I almost left the ministry three years ago. One sentence from a young man kept me.

Three years ago I sat in my car outside the church for close to two hours, engine off, AC off, just sitting there. I had typed a resignation letter on my phone. Church politics had finished me. Watching colleagues turn the pulpit into a business, elders counting my usefulness in naira, my own salary sometimes coming two months late while we were building a bigger auditorium nobody asked for.

I did not tell my wife that day. I did not tell anybody. I just wanted to disappear quietly. But that same week a young man in my youth group, one of those boys who barely talks, stopped me after service and said, "Pastor if you leave, I don't know who I will talk to." He did not know what he was saying. He just said it and walked off to catch his bus.

I still think about leaving some days. I am not going to pretend I don't. The thing about this work is that God does not send you a text message confirming you are in the right place. Sometimes it is just one person, one sentence, one boy who cannot afford transport but still comes. So I stay. Not because I have all the answers. Because somebody still needs a person to talk to. Nwanne, when was the last time somebody told you plainly that they need you?