambers of my heart weren’t pushing the blood out like they were supposed to. It was then explained that I was running a high risk of a heart attack or stroke or developing a blood clot which would most likely be fatal.

Say what?!

The problem was, everything they tried didn’t work. After 4 hours in this condition, the doctor walked in and said “We’re going to give you 15 more minutes. If our current treatment doesn’t work, we’re going to put the paddles to ya.” Translation: “We’re going to stop your heart and start that bad boy again.”

Once the doctor walked out, I realized I may not see the sun set on that day. I began to think about my marriage and all the things it wasn’t. I began to think how I wouldn’t be the one to raise my son. I realized that if I died that day, I would’ve left this planet without fulfilling my purpose for being here.

Question: If you were to die today, would you be able to say that you fulfilled God’s plans for your life?

If not, what needs to change in your life where you can live out your God-given purpose?