There’s a scare tactic used in a lot of training materials for church planting. You open up a keynote speech at a conference by saying something along the lines of:
“Beware! Church Planting is the Hardest Thing You Will Ever Do!”
From there, you go on to list a bunch of scary statistics about how wives hate their husband’s decision to plant a church and how all planters have back problems.
Don’t get me wrong, Church Planting is hard.
My fear is that this scare tactic doesn’t work. Worse, it can create some very unhelpful (or even sinful) thought patterns in the mind of the planter.
Also, if something is “the hardest thing you’ve ever done,” you should consider asking “is it possible I’m doing it wrong?”
Three Dangerous Mindsets
Thinking Your Success Makes You Special
Listening to rants about how difficult Church Planting is doesn’t dissuade me, it excites me. Planting a church becomes this nearly impossible goal. Only the strong survive!
If you think about Church Planting like climbing Everest, then you as Church Planter are suddenly ushered into an elite club of Super Christians. While you may say over and over “God gets all the glory,” the narrative you tell becomes about your victory.
Thinking You Deserve Success
If you think that you are doing something for God, and you think that it is an incredibly difficult and important task, it is hard not to develop a sense of manifest destiny. “I’m doing this hard thing for God, so I deserve to succeed!”
This is the heresy of magical thinking. The subtle, underlying idea is that if you say the right words or do the right things you are forcing God to reward you.
Thinking God is Punishing You
The rant is not totally wrong. Church Planting can be difficult.
However, if you (1) believe God called you to plant a church and (2) you are experiencing difficulties, it is easy to start blaming God for these difficulties.
Few people will say “God is punishing me for planting this Church.” However, the subtext is there in other things we say. Consider:
“God is tearing away a lot of my idols.”
“God is sanctifying me.”
“God is teaching me some hard lessons.”
This is tricky, because God does want to sanctify us. But we should be wary of attaching our immediate understanding of momentary difficulties with God’s character or overarching will.
The Devastating Effect of Self Importance on a Church
My fear here is that the narrative of doing difficult, important and painful work for God can have a devastating impact on the life of the church. Here are a few ways it might pan out.
Seeds of a Celebrity Culture
When you launch into church planting with a belief that you are doing something exclusive and dangerous, you easily create systems that reinforce these ideas. You might create situations that are under your control. You might create opportunities for people to tell you that you are really great.
Don’t be surprised when the culture of such a church becomes more about the planter than about Jesus.
Excuse for a Lack of Empathy
Let’s be clear: Church Planting is difficult. Why? Well, lots of things in life are difficult.
People in your congregation will have addictions. They will undergo cancer treatment. They will go through breakups and divorce.
If there is a voice in the back of your head, constantly reminding you that you are doing the hardest thing on earth, it might speak up at inopportune times. Instead of listening and joining in their pain, this voice reminds you that no matter how difficult someone else’s life is, yours is even worse!
Casting God as Mysteriously Untrustworthy
What kind of God gives a person a task that will hurt them, and most likely fail? A God shrouded in mystery that you cannot trust.
While “God moves in mysterious ways,” it is in order to perform his wonders. Not to hurt people!
God is mysterious because he is ineffable, infinite and immortal. But his call is simply to “follow Jesus.” Because we live before the restoration of all things, we’ll occasionally get hurt along the way.
Pain is a statement about reality. Beware of twisting that statement to blame God for our pain.
If it’s so hard, maybe you are doing it wrong
There’s an old joke about a man who goes into the doctor and says “doctor; it hurts when I move my arm like this.”
The doctor responds “don’t move your arm like that.”
If Church Planting is the hardest thing you’ve ever done, maybe you consider if you are doing it wrong.
Here’s a short list of things I believe have kept Austin Mustard Seed from feeling too hard.
1) We had lived in the city a few years
2) We planted as a team of part-timers, instead of a single full timer
3) We each had prior church planting experience
4) We’ve been intentionally simple, only creating programs as we need them
5) We have other things in our lives (jobs, hobbies, families, other responsibilities) that keep us from obsessing over the church.
6) We have places in staff meetings and in our liturgy to be honest, and share about our difficulties
7) We belong to multiple organizations that provide coaching, encouragement and support
8) We copied a lot of our ideas from other churches in our city, rather than trying to invent something new
9) We aren’t under a deadline to grow quickly
10) We set aside a lot of time just to have fun, both as a team and as a church
Remember, Jesus never said to plant churches!
Nowhere in scripture does Jesus say “go plant churches.” Instead, he tells his disciples to go make more disciples.
Occasionally in scripture, God calls an individual to certain places or people. Phillip is whisked off to meet the Ethiopian Eunuch. Paul sees a vision of a man in Macedonia. But God does not tell them to “go plant churches” in those places?
So, why then plant a church?
A church is the natural result of a group of disciples.
In some cultures, it makes sense to create programs and opportunities where you can recruited into discipling relationships and communities. This is why we started a liturgy at Austin Mustard Seed. It fits our dechurched culture. It fits our event-crazed city. It becomes a “fishing hole” for us to find new disciples.
Let’s stop talking about how hard it is to plant a church. Let’s ask God to send us to people and help them become disciples, and the churches will plant themselves.
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