Church Planting is for Girls

    So here we are. Year two of our church plant. The excitement of the first year with all the cute little “firsts”(like new believers) and the not so cute little “firsts” (like first demoniacs) is over and we are now heading into life as we know it. A bouncing, budding, baby church.

The constant movement of this teetering toddler, leaves a trail of tired protectors in its wake. Burnout is laying down fresh tracks as it rounds the corner of year two. Now, once fresh-faced servants of Christ, see you approaching and scream, “No!”

But cheer up, as any botanist will tell you, everything with a “bud” is going to have bugs.  Life begets life and both symbiotic as well as leaching relationships are bound to happen to a young church plant. In order for a church plant to survive and thrive, it’s important to be able to define the difference between the two.

What is producing life in our church plant?

What is leaching life out of our church plant?

Here are some examples of church plant “Buds”– Things that bring more life to your church plant.

1. Solid Relationships- Pure and simple. If the church is about Christ, and Christ was about people, then the church must be about people if it is going to be about Christ.

Does your core group know each other? Could they pray at the drop of a hat for one another, knowing the needs, struggles and joys of one another?

2. Ministries that are meeting the physical, and spiritual needs of the people- This is where a lot of relationship building starts. Perhaps it is serving a meal to the homeless together and then spending time praying for one another afterward. Less is more at this stage. If the people are facing burn out, scale back a bit. Doing one thing well is better than five things with no spiritual power.

3. People with the gift of encouragement- I wish there was a mail order catalogue for these precious saints. I’m not talking about “yes men”. I’m talking about Spirit filled, wise believers who know when Satan is kicking you in the teeth and rather than finding fault, they encourage you to kick back.

4.  Gracious attitudes- An attitude that remembers Church is actually not about: hot coffee, sound equipment, a cosy building, silent Sunday school, or any and all of the imperfections that come with building something out of nothing on a Sunday morning.  We all know those Sundays when the hot water is cold, the cold water is hot, and the kids are taping the ankles together of their new teacher. Yet through it all our time of worship and prayer together is from another world. This is the blessing of a gracious attitude.

5. Laughter.- I’m not talking about blowing on one another till we get the giggles. I’m talking about enjoying each other, becoming friends, and ministering to one another. The places where we “get real” as we are discipled toward the cross.

Now for the church planting “Bugs”- Things that leach the life out of your church plant.

1. Gossip – In church plants, gossip wears the cap of “complaints”. If you feel frustrated, which I promise you will, watch out for this one. It usually starts like this…

“I don’t know why we have to…” or

“I don’t know why we just can’t…” or

“I don’t know why they just don’t…”

2.Legalism- Trying to force everyone to be the same, and have the same convictions, will only make them all share the same sin of pride wrapped in legalism. It might sound like this…

“Well they’ve been saved for a year now…. They should know better…”

(How long have you been saved? Do you still get it wrong? Yep.)

or the more insidious…

“I’ve managed to… why can’t they?”

3. Looking to “Egypt”-  Frequent talk about the olden days, old church, past ministries. This is a HUGE bug. The locust  of most church plants. It eats at the core of what God wants to do in the now, with the lives and gifts of those around us.

So it’s time to revaluate. Are we dealing with more pests than praise?

Have we pruned buds while leaving some bugs to multiply?

Have we given too much ear to gossip?

Or given in too much to the pressures of legalism and the opinions of others?

Have we spent our devotion time remembering the lovely small group at our old church?

Identifying and pruning the things that are leaching life out of our church plant, will allow us trade in those “Terrible Twos” for the “Terrific Toddler” years.

Which is it? Our proposed church plant? Hospital or Yacht Club? What is our objective at the end of one year?

Is it that we would have enough money to pay a Pastor full time? Maybe two Pastors and a worship leader?  Open a coffee shop? Buy great crafts for the Sunday school?

I had to ask myself this question at the end of our first year in Long Beach. By human standards or even American church culture standards, it would appear that we’re exactly where we started one year ago.

Still outside with the homeless, addicts, and misfits. Still no building, no coffee shop, Kids corralled by orange plastic or perched more securely in mamas lap.  Tables loaded down with food and cloths to give away to anyone walking a straight enough line to get to them. Still needing chaperones to take all ladies and kids to bathrooms with no doors, no toilet paper, and people bathing in the sink.  And still, after one year, about 50 sober Christians short of running a summer Vacation Bible school.

As I contemplated where my lawn chair should go so I’d have the best view of my kid in Sunday school, I wondered if I should be upset?

When do we get upset as church planters? I don’t mean scared…I think we are scared from the start. Like kids standing in line for Montezuma’s Revenge, it seems the pounding of our heart just widens the smile across our adrenaline filled cheeks.  I mean, when do we get upset at what church has become? And are we right?

I found the perfect spot and sat. Most of the other lawn chairs where still empty. A few people were joining in the open air worship. A homeless guy mistook the kids’ snack table for the free food we were offering, and had to be redirected away from the wide eyed Sunday school teachers.  Behind the tree at the back a young man rode up on his bike and handed a package to a man who nervously wiped at his nose again and again. They patted each other on the back, then paused to hear the sermon begin. A tall, sun blistered drunk man shouted at the top of his voice, “Praise God” and lifted lanky arms in the air. He was received by a hug, pat on the back and sobering cup of coffee.

Slowly the empty chairs filled. Then back around the trees. People rode up on rusty, bag heavy bikes, talked, exchanged packages, bummed cigarettes, tried on cloths, ate freely, sat on the grass, hid behind the trees and I just prayed.   I prayed my husband wouldn’t be distracted. That the man behind the tree with the jitters would stay and listen longer. I prayed that the girl with her pants hanging low on thighs hardly covered by her baggy shirt , would lift her shy eyes, hidden under her black beanie, and hear her Father in heaven loves her, no matter what her earthly father had done. And as I scanned each face, I began to get that Montezuma, adrenaline filled smile. Yes, I was scared, but not upset at what this church plant was, is.

This was Christ’s church. Not mine and my manicured toes.  I pictured Zacchaeus in the tree, the woman with the alabaster jar, the tax collector with his pocket of stolen cash. Each person in this Park had their twin in one of the gospel stories. The Scripture struck me between the eyes. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”   Mark 2:17

Christ’s words are so logical, they almost seem sarcastic. Who told us church had to be clean? Sober? Safe?

Who goes to the hospital with their wounds already clean and bandaged? Their broken bones set? Who arrives at the surgeon already operated on and stitched up?  As much as there was the pressure within me to “Grow up” and become a “real” church with a real building and programs, I’m growing into this idea of the “Anti-church” or church for those who don’t go to church.

So my revelation at the end of our first year church planting in the U.S?

A Hospital is for the sick. What a novel idea. It is not clean, tidy and safe.  There may be less dirt under my fingernails than some, but cancer can still eat at my Christian walk just as fast  as any other mortal in this broken world. So I’m content to be a part of this medical team, as long as The Healer is running the prep room.

I smell smoke….
After a few whiffs around I realized it was me. If I had been 16 rather than 39, I  would have had some serious explaining to do. I smelt like the rich,thick,smokey aroma of someone who’d stayed far too long in a late night bar….yet I’d only had one chai tea latte in a long beach coffee shop. Honestly. Scouts honor.

We’d just left the crime scene of our first church outreach. Sure we’ve done some of the normal stuff this year, like hand out flyers, invite people to our church, feed the homeless and give cloths to those in need. But this out reach was different…..it was really OUT….OUT of our comfort zone. OUT of our church building. And it wasn’t just the real “spiritual” people who showed up with perfectly packaged answers. It was all of us, and all of us did our messy little part.  With our messy little add-lib answers.
What was the outreach? Simple..talking, listening, letting ourselves be vulnerable as Christians. Seeing people where they are. Caring about what brought them there. Letting them be where they are, because that is the truth. We simply held an open forum discussion about the Bible and the Mayan Calendar in a very “not so biblical” atmosphere and we didn’t have to “save” anyone in ten easy dance steps.  But what a beautiful night it turned out to be. Letting God into the room. A room where he’d not hung out so publicly before.
Walking into the room, I felt the heat rise to my cheeks. I wasn’t sure how hostile things would get. It only took one sideways glance to find about twenty people who outwardly had nothing in common with me. From their lifestyle choice, to their tightly rolled zig zag tucked back into a tattered jean jacket. I could have been Olivia Newton Jon in a poodle skirt to them. I felt so Square.

But then I saw it. The man in the corner, drawing beautiful  mayan art. He didn’t know our discussion was for him and his creative bone.   I knew then, God was in the house. Hanging pictures and arranging chairs before we’d arrived, creatively creating what He wanted for the night.
All of a sudden it didn’t matter whether I fit in or not. Had a butch hair cut or rosy cheeks. Wore black nail polish with a skeleton tattoo, or pink pumps and a gold anklet.  We, all of us in this funkily tossed salad of a room, were made by one Father. Some called him Abba, others still thought Abba was simply a swedish pop/rock group.

As I made the long silent drive home from Long Beach…My “Tresemme shine” smelling hair exchanged for a musky “Camel light”, I thought, “In the real world…this is how it smells….” Smiling to myself, I inhaled the smoky aftermath attached to me, and said it aloud with my prayers, “In the real world Lord, this is how it smells.”
Perhaps that’s not the sort of thing a pastor’s  wife should say, but it’s true. Sometimes the sterility of our Christendom within our tidy church walls makes me choke more than the the huge whiff of menthol just blown my way.
I see people on the streets walking or in their cars driving and I wonder, how is it that we’ve missed them with the message? The Good News?  Why don’t they see it as “Good News”? What can I do with my measly little life? “I smell smoke!” So where is our fire church? Our Passion?

“I smell smoke!” Do I realize my misplaced priorities and lack of spiritual insight into the broken lives around me can make me just as prone to miss the mark of love as my “non believing” friends? I don’t want to be written in as a Pharisee in God’s book of life.

As a church planter, I have the rare privilege to rethink what church is. Again and again. Like reexamining an unhealed wound, I want to see healing in the lives that step into this Christ I know. His Body of Believers.  Thinking over our last church plant, I was reminded of a profound statement made by one of our leaders after a very raw “church” experience where curse words out numbered the “Amen Hallelujahs” ten to one…. but with much more sincerity. After church we had met as a leadership to regroup in prayer. Asking them how they felt about the movement of the church, one leader said it perfect when he stated,  “Well, all I know is, it’s good to smell alcohol on a Sunday morning again….”
To this I add, “It’s good to smell like smoke again.”   I know I’ve entered the fire.
Lord keep us from our Christian sterility, a weak substitute for true inward sanctification.
“Some wish to live their life within church and Chapel bell. I want to run a Rescue Shop within a yard of Hell.”  – C. T. Studd

“Pick up your cross and follow me” …and stop being a goofball.Last week I found myself mulling over this profound phrase. Like a Child turning over a shinny new penny in my hand, I thought and thought about what this could possibly mean for me. What would I do with it and how could it change my life?….for the better that is.Yes, for the better. We always want better don’t we?  Better life, better kids, better marriages, better organic food, better ability to juggle everything. Better.Yet on a human level, living missional offers about as many luxuries as that shiny new penny in a child’s happy hands. It’s the great inspirational catch phrase of our time, to “do” more with, but only a drop in the bucket of what is needed. What do we do when our missional  ideals, don’t match the reality of the challenging  tasks ahead?

Lugging the rugged Cross uphill was never part of the bargain was it?

We are now eight months into our first American church plant, in a different culture than the first, with none of the same rules to play by and none of the same support systems. My idealistic-rose colored glasses are very little use to me when the smoke from the rubber hitting the road fills my eyes. It’s always easy to “do great things” around a conference table, with a steaming caramel macchiato in my hand. Yet the longer I labor for the Lord the more I’m shown that Extraordinary, is most often accomplished in doing the ordinary things in life well.

If there are ten people in church today, well then, my extraordinary task in front of me is to love them well. To try and see them, meet them, begin to learn to care about them and who they are as Christ does. If there were 100 new people in church today, then how about I actually find a way to connect with at least one person? Not because I “should” as a good little Christian, but because this is one of my brothers and sisters…or someone I want as a brother or sister.

Sound easy? Simple even?

But what if that person is nothing like me, perhaps even dangerous, a threat to my family, the safety of my husband, or the innocence of my child? What then? “Who is my Neighbor?” is a question I think every true disciple of Christ asks at some point or another.Truly living missional is stepping outside my sweet smelling comfort zones and backing away  from “the better life” that I strive for, toward a ” better life” for someone outside of myself.  Picking up my cross as I mediate on it, is picking up those very things that are the hardest for me, the unpleasant things, and following my Lord to the grave of “self”  with it.Living missional is the beginning of picking up that cross, but dying missional is what actually happens when you keep carrying it.
Eight months into Gods mission in Long Beach, and I still have a long way to go in this lesson. Learning about the Discipleship of the cross.

You know you are a church planter/ Apostle when…

1. You look around at your church of five people and get excited. 
2. When new people come to your church, you get unsettled when they tell you they are already Christians. 
3. The back of your car is filled with coffee pots, sound equipment, random items left behind by strangers, flyers, six versions of the bible, a throw rug, building  blocks, and tape.
4. You wonder where church will meet next week.
5. You get unsettled when your church reaches the 75 person mark and can pay you/ your husband a full wage.
6. When asked for income references, you list two or more sources.
7. When picking a home, you view its “home-study room”…. Rather than “living room”.

These are just a few observations the first half of this year of Church planting. No doubt it’s not a life for the faint of heart….or boring. While church planting may have its challenges, it is utterly satisfying when the adventurer in you is feeling a bit smothered by the boring routine of life’s normal laundry days.

My husband recently took me away for my birthday to Sequoia national forest. When I arrived at our lodgings and found my stock pile of travel soap had diminished to nothing, I really got upset.  Not because I was going to have dirty hair for my hot, 39th birthday bash, but because, as I sat down defeatedly on a very comfy couch, enjoying a fabulous view of the sequoias, I worried that I’d lost my adventurer’s edge…and I hadn’t even hit menopause!  This odd phenomena of the missing free toiletries, acquired on long hours of incessant traveling,  believe it or not, really tuned me in to the fact that I was, for all my stressing, a church planter to the  core.

Why? Because you see, one of the things I should have listed above was “You know your a church planter when you have an unlimited stock pile of hotel soap and shampoo!”  Traveling is almost a compulsion for the church planter. Packing is as natural as cleaning your ear wax. A necessary and satisfying evil.

A Church planter is unaccustomed to such words as twiddle, coast, relax and settle…unless that silly church planter is momentarily envying the “normal” people of this world. The dichotomy of need to press on toward ministry mission, often rubs against the occasional weary legged church planters-feet. But be encouraged, it has been only a month since my birthday and I’m due to be collecting travel soaps in a few weeks again.  The adventurer may pause, dear church planter…but only to shift gears.
Hear the call, then call those to hear.
“Do not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

“The people we love to read about in the Bible are impressive because they battled through the challenges.” David Branon.

I read this in “Our daily Bread” the other morning and I figured this was as good a place as any to start my “Year in the life of a church planter” blogging for the girlies.  Yes I’m using that term in the old very un P.C. way as in…”Don’t be such a girl about it.”   But lets face it. In the first year of church planting……how many times do we talk about the possibility of things “Folding” or perhaps we do the more spiritual spin to it and say, “Oh perhaps it wasn’t God’s will.” ..which really means…..”oh crap I’m soooo scared of failing and having mud on my face and being the church of only five people and most of them MY family.”

“Challenges” don’t mean we are not in God’s will! That is the first thing that I’ve had to face this year. If so, Paul the apostle would not have ever run his small, scarred, legs around Asia minor right?

Back in June I had the awesome opportunity of talking to a group of “Church planting Wives” Kinda sounds like “Footballer’s wives”…and I suppose it isn’t a far fetched parallel. They run around the world with their men.  All these women were being bounced around here, there and everywhere and yet were so excited to be used by God. They were such an encouraging group of Gals. They were on a “mission from God”, excited “to go” and grounding themselves in God’s word.

Yet when the music stops, the conference is over, and you’re out, alone in a foreign country…or just a foreign territory and on the front lines of church planting, the challenges begin. The loneliness, the free falling, rootless existence begins…despite your spiritual support team…which is a must by the way…….If only to hear your screams as you fling yourself into No Man’s land.

First year of challenges for me looked like this…..call me carnal….or call me honest… I don’t mind…but if yours looked like mine, then perhaps we’ve found community in the challenges faced by church planters in the first year.

Day one:  “Oh God did we do the right thing????!!!!”

Day two-through sixty: “Oh God are you sure we did the right thing?”

Day sixty one- “God our savings is almost gone….”

Day sixy two- “God our savings is gone!”

Day  sixty three- Big, bruising, smack on the head through the word….”Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on his Faithfulness.” …….Yes these challenges are from my own journal.

Three month mark- “Lord, is this how we’re suppose to make ends meet? How many more jobs do we take????”

Sixteen weeks- “Lord what if the “bad” kids hurt my wonderful child???! I don’t want my kid to do drugs or learn the proper words for their sexual organs at age two please!”

Seventeen weeks- Smack! Smack! “In all the setbacks of your life as a believer, God is plotting for your joy.” John Piper …

“Oh what a good quote Lord, I’m so rubbish I should not be a church planter. I’m so selfish and self seeking. I Suck.”

And so there they are. The first three months of the Birth of our baby church.  Some of my challenges were a bit more spiritual than these. But I chose to enter these because they were the most embarrassing, simply  because they had nothing to do with the Spiritual side of things. My hardest challenges are the ones which are the most carnal, because they are a double edged sword. They are my human fears and insecurities and at the same time, they dig deep at the root which I am trying to lay as a church planter. A faithful, solid walk with Christ. These challenges hide my vision of the spirit of God working in me. If I feel unspiritual….well then…I say…what am I doing trying to do this???????

Lesson? Keep coming back to “It is Christ who strengthen’s me.” not “It’s Andrea who strengthens me.”