On an ordinary day, playing with his two best friends, 10-year-old Todd Foster heard God’s calling for his life.
“We were playing in the driveway, talking about what we wanted to be when we grew up. They wanted to be farmers. I wanted to be a landscaper. But I tell you, as clearly as they were sitting next to me, I felt God there. He told me that one day I would be a pastor. That was the last thing I wanted.”
Though Todd had seen his parents living out their faith, he felt stifled in the small country church they attended. He looked at the pastor there and thought, “Nobody wants to be that guy.”
From that day on there was a voice inside that said every day to Todd, “This is what I want for you.”
Todd’s answer: Run the other way.
“I decided if I was bad enough, God wouldn’t want me. I intentionally went the other way, thinking that would disqualify me. I started taking drugs. I would move from one bad thing to another.”
Todd never told anyone about this calling. He nearly told the pastor and then his sister, but something always got in the way.
Eventually, Todd moved to Ocean City, MD., and got a job on a charter fishing boat.
“That was probably my lowest point. I’d make $1,000 during the week and have nothing to show for it by the weekend,” Todd remembered. “I began going to a reservoir, every day, just looking out. It was beautiful. I said, ‘God I can’t do this anymore. None of this stuff has satisfied me…I saw my parents had joy and peace — even after raising me. I wanted that.”
The Fosters were now at another church, so Todd went there and talked to the pastor. He shared his story for the first time
“He didn’t react or think I was crazy. Actually, his story was identical to mine,” Todd said. “He told me, ‘Be as stubborn at running toward God as you were at running away.’”
Todd went from being far from God to a Bible college student.
He eventually came to Lynchburg for graduate work at Liberty University and has been here since. The little boy who first heard God call him to be a pastor years ago now lives out that calling as he serves as Blue Ridge’s Worship Pastor.