I read this article by a church planter who had recently close his church and was discussing some of the things he had learned from the experience. He came up with several points that were thoughtful and well presented. But as I read them I realized that I couldn't agree with very many of his points. I will list here the bulk of his point and my respone.
It’s all about Sunday.Put all your energy into a great experience on Sunday, and build community out of Sunday worship services. Greet people who come to the door warmly, have great coffee and donuts, a good band, be welcoming and funny, treat the kids well so they’ll want to bring their parents back. If you’re dead to the world on Monday, or through Wednesday, so be it. Sunday is worth it.
For a church which gathers on Sundays, well, Sunday’s a pretty big day. And there’s a lot to be said for being hospitable and safe for the kids. But nowadays I think that if Sundays leave you - pastor or leader or guest - feeling worn out and drained, perhaps you’re missing the point of celebrating the life of the Trinity, the risen Christ, in your life and the life of your community. What if the community’s gathering is actually refreshing, invigorating, restorative, re-creational?
If we can’t live an everyday faith, 7×24, because the events of last week crushed us, then our faith is out of balance. If we’re so focused on getting the chairs set up on Sunday that we’re not going to hang out with neighbors on Saturday night, then we’re missing the whole point.
DUKE: Obviously Sunday is not the only thing, but it is true that it is usually the largest open door you have and the most likely place for you to have guests show up... So it does demand more attention than most other gatherings. I agree with Pat's premise though that if it drains you and you can't do anything significant during the week then its out of balance. The other piece of this puzzle is delegation... With a small church there aren't as many qualified people to carry big parts of the load for you, but you can offload much of the tasks and save your own energy for leading and teaching.If it’s not working, your signage or location is wrongI was actually told this, along the way, when my response to “how big is the church now” didn’t satisfy the lady asking me the question.
In our tribe of churches, there used to be a day when you could literally put out an A-board sign and people would flock into the worship gathering. Stories are even told of the early days when people wouldn’t even put up a sign, but God’s Spirit would just divinely guide folks to a house in the suburbs where something was happening, and it would be overflowing.
Now, I think signage and maps and directions are helpful, for those that know they want to go. But I also think that, at least in the Pacific Northwest, those days are long gone. People who want to go to a church can find one in the newspaper or phone book or the local junior high building.
There’s a societal shift happening. The means and ways of the church’s expansion are shifting as well. Or at least they can be, and should be, and in some places are. Perhaps it’s about people, relationships, networks.
If it’s not working, perhaps God’s doing something else.
DUKE: If its not working your locations MIGHT be wrong. I looked at a couple of building here that were in rougher parts of the city and the people I had already let me know in no uncertain terms that they wouldn't go there. The places appeared ok to me... But then again, I'm not black or hispanic. And the message you send with signage or, moreso today with webpages, is critical that it say what you think it says. If you invite somebody to visit and give them a card, they are going to look at your web message... And it needs to say what you mean for them to hear.What counts is attendance, baptisms and signups for membership classMy tribe’s annual health check sent out to church plants asked those three questions: How many in attendance (and what count by racial heritage), how many did you baptize this year, and how many people have gone through your membership class.
In the church growth era and movement, we were told that if the church is a healthy organism, it must grow. Lack of growth was due to an internal restriction - bad programs or bad leadership or bad structures.
I always wanted to be able to write in the margins, to tell the story of the woman who’s doing pretty well with her crack addiction, or the couple who’s not fighting so much these days and their kids feel safe, or the guy who has a kind ear to listen to his crazy stories of the good old days. But they don’t make the margins very big on those forms. Probably because they can see smartalecks like me coming a mile away.
DUKE: I agree with the need to 'write in the margins'. That everything God is doing is not easily quantifiable. But what else should you count? Does dinners served have the eternal significance of baptisms... I didn't get into ministry to make people better... But to see them transformed... And come into relationship with Christ and his body. Whatever it is you are trying to reproduce... Count that... But... Count something! Work without a goal is toil. Baptisms may not be a true measurement of change in people... But it is a true measurement of commitment to change... And that may be as objective as we can get.For the first two years, work as hard as you can without burning outThen, just before you burn out, you’ll have enough people in the church that you can hand off duties to them, and then just work super extra hard.
At one point, early in our church plant, my wife and I had 5 evenings a week PLUS Sunday committed to the church. We were leading a couple small groups, doing a marriage workshop for the community, doing premarital counseling with a couple and doing postmarital counseling with another. All were good choices, all were “needed”. But we were going to die.
Two stories about John Wimber, who founded our movement, come to mind. I deeply value what John brought to the Kingdom of God. I’m not even sure that these tales are true, but I heard them a few times and they seem to have the character that you hear in church planters’ war stories. In his church’s middle aged days, he would pass friends (now on staff in his thriving church) - folks who were, like him, working so hard that they didn’t have time to be together as friends. John would shake his head at this loss, and say, “well, maybe in heaven”.
Or another. John used to tell his guys early on that pastors don’t retire, they either die on the job of old age or have heart attacks.
As much as I love the guy and his legacy, I’m not sure that John always got it right. And there’s a difference between being effective and being unhealthily driven.
And moreso, leaders - church planters - model healthy lifestyles to the folks that they lead. If we’re too busy for relationship, we’re telling those who follow us that it’s ok for them to be so busy that they don’t have time for people.
We - early on - made the choice that the church wouldn’t do more than 2 weeknight things at a time, and nobody was invited to both. You could come to one or the other, but not both. A marriage workshop or a small group, but not both. On the other night, go have dinner with your neighbors instead.
Did this decision stunt our growth? Quite possibly, but if it did, it only did so numerically. My family’s still intact and healthy. I wouldn’t trade this decision for anything.
DUKE: It is hard work... And boundaries are essential. My only concern is that we use this one to perpetuate the "sit back and let God build his church" myth... There is no "sit back" in church planting. Every Biblical story I can think of required people to do something, normally rather risky and difficult, and God did it through them. Nehemiah and the wall was not an easy task... Lots of long days and sleepless nights. The danger is that we don't pace ourselves for the marathon... We've already had to deal with that issue here and force people on our team to establish "ministry free zones". Times and places that are just for their family. But that is only 1 day a week right now for most of usThe goal of every pastor should be to be full-time, paidBeing bivocational (working in a ‘normal’ job just pays the bills so that you can lead the church) is only for a time; but the real work of ministry is when you’re full time on staff for your church. This usually happens when your church is between 100-150 in attendance, with normal giving patterns.
I liked being able to focus on the church only, during the time that this happened for us. For my family, that happened because I was a stay-home dad, and my wife supported the family financially. These days - the first couple of years of our church plant - were a lot of fun. I had tons of time with my daughter, I had tons of time to read and write and meet people and pray and reflect. Better still, I could talk about the discipleship aspect of financial stewardship easily - because I wasn’t taking the money of the people. The most I was ever compensated for leading our church was 1/2 of our health insurance. Oh, and being reimbursed for my book purchases (that part I miss a lot :-)).
But now that I’m back in the software world, I’m connected to the reality of workaday life that I wasn’t during that phase. I wonder now, if I’d ever really like to be paid to be a full-time pastor of a church. With that comes a lot of structure, organization, planning, staff work that I’m not convinced is the best way for me.
DUKE: I see small church pastors raise this flag often... I used to be one of them. But I don't know that I believe it anymore. As a bivocational pastor my whole life I realize that too often my employer or my church gets shortchanged. And the argument was often wrapped up in my own need to feel significant though my church wasn't growing financially or I didn't have the faith to take the potential pay-cut and sacrifice my standard of living. For me there was a deep paradigm shift. I concluded that I'm not trying to grow a church so that I can go fulltime... I'm trying to go fulltime so that I can grow a church. I believe that a church that is going to have impact is going to have to have leadership that is dedicated and focused to the church only. You can't serve 2 masters.Some people are just scaffolding peopleA book I read by a guy I highly respect said this. When a church plant starts, some of the early people who come won’t be with you in the end. That’s OK, but you should see them the same way that you build a scaffolding in order to build a house. They’re not going to be around for the long haul, but they can be useful in the short term.
To some extent, I still believe this: Early in a church plant’s life, you attract all kinds of folks who see this new organism as the fulfillment of their hopes and dreams, or better yet, as better than the last place they were at because you’re not their last pastor. Inevitably, the newness fades. And hopefully, the community’s focus becomes more and more clear; it discovers for itself “which way this bus is headed”, and people who don’t want to be on that bus recognize it and hop off.
However, this mentality encourages you to see people by their usefulness to you, and your plans and vision. And it also sets you up to look for enemies, for betrayers. And if somebody’s not totally with you, then it must be that they’re fickle and not long for your church.
One of the guys we had with us was a very difficult personality - very legalistic, stringent, and upset if we all didn’t live life his organic, no-sugar, no-tv kind of way. (For some reason my constant movie references didn’t give him a clue that I wasn’t in his world). I was praying one day, complaining about him to God - as clearly as I’ve ever heard the voice of God speak, he told me, “Hey! You say that you want a community of different people, right? And that discipleship happens in community. He’s here not in spite of your plans, but because of your plans.”
We still see this guy. And have a better relationship than ever, even though I still watch TV and eat Cheetos sometimes.
DUKE: But there ARE scaffolding people. Maybe that’s not the best term but I figured out years ago that the church is a river, not a lake. People flow through it and keep going. So our job as pastors is to pour into them as much as we can so that as they keep moving they are taking your impartations with them to bless the next church. And receiving that blessing is also part of the process... Let them give me what they have for the good of the body I lead and the vision I have... Its not a one-way grab...Gather a crowd first, figure out who the disciples are laterSame book, but this one’s more commonly held. Start out by attracting as many as you can, as quickly as you can. Don’t do discipleship - hard calls to faith - but let there be a sense of joy, a buzz, a lot of excitement as the church is growing. Later, identify those among the crowd who are are willing to be disciples of Christ - the truly committed - and build them to be leaders. After all, Jesus did this - he had crowds around him, but he only choose 12, and really 3, to be intimate disciples.
For a church which measures its value by Sunday attendance, that’s fine.
For me, though, I see it this way: Jesus focused his time on 12 people, and really 3, And the course of history was changed.
DUKE: Definitely discipleship doesn't happen in a crowd, but enthusiasm does. The group I am currently working with started from 3 people who had no desire or expectation of being Christians. But we encouraged them to come hang out with us and bring their friends. Over a few weeks the ones who had been with us longest started walking out discipleship, even before making a profession of faith. Now the ragtag group of friends and family around them are following their lead and getting closer and closer to the flame. Again, no disrespect to the author because I have battled the same issue of trying to lead a small church, but its a bit short sited to say "I will just focus on the 12". If God was flooding your doors with seekers would you still just focus on the 12?
Thoughts and Musings by Duke Lancaster
