REFLECTIONS OF A RECOVERING CHURCH PLANTER

**Disclaimer: The reflections that follow are in no way intended to disparage or cast blame towards any of those whom I served. Furthermore, I believe the leadership whom I served under and alongside to be men who love the Lord, His people, and His work. They were on all accounts gracious to me and my family.**UPDATE: This was written many years ago following my first effort to plant a church in South Carolina. I am thankful for God's grace since that season but still look back at these thoughts with a great deal of sobriety.

The dictionary defines “recovery” as the: “act or process of becoming healthy after an illness or injury: the act or process of recovering; the act or process of returning to a normal state after a period of difficulty”[i] I can say with a great measure of surety that this is precisely what I have been experiencing after stepping away from a 5 year journey of church planting in a small town in South Carolina. Make no mistake brothers, church planting is not for wimps and if you are not ready and reliant on the Lord, you too may end up in a state of recovery!

It has taken me several months just to process all that took place during those five years and I am just now, after significant heart-work, able to articulate some of what I have learned from the experience. Now, before reading any further, you should know that I intend to be quite transparent in this reflection. For this reason, you will read things that very well may cause you to question a person like myself even being in ministry. Nevertheless, I write this not to convince you of my goodness, my skill or my righteousness but to warn you of the same dangers that lurk around the corner if you fail to keep Christ first in all things! Far from being good, skilled and righteous, I am hopelessly incapable, lost and broken apart from Christ!

So then, listen up, take note, and be warned. My prayer is that the following reflections will serve as warning signs to all who read and who desire to take the road of church planting. Although there will only be 6 signs that I share, please, for the love of God and His church, don’t ignore them. The question I wish to ask and answer is simply this, “After 5 years of church panting ministry, what do you wish you had done differently?” Although much could be said, I intend to limit this to 3 areas of practical importance and 3 areas of personal importance.

3 Areas of Practical Importance for Church Planters

1.      I wish I had spent more time actively investigating rather than passively interviewing.

My process was not too dissimilar from that which many of you will or have gone through. It started with a lead…in this case, from a friend who knew I was in the midst of seeking God’s direction for the next season of ministry. The lead led to an inquiry on my behalf which resulted in a sent resume, a completed application and a few email exchanges. Before all was said and done, 6 months would pass, several sermons would be preached, a doctrinal statement would be produced, personal interviews would be had, and much to my surprise, I was extended an invitation to become the lead pastor of a church plant. Yet, throughout this process, though I was under the impression that I had been diligent in asking questions, in hindsight, my questions were insufficient. For instance, it would have been helpful to question why the small gathering of interested people had already been led to purchase a building. It would have been helpful to talk in more detail about the fact that the majority of those who were committed actually lived in a different town than the location of the newly purchased building. It would have been helpful for me to have asked more questions of the leadership from the “planting church” about their philosophy of ministry and of church planting in particular. It would have been helpful for me to have talked about the expectations on the front end so as to determine whether or not my philosophy and strategy of church planting fell in line with theirs. As you might imagine, my list of questions could continue. Suffice it to say that I have learned the grave importance in not only being interviewed but in actually investigating. I can’t over emphasize this! If you are in the process of planting or are preparing to do so…investigate! Ask questions…lots of questions. Evaluate graciously but think critically. Don’t be afraid of the prospect of saying “no” if you determine that the opportunity is not a good fit.  

2.      I wish I had spent more time on the front end developing a “meaningful membership” environment.

Don’t misunderstand…the folks God allowed me to minister to and with were great for the most part. (You always have a few thorns and a few well intentioned dragons) They had a genuine love of the Word of God and I had a genuine love to teach it…it would seem that it was a marriage made in heaven. However, during the early stage of the church plant’s development, which I was not part of, they had already developed a “bible study” mentality. Rather than developing a strong understanding of what would be required to build, develop and sustain a healthy local church, many of those involved grew to love the comfort of low responsibility. As a result, though we made it out of the gate, we never really gained any traction. To add to the challenge, I failed to make the hard decisions early on and I failed to establish an, “All In” culture. Not that I could have done this on my own…but truth be told, it wasn’t even on my radar much less in my prayers! The hard work of living missionally, reaching our neighbors and co-workers, and engaging the community in which we were planted was stifled by personal desires, personal missions and preconceived notions. Though we developed relationships with one another and we learned God’s Word ,we never developed a robust, missional, work ethic. Instead, we cruised down the proverbial road just doing church rather than actualizing what it truly means to be the church.

3.      I wish I had exercised greater wisdom in regards to the newly purchased building and property.

As already alluded to, we never worked up to a “building”. It was already a done deal when I arrived! In the estimation of some, this is a dream come true…only they have never lived through the nightmare. Though I do not to pretend to speak with authority on the matter, I can speak from general observation and personal experience. In my best estimation, the building, the structure in which the local church gathers…is important…but not most important. Admittedly, the United States is permeated with a culture that almost necessitates a specific meeting location and a relatively comfortable environment. I have no issue with this in most cases and actually appreciate a well-built building and the accoutrements that often accompany it. However, just as I expect my boys to grow into certain privileges and opportunities, so too should a church plant in most, though perhaps not all cases. Some of the most successful church plants I know of spent considerable time laboring weekly together through the furnace of mobile-church before a permanent building was ever even a topic of conversation. As a result, they learned the great lessons of working hard, being diligent, being “all in”…even when it makes you sweat! To reverse this order is to invite complacency and apathy in many cases...at least in our I can say this was the case. What’s worse is the fact that when this order is reversed, at least in my case, a subtle and unfortunate realty begins to take form. Rather than focusing on the primary mission of making disciples by going, making, baptizing and teaching, a secondary, far less important mission is elevated. This mission I speak of is one of filling the building, taking care of the building, paying for the building, repairing the building and somehow making an aged, out of the way, and incongruent building attractive to an ever changing community. As a result, the great commission has a tendency to get turned upside down and rather than developing a missional community that is all about going and making, a comfortable community is created that is all about hoping and waiting …for others to come. Although I had nothing to do with the purchase of the property, I wish I had sought out more wisdom in those early days so as to lead the body through the process of getting things on the right track. Perhaps this would have meant selling the building. Or on the other hand, perhaps it would have been a greater focus on using the building in the community in which we were planted. In either case, I failed in this area and the church plant suffered because of it.

3 Areas of Personal Importance for Church Planters

4.      I wish I had spent less time preparing well-documented and rigorously detailed sermons.

That’s right, I said it! I thought I never would…but I did…so there it is…I am just going to leave that there for you to think about. It’s true. I spent countless hours in study…tucked away in the office of our nice building, studying the Word, breaking it down, writing sermons and getting them ready in power point for an instructive Sunday morning. In fact, early on, one of the initial attempts of constructive criticism offered to me was that I didn’t provide enough cross references in my Sermons. Truth be told, I had not learned to do very much of this in my initial training. As a result, I set my mind to go even deeper in my studies and as a result, I could easily spend 25-30 hours in sermon preparation a week. Unfortunately, this left me very little time for the hard work of making disciples, praying (more on this later), immersing myself into the community and training new leaders. I have come to realize since then, that a great, instructive sermon can be prepared and remain faithful to the text without spending over half of a pastors office hours towards its development. Yet, I must say that this tendency was not driven by what I would have considered to be selfish or ulterior motives. I genuinely had a passion and desire to get it right…each and every Sunday. I didn’t want to do the Word an injustice and I didn’t want to leave anything on the table. So I worked hard...I studied diligently, I read and I wrote and I read again…yet, what I had not realized is that somewhere in the midst of deep study and preparation, I had missed it. For all the reading of the Word I had been doing, I rarely let the Word read me…something we should all be mindful of. for all of the preparation in the Word I had engaged in, I badly needed the Word to prepare me! I can’t imagine how many times I read the word and divided it into all its nuances without ever having my heart read by it…though I desperately needed it! I don’t doubt that many were encouraged, educated and even evangelized by some of my sermons; however, if so, it was in spite of me not because of me. I had become an imbalanced pastor and had allowed the prideful sin of perfectionism to creep in un-noticed. I was a slave to my own desire to get a sermon right...Consequently, though I would have prided myself in not leaving anything regarding the text on the table…I left many other ministry duties on the table and as a result the church plant suffered.

5.      I wish I had been committed to personal prayer

It is to my shame that I offer this confession. I was in all intents and purposes a prayerless pastor. Don’t misunderstand, I could spend a couple of paragraphs talking about the ways I made prayer a supposed priority; however, after the smoke screen of excuses dissipated, I would be left with the cold hard reality that I was nonetheless a prayerless pastor. I can rarely think of a time in which I, beyond the watchful eye of a congregation, humbled myself before my Lord and bowed before Him in utter dependence. I struggle to recount a single time in which my diligent preparation of a sermon began with a dependent prayer to my savior. I prayed before those who I was leading…I prayed in order to do the “Christian and pastorly” thing…but I didn’t pray as a child who was in desperate need of His father. Sadly, this was a betrayal of what I knew to be true. Like some of you reading this, I knew all too well how badly I needed the Lord. My very testimony is a story of God’s unbelievable grace…He had taken a nobody and made me somebody, He took one with no hope in the world and chose to use me for His glory! Yet, as sure as I found myself in a position of leadership, charged with teaching others the great truth that “apart from Him we can do nothing”, I failed to appropriate that truth in my own life. I had become blind to my unarticulated boast though it was being loudly proclaimed on a daily basis through my sinful self-sufficiency. I was a prayerless pastor. Consequently, I became a powerless pastor. I was constantly faithful to the Word and to proclaiming it with boldness yet I saw very little fruitfulness in the 5 years spent in ministry. At times I would justify this by calling attention to all the other reasons that likely contributed…and perhaps they did. However, one thing is for certain, the power of God was not evident in my life because unbeknownst to me, I had forgotten the reality that apart from Him I could do nothing. I found myself time after time trying to figure out why there was no significant growth, why we could never seem to gain traction, why I felt so drained…ironically, the reason I felt so drained was because I was full of myself and empty of dependence on God.

6.      I wish I had placed my ministry as a husband above my ministry as a pastor.

I know, I know…you guys already know this…so did I! I had some great men in my life who made this abundantly clear before I ever became a pastor. I knew that my ministry to my wife, my ability and commitment to lead my family well and my need to love my wife as Christ loved the church was my first ministry. Failing in this arena would be a sure failure in all other ministry arenas. Yet, I did fail in this arena. I failed, and yet, in the midst of failing, I didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t even see it. Only by the grace of God did I not fail irrevocably. No, it wasn’t all me…there is always another side of responsibility. However, it was, is and will remain my responsibility to love and lead my wife and family. For this reason alone, the responsibility falls primarily upon my shoulders. My wife and I found ourselves actively engaged in ministry, tired, disillusioned and unfulfilled. Yet, instead of laboring through it together, we were on separate paths taking the same journey. Looking back, the roads we travelled were littered with anger, cutting words, dishonesty, lovelessness, neglect, un-forgiveness, unresolved conflicts, plastic smiles, self-sufficiency, prayerlessness, stubbornness, and the list could unfortunately continue. How does this happen to a guy who loves the Lord and who had been in ministry since the age of 18? How could this happen to a gal who was born and raised in a Christian family and whose dad was a pastor? Much could be said to answer such questions but perhaps it’s enough to simply say, “It can happen”. Today, we stand together…not perfectly and not without difficult conversations…but together nonetheless. The grace God has shown us is simply beyond measure. He rescued us from ourselves and apart from His grace I would be yet another nameless pastor who was forced to step to the side because I was no longer fit for the ministry. This could be you…it could be you…don’t underestimate the danger! Husbands…love your wives…love them well, love them more than ministry, more than success, more than preaching, more than counseling and more than studying. Get this wrong and all else will follow.

Much more could be said. I will leave it unsaid for now with the hope that what has been said will be given adequate consideration. Though the things I have shared in this reflection are difficult and though I say much of it to my own shame…I am thrilled to say that I no longer carry that shame around my neck. Our God is an amazing God whose love never fails and whose grace is deeper than you and I can fathom. He rescued me from myself…from my self-love, my self-sufficiency and my self- reliance. Yet, it came at a cost.

For you see, like many others, I went into this church planting ministry with a hope to stay there for the long haul. It was and remains my desire to be in one place of ministry for the rest of my days and leave a God-glorifying legacy. Nevertheless, that was not to be so. In fact, not only did I have to bring that ministry endeavor to a close, I also had to move. More than that…I was not required simply to move but to move to a different country.

Furthermore, not only was I required to move to a different country, but it was the first of what looks to be three different moves I will end up making with my family before all is said and done. I’d like to say that God has a definite sense of humor here but I am more convinced than ever that it’s His love and not His humor that has lead me down this path.

Simply said, He has loved me through it all…even in my most blind and rebellious behavior…but praise God…He loved me far too much to leave me that way! It is for this reason that I write this…to share with all those who take the time to read, that God is great. We are privileged to stand in the shadow of His greatness! May this reflection, this confession, this attempt at transparency remind you that ministry is not a right earned or a toy to tinker with…it is a privilege and responsibility for the called. The God who equips, positions, and empowers your ministry is the same God who can and will at times rip you from it with a jealous and unrelenting love because in His economy, your soul, your family and your intimacy with Him is far more valuable than your perceived ministry success!

Sincerely,

A Man In Need of Humility