THE FLIP
SIDE of CHURCH PLANTING
You Shouldn’t Plant a Church You Should Plant a Church
By David
Drury
You Shouldn’t
Plant a Church
These thoughts are not
for the feint-of-heart but for the seriously searching and learning pastor
considering planting a church. Perhaps
many of these reasons don’t directly apply to you—but think through things on
the ones that do. I’m going to be very
hard on you here, because I’ve been in your shoes personally not too long ago
and multiple times over. But who else is
being hard on you these days? No one
else has the guts to plant a church and so you don’t take their opinions that
seriously. So you might be blindly
moving toward planting without knowing what you’re getting into since everyone
around you is just happy you’re willing to do it—since they certainly
aren’t. You might be able to pull it off
in the end. But when it comes down to
it, I think you really shouldn’t
plant a church…
Why?
1.
YOUR TEAM WON’T COME
TOGETHER LIKE YOU PLAN
Your team won’t be hand-selected by you—they’ll be a motley
crew you don’t even know or wish you had never known. The college buddies and former ministry
partners that have dreamed with you were mostly just good sounding boards for
your dream—it wasn’t THEIR dream as much as it was them responding to your
leadership for a time. The actual team
you’ll get will be full of people you don’t even know yet—and might not trust
at first. They’ll be career and
family-driven people with other lives that don’t have as much time, as many
talents or as similar a training as you.
2.
IF THE IMPORTANT STUFF
ISN’T HAPPENING NOW FOR YOU—THEN PLANTING ISN’T THE SOLUTION
If you’re not leading people to Jesus and discipling them now, a new church plant isn’t the secret to
change that pattern. Who is the last
person you led to Christ? How many of
your friends are unchurched people? How much time do you already spend in the
community? Who are the individuals that
you are currently discipling to become more like
Christ? If you can’t answer these
questions with full confidence then having the added burden of launching
services, running meetings, recruiting and training leaders, establishing
systems of accountability, preparing new message series and promoting the
church in the community will simply squeeze out any time left over to make sure
you’re personally experiencing, learning from, and modeling the most important
stuff that ministry is about: evangelism
and discipleship.
3.
THERE ISN’T ENOUGH
MONEY TO DO IT
Your plans will usually cost a lot more than you get in and
you’ll make sacrifices personally to pull it off. This is true no matter how “successful” the
church ends up in attendance figures. In
some ways, a larger church plant costs even more per person than a small
church—because you’re going to have to launch ministries to keep up with them
(such as youth ministries, which are expensive but don’t bring in money well
for the church at large) that you otherwise wouldn’t spend. You might even feel a huge need to hire other
staff people and pastors but you certainly won’t have enough money to hire them
or hire them at a full time comparable wage!
You’ll also make personal financial and security sacrifices that will
strain your home life. No church planter
gets paid what he or she is worth. It’s
like being a teacher more than like being a doctor. You’re serving with less reward that is
right. You’ll often have meetings where
other leaders and even yourself decide to short-change
intended “raises” to make things right for you in order to pay for essential
ministries or bills that come in.
4.
OTHER CHURCHES IN YOUR
AREA WILL BE DOING “IT” A LOT BETTER THAN YOU
You’ll just be one church among many when it comes down to
it—and many of those churches will be really great churches doing the most
important stuff better than you will. Even
if the demographics show a lack of enough churches in an area, remember that
the Baptists and the Nazarenes and the Vineyard and the Willow Creekers are all
using the same demographics and they all started “under the radar” churches in
the past few years before you even moved on-location. In your first year of services there will be
a few other churches really hitting it out of the park and this “competition”
will sap your team of wonderful potential leaders and musicians in the area all
while making you think, “I thought this would be more like missionary work
where we’d meet a need no one was meeting.”
5.
THE EMOTIONAL COST FOR
YOUR FAMILY WILL BE TOO GREAT
Planting a church is a high-risk situation that, even if it
succeeds, will cost too much emotionally for your family. Your spouse and children (if you have them)
will be actively involved in every facet of the church out of necessity and
because they will feel a great pull to be involved since the vision is so
consuming you. You’ll try to guard
against this but situational excuses will gradually chip away at your
“boundaries” philosophy in the first few years of the new church. The problem in the end will not simply be
whether or not your spouse is “committed enough” or “ready” to plant a church
with you—the problem will be the lack of support structure and the emotional
toll the roller-coaster of planting successes and failures (and be assured
you’d have both) will have on them.
6.
EVEN THOUGH YOU THINK
YOU CAN—YOU REALLY CAN’T DO WHAT YOU WANT
The pressures of key team members, your denomination and
the need for people and income will force you to do things you didn’t want to
do from the outset. The vision you have now
will morph and bend around more immediate concerns such as, “How do we get more
people here” or “How will we pay the rent this month.” You might even find yourself questioning the
original vision and blaming IT for any lack of success you have. Before long in planting a church you’ll
wonder if you would have more freedom to do what you want with the seemingly
infinite resources, lack of comprehensive responsibility, and limited job
expectations you’d have as a member of a staff in a larger church, which is
maybe what you should do instead if you are going to let money and other
people’s vision change the original intent of the church.
7.
YOU JUST WANT TO BE
YOUR OWN BOSS AND THAT’S A BAD MOTIVATION TO START A CHURCH
You’re fed up with the “status quo” at the churches you’ve
attended or even been on staff at. You
think most “senior” pastors are improperly motivated and heading in the wrong
direction—somehow tainted by traditionalism even. You’d like to “work for yourself” and “run things
like they should be run.” You figure it
would be easier to start your own church than change an existing one. What you don’t realize is those are all bad
motivations for starting new churches and will ironically produce the same
results in you that you loathe in other leaders. You’ll soon discover that each new person in
your church plant comes with their own version of the “status quo.” Many people that seek out church plants are
those that left other churches because they were leaving the more traditional
service styles. And even though it seems
like you’re working for yourself—in fact, you’re working for some district or
in time a young, unseasoned and mistake-prone board that doesn’t know what they
are doing and often times hurt you in the process. Church planting is like war—and in no time
you’ll be battle seasoned enough that young guys out of college will consider
you somehow tainted by something.
8.
YOU AREN’T EXPERIENCED
ENOUGH
You not only haven’t planted a church before—but you
haven’t even been a part of a church plant as a lay person or team member
before. Are you going to ask
others to sacrifice to be part or full-time team members for you? If so, then have you done the same for
someone else in church planting? Have
you gone through the sacrifice you’ll ask others to do—learning a from the
first few seminal months and first years of a new church, instead of simply
learning from “ready made” churches that have already entered their third and
fourth phases or are already super-churches.
Have you experienced the reality first hand of church planting or are
you simply a book-learned potential church planter? If you haven’t ever preached on a weekly
basis or led a board meeting or planned a worship service or recruited a
ministry team from scratch as a senior pastor then you’re ill-equipped for
50-75% of the church planter’s job. And
if you’re under 30 then you’re flat out dreaming about being ready for this and
perhaps you should look into another ministry for a few years to kick the tires
on your call before you step out in THIS much faith!
9.
THIS IS JUST A DREAM
THAT YOU SHOULD ADJUST AND APPLY TO YOUR PRESENT MINISTRY
It’s okay to have dreams but part of maturity is distilling
the core of a dream and applying it to real life. Perhaps what you’re really after is leading a
team of people you love working with and changing the world with them! You don’t have to church plant to do that—in
fact, it’s really hard to do it in a new church for reasons cited above. Perhaps you should channel your church
planting dreams into training yourself to be and pursuing opportunities to be
the point leader or senior pastor of an established church. You obviously have the gifts for that role
anyway. Also, this dream might be
something you do but just not now. Be
patient! Don’t be an Either/Or
person when it comes to church planting.
Be a Both/And person. You can both apply the values and vision you
have for your dream of church planting now in your present ministry, and later
on plant a church after you’ve tested out your values and vision in ministry
for the next several years. This will
also give you time to actively pursue getting the experiences I pointed out
that you don’t have before you plant.
10.
YOU AREN’T CALLED TO DO
IT
You’re called to The Ministry—don’t doubt that at all—but God
didn’t call you to do this. You may
feel recruited or inclined or wired or driven or obligated or desiring or
hopeful or dreamful or willing. But you
don’t feel called. This is one of the options that God has given
you to take—but you don’t have to take it.
You could be a youth pastor or senior pastor or chaplain at a hospital
or missionary or staff pastor or para-church
itinerant speaker. You don’t have to do this. If you don’t have to then why do it since you have so
few of the other 9 motivations above going for you! Or at least you’re not called to do it now.
Don’t worry, God has a place for you in his Kingdom, it’s just that
church planting might not be it now or ever.
The Ministry taking place in the other 99% of his Kingdom can and will be
just as rewarding for you and result-producing for God’s Glory. Don’t be afraid to admit that you just don’t
feel the call to do it even though
you feel other tugs to go for it. You
are called to His Service—and it won’t really bring Him Glory to start a new
church if it’s not really what you deep down know you must do because you feel
him constantly and for more than a few years leading you to it. You shouldn’t do it. You’re not called.
On the other hand
there’s The Flip side…
You Should
Plant a Church
These thoughts are for
the discouraged and disillusioned (perhaps even those that became discouraged
and disillusioned reading the past half of this book). If you’re a seriously searching and learning
pastor considering planting a church then be encouraged that you’re doing the
absolute most important thing you could do with your life and generations of
people will be impacted by your ministry no matter what the immediate successes
look like! Perhaps many of these reasons
don’t directly apply to you—but think through things on the ones that do. I’m going to be very motivational and
encouraging of you here--in the areas no one else seems to mention and people
forget are central to what starting new churches is all about. Few of those you’re listening to these days
personally know what starting a new church is all about when the rubber meets
the road good and bad, but here is what it is all about at its core. When it comes down to it, no matter what
anyone else says, I think you really should
plant a church…
Why?
1.
YOU’LL BE PLEASANTLY
SURPRISED AT THE WONDERFUL PEOPLE WHO WILL JOIN YOUR MINISTRY TEAM
Sure, they won’t be who you thought you’d get—but your
actual ministry team will be much better than your pre-planned one! They’ll be tailor-made for the situation
you’ll find yourself in once you’ve actually launched, which will be
substantially different that you thought, no doubt. The Holy Spirit has a lot more wisdom than
you do, and those college buddies and prior ministry partners might not have been
the best people to do this crazy church planting thing with anyway. Your church will be gifted with some more
mature people than you who will take you under their wing and support you. Some of these will think of you more like
their kids (because you’ll be about the age of their kids) and almost “mentor”
you while also being led by you. Don’t
resist this at all—but embrace it as their calling and your need. You’ll also be gifted with people that don’t
have a similar ministry skill-set or paradigm as you do and who will diversify
your team and help shape the future of the church. The vision is more fluid than you now think
anyway. Some of it will change and
adjust over the years as you do life together with the people God brings to
you. You’ll be gifted with some
completely unchurched spiritual infants that will
join your team as well—and they’re the best kind. You absolutely have no way of knowing who
those people will be and it’ll be a joyous surprise God will give to you as the
best gift you could receive.
2.
YOU’LL BE FORCED TO
BOIL THE MINISTRY DOWN TO WHAT REALLY COUNTS
Church planting gives you the unique opportunity to start
with a clean sheet of paper and build the thing from the ground up. In this process you’ll be able to focus in on
what really counts: evangelism and discipleship. If you get things right up front, you’ll be
primarily concerned with being the church more than running
the church. You’ll be able to
choose not to do things more than any
established church pastor could if you start making decisive decisions early
and often on what those things are or perhaps are not. This will be an
incredible thing you would cherish.
You’ll start out making sure that you, your team, your ministry model and
church structure are all about going and making disciples. What could be more impacting than that?
3.
GOD ALWAYS SEEMS TO
REWARD THOSE IN MINISTRY THAT TAKE CALCULATED PERSONAL RISKS
You certainly shouldn’t do it just to make a point—but if
God has called you to take the risk then be assured that he will reward you for
your obedience. As Dallas Willard has
pointed out, discipleship is simply and profoundly “A long obedience in the
same direction.” This is what your
church planting call is, obedience to God’s direction in your life no matter
how long it takes or what form it ends up being. You will be risking a lot, but Church
Planting is a high-risk/high-reward situation.
You could equate it to the Internet Economy startups before the turn of
the new millennium. If you get things
right from God’s perspective, you could end up producing results for the
Kingdom like Amazon.com produces for its stockholders. Of course, if you get things wrong from God’s
perspective in regards to motives and priorities, then you’ll be like the Stock
Market busts of this decade and make an Enron-like crash without integrity.
4.
YOU’VE BEEN GIVEN A
DISTINCTIVE VISION THAT MUST BE BROUGHT OUT IN THE BODY OF CHRIST
There may be other churches in the area that
are doing great. There may even be
several church plants that are meeting the needs of the unchurched
in the area. However, you have several
distinctive values to bring to the table that is the body of Christ in your
target community. In the
long-run, that community will be underserved and less than God intends without
your church’s presence there to not only reach the lost and disciple them, but
to influence the other churches and other denominations there in the direction
that God is calling YOU. Remember, God’s
design is much grander than ours, and He may intend things for your church 20
years down the road that you have no imagination for now—and likely will not
even be the pastor steering things for when they hit. Now that’s leaving a legacy! Don’t miss that chance.
5.
YOUR FAMILY WILL HAVE
AN OWNERSHIP LEVEL BEYOND ANY OTHER MINISTRY YOU COULD BE INVOLVED IN
Your family and team members understand the emotional toll
this will take from them and are prepared to endure it because they believe in
it as much as you do. You didn’t have to
convince them of it—they believe it and hear the call too! And what’s wonderful is that your spouse and
children will become involved in this new church in meaningful ways far more
than they would if you entered an established church. It will radically change their view of what
the church is and their role in it. If
nothing else, even if the church plant closes down, your family will have gone
through it together and learned more from God’s school of hard knocks than they
ever would in some other more predictable situation. And if the church plant succeeds for Christ,
then the joy that will follow the emotional toll they paid will be overwhelming
in the long run. Just be prepared and
realistic in the way you plan and dream with your spouse when in the midst of
planning and actually planting.
6.
THE AMAZING THING
IS—YOU REALLY CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO
Believe it or not, you will be able to design a whole
church from scratch. That church will not only impact the people you see ministered
to—but by establishing a new church you’ll leave a mark behind on the planet
that makes a concrete and identifiable influence. At times you will feel like being a church
planter is like having a child—and even being a grandparent. You’ll feel like you’ve reproduced something
that will have a multiplying impact long after you’re gone like the sand on the
seashore or the stars in the sky.
Compared to that being a pastor in many established churches can feel
like spiritual baby-sitting. A church
planter is a spiritual parent that brings a whole church into existence. The rest of your life hardly you or anyone
else around you will believe that you actually pulled it off.
7.
YOU’LL CUT OUT THE
“MIDDLE MAN” IN THE AUTHORITY STRUCTURE OF THE CHURCH
It’s not like you’ll be your own boss completely—but you’ll
often feel like Jesus alone is your boss and no one else. You’ll go straight to the
top in making decisions and few things, if any, are delegated to you. You’ll be forced if nothing else to learn to
listen to God’s direction since few if any others will give you direction. Most of your planning time will start with a
clean sheet of paper and absolutely no expectations. Deep down in their hearts the denominational
types and other pastors really don’t think you’ll pull it off without a miracle
anyway. You can use that to your
advantage and simply do what God wants to get done—and not worry so much about
arbitrary results. Then you can focus on
the kingdom results that are the really important stuff of ministry.
8.
YOU DON’T HAVE THE
There’s no better pastoral ministry experience than church
planting—and nothing prepares you adequately for it other than doing it. For sure you’re going to want to spend time
learning from very young church plants and hopefully joining someone else’s
church plant team for a few months or years to get your feet wet. However, until you actually get out there and
do it you won’t have the kind of experience needed. Your prior experience is like dating and
church planting is like getting married—you just can’t know what it’s like
until you say the vows. You can equip
yourself in strategic ways before you go for it, and getting more education and
life experience helps with any massive task, but don’t let anyone look down on
you because you are young or seemingly inexperienced. Many of the best church planters are the ones
everyone bet against but who stuck with it until God was pleased.
9.
YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO
DO THIS EVENTUALLY BECAUSE YOUR VISION WON’T GO AWAY UNTIL YOU DO
Your dream of starting a new church won’t go away until you
are involved in it first hand. This
isn’t a passing fad for you and you’ve felt the tug for many years now. You’ve intentionally put yourself in new
church environments to learn from them and found yourself to be even more
jazzed about not only the possibilities—but also the kingdom results you were
involved in helping make happen in those experiences. You just can’t shake this vision and that’s confirming
in you that it’s from God and even when you’ve been involved in other ministry
you’re still dreaming and filing away ideas constantly for your church plant
plans. You know deep in your soul that
the present is really just learning time for your future church planting days.
10.
YOU’RE CALLED TO DO IT
You’re called to The Church Planting Ministry—don’t doubt
that at all if you feel it in your bones.
You may feel discouraged or ill-equipped or tired or manipulated or
not-ready or too-young or undereducated for the task. But you still feel called. This is not just one
of the options that God has given you to take—it strongly seems like the only
option for your next move in ministry.
You feel that you need to do this out of obedience to God more than
anything else and you’re walking into it with the kind of humility that only
comes with a call. You could be a youth pastor or senior pastor
or chaplain at a hospital or missionary or staff pastor or para-church
itinerant speaker. But you have to do this and you have to soon. God has a place for you in his Kingdom
long-term and you don’t know what that fully is. You just know that for the next phase of your
life God wants you to invest your all into starting a new church for Him and
Him alone. The Ministry taking place in
the other 99% of his Kingdom just won’t be as rewarding for you and as result-producing for God’s Glory in using you. Don’t be
afraid to admit that you simply feel called to do it even though the stiffs on
boards that evaluate you think this is more of a career move for you to decide
on. You are called to His Service—and it won’t really bring
Him Glory to continue in the established church if it’s not really what you
deep down know you must do because you feel him constantly and for more than a
few years leading you to start a new church.
You should do it. You’re called.
Writer Bio:
David Drury had been
involved in seven new church plant teams—three as a lay member or team leader,
two as the point leader/planter, one as interim pastor a few years after its
launch, and now as a staff pastor in a church sending out a new church plant
“daughter.” These churches were in
©2004 David Drury
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