June 21. Andy Stanley. Andy will tell you he’s an introvert. He says, “Crowds kill me.” At a party, he wants to find one person and sit and talk to him.
But Andy is the senior pastor of North Point Ministries, which includes North Point Community Church, Buckhead Church, Browns Bridge Church, Gwinnett Church, Woodstock City Church, and Decatur City Church. And the weekly attendance for North Point alone is more than 40,000 people.
Today’s story is about a time before he came to North Point when Andy was pastoring the same church as his father Charles Stanley. Listen to this.
Anger can hold a relationship hostage, but love can set it free.
Andy and his dad had been living in the everyday tension of leading the same church with two opposite leadership styles. And that strained an otherwise devoted relationship. The two men refused to let it affect their father-son bond, and they continued to strive for unity.
“We had no tolerance for father versus son,” Andy said.
But then—Andy’s mom filed for divorce.
Heartbroken and frustrated at how the divorce was being handled, Andy wanted to help his dad, but it only created more tension. The father-son team grew further apart. Suspicion and frustration nearly wrecked their relationship.
Andy had watched his parents continually try counseling, to no avail. He didn’t know who to blame for the marriage failing, but he was angry.
And this anger made it too difficult to continue working with his father, so he prayerfully made the decision to leave the church. He walked into his dad’s office and gave him the news.
“It signaled the death of an unspoken dream. What could have been, and perhaps should have been, wouldn’t be. So, we just stood there and cried,” Andy said.
His father felted betrayed.
Not wanting further damage to scar their relationship, the two made weekly counseling meetings together the norm. It was hard. Once Andy asked his counselor, “When can I give up on my relationship with my dad?”
The counselor said, “When your Heavenly Father gives up on His relationship with you.”
Andy realized how his stubbornness and resentment were keeping him from true relationship.
His dad continued to reach out to him, asked him to lunch. And the meetings were awkward, but the two men kept pursuing full reconciliation. “The conversations were stilted, to say the least,” Andy said. “We were both so mad and so hurt. But he kept initiating. And I kept showing up.”
During one of their strained lunch dates, Andy’s dad said, “We both know what usually happens to fathers and sons who go through something like this.” He looked him in the eyes and said, “Andy, I don’t want us to end up like that.”
Andy let out a broken whisper, “Me neither, Dad.”
“So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God” (Matthew 5:23–24 NLT).
Is there a relationship in your life that God is asking you today to reconcile? Anger can hold a relationship hostage, but love can set it free.
Stanley, Andy. Deep & Wide. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012.
Blake, John. “Two preaching giants and the ‘betrayal’ that tore them apart.” CNN November 19, 2012. http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/17/us/andy-stanley/index.html.