Lessons We've Learned our First Year: Is it Hard?

   


  Last week a pastor from our district called to interview me about church planting. It caught me a little off guard, but it was a great conversation and made me think over the past year. Ever since that conversation, I've been meditating on things I've learned over the past 15 months. So, I've decided to write a series of posts on lessons we've learned over our first year of church planting. This is the first. Make sure to check back for the next posts in the series. 

     I'm asked often if church planting is harder than we anticipated and if we are ready to throw our hands up in exasperation yet. That's a hard question to answer, because the things that are hard, are not things I anticipated as being hard (except for administrative tasks... which I have never been great at. And that's not hard as much as annoying. I miss having an administrative assistant daily.). Many of the things I thought would be difficult, aren't.
      I thought that meeting neighbors would be daunting, and difficult. That it would take months, or years to have deep conversations. That however has been completely untrue in our experience. There are a few exceptions to that, but the culture of our neighborhood is very open. People are outside a lot, which makes it easy to get to know people. Mac and I are also outgoing people, which probably has helped with this, but within a few months we knew many of our neighbors names. Getting to know people on a deeper level, takes more time, but we've gotten to know some really great people, who call me for prayer, who come into my office for hugs when they've had a rough day, and who are excited to see us out in the community.
     The other thing I thought would be incredibly difficult, would be learning to live with less. Our finances have been tighter since moving, however it's not been near the struggle I thought it would be. We have very generous people around us, who always seem to step in at the right time. We have great jobs, and health insurance. All of these things have really helped in that transition, and because we really feel we are called here, and we love our neighborhood and broader community, it makes the sacrifices feel less like sacrifices.
     However, probably one of the things I didn't anticipate was the strain on our schedule. I naively thought we'd have much more time together, and a bit more control over our schedule. To be able to take weekends off (something we never really have gotten to do), and take some extra vacation time. That has not happened. If anything, it seems like we are always adjusting to a new schedule. When we first moved, we got used to the schedule of hosting groups, and my being out of work. Then school started, and I began working, so our schedule switched again. Mac then switched jobs (which was great financially) but it meant I didn't have a car during the day, so our schedule again switched. Then we started Sunday morning worship services. By the time we got used to that routine, it was again summer, with our summer mission trip schedule. Now we are back to the school year, now with 2 cars, Sunday morning worship services, and both of us working jobs that pay again.
     I knew things would be busy, and a lot of work, but I really thought I'd feel more in control of my schedule than I do. Mainly it's because we had no idea what anything would look like, now that we do, it feels a bit more manageable to get into a routine.... until we get another curve ball.
      The other difficult aspect of church planting for us, and maybe even more difficult than the scheduling, is to explain to other Christians what it is we do. People who don't go to church seem to get it, that we are here to love the neighbors, to be people of peace, grace, reconciliation and love to the people around us, and to be a catalyst for transformation in our community. Many church people don't get it... at all.
     We get asked questions like "what model of church planting are you following?" "How many people are in your church?" "But what do you actually do...." All of those questions I cringe to answer. We don't ask these questions of ourselves, we tend to just ask, are we being faithful to what God is calling us? If the answer is yes, we just keep doing that.
    The truth is, our model is Jesus, and that's about it. We don't have lots of people in our chairs Sunday morning, but we interact with hundreds of people many weeks, so Sunday is a poor way to look at what we do. We tend to not look at butts in pews as a sign of success, but whether or not we were faithful to follow Christ, care for one another, and love our neighbors during the week.
      Each day around here is different, but we do a lot of different things. We garden, we ask people how their day is, we welcome people into our home, we write, we read, we clean, we cook, we go for walks through our neighborhood, I write a sermon each week, choose songs from the hymnal, print off bulletins, answer the phone, go over budgets, go to the bank, talk to neighbors, oh, and then we also do house work and have jobs on top of that, while caring for our dog, one another, and spending time with friends and family. Pretty much our lives look like most everyone else's.
      We try to engage the neighborhood, mostly by being good neighbors and living our day to day lives as Christ followers. There isn't a magic formula, or method really, just being people who truly love Jesus and seek to live that out to the best of our ability, with our lives open to the people around us (from the grocery store, to church on Sunday, from the coffee shop, to mission trip teams). But if you want to know what we tend to live out as a model, it's this: Radical hospitality. That's it. We believe that true hospitality can change the world.
     In fact in many ways, we believe it already has. After all, it's Christ's great call to join life with him that brought us here. The call to be immersed in the life of a community seeking Christ, called the church, is a call to hospitality. A call to care for others, to invite others into our lives, and to in turn be invited into the lives of others. That's why Jesus is our model, because he was great at this. At inviting people into his life, at being present in the lives of others.
    This is what we seek to do, each Sunday as we serve breakfast, during the week as we invite people into our home, or even when we make books available to our neighbors. These are all ways we seek to live life together with our neighbors. And, yes, this is hard sometimes. It's really hard to be faithful sometimes, because we know that is a call to sacrifice, to give up our comfort, to answer the door when we don't feel like it, to walk the hard path with people. But that's the call of a disciple, to follow the path of Christ, and it would be a mistake to think that is an easy path, but we truly believe it's the best path, and so, we continue to walk it.
   
Next Post- top 3 leadership insights I've gained year 1 

This entry was posted on Friday, August 14, 2015. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response.

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