The prospect of planting a church is petrifying. I have studied for the last 7 years for this moment, taken class upon class on the process that church planting requires, written church constitutions, bylaws, staff manuals, baptism and ordination documents, worked as an Executive Pastor where I created a church website, helped plan weekly services, helped develop a core team, launch team, and helped successfully launch a church. My studies have resulted in a Bachelor’s Degree in Religion, a Master’s Degree in Church Planting, the opportunity to preach and have lives transformed through that preaching, and a chance to study just about everything there is to know about starting a church from scratch. The last several years I have put weeks of time and thousands of dollars toward attending conferences for church leaders, conferences spanning 4 states, East and West from South Carolina to Texas and North and South from North Carolina to Florida, I have driven all over the country to learn from the leading sources in what it takes to plant, lead, and grow an effective church.
Yet here I sit at 4 AM, haunted by the prospect of planting. The self-appointed moniker “Completely Inadequate” certainly comes to mind.
I know that God has called me to this and I know that He is sovereign and it is His church to build (through me), and I trust that He will use my inadequacies to His glory, but my goodness, nobody prepared me for this. And the worst part… I’ve barely started.
I have always heard about how difficult it is to plant a church. The church planter feels alone because they carry a burden that nobody on their staff can relate to. I have heard about how difficult it is to be the pastor, the one who puts the sweat equity into the church and prays they have done it right. There is this weight of possible failure that sits on your chest and keeps you up at night. Right now the weight is less about failing as a church planter and more about failing as a husband and father (some day) through failing as a planter.
Can you imagine what it must have been like for Noah, to know that if he built the boat wrong it was his family who would pay the price? I am coming to learn that the church planter feels that same weight. Church planters struggle with questions of money, wondering if the church will ever allow them to financial support their families or if it will keep them from that, or worse, bankrupt them. They wonder about friendship, if the people who support them today will move on tomorrow or if their children will ever have a church “family,” or just a revolving door of faces. They worry about making a moral failure that will destroy the church, about lying, falling into sexual sin, being immoral with money, neglecting their family (and thus being unfit for ministry), or any of a number of issues that can tear a church apart. They question if God is leading them into hardship to prepare them for a future work… nobody wants to be lead into hardship, lead into a long period of hard sowing with little reaping, or maybe being lead into a church that is destined to fail, especially not when their family is along for the ride.
It is very difficult not to let my inadequacy blind me from God’s sovereignty. After years of training I am on the precipice of planting and I cannot, for the life of me, figure out the first step. I remember that all of my training tells me about vision and leading, that in order to lead well I have to be a visionary leader and I do have a vision of where I am going but right now have no idea how to get there. I feel like a little kid watching a TV commercial for Disney World. I can see where I need to go but am stupefied on how.
I feel like I am leaping off a bungee tower… I know it is going to be an amazing journey and that some day I am going to look back with wonder and amazement but right now I’m mostly praying for the rope to not snap. As I stand, looking over the edge, I’m paralyzed. I’ve already moved one foot off of the platform and I guess all there is for me to do now is to let gravity take its hold.
I know that God will lead me through it because it’s His church, not mine, and because He’s much smarter than me, but as I embark on this terrifying adventure know that any prayer, happy thoughts, encouragement, and beyond mean the world to me.
