No Superheroes Here, Please: Encouragement for Church Planters
Following on from his Planting Pitfalls research, Dan Steel (pastor, speaker, host of the Acts29 Europe podcast series) opens up a vital conversation about honesty among church planters about our limitations, to avoid risks of isolation and burn out.
Why is it that planters can so often end up bruised, broken and burnt-out? Do we need be honest earlier about our limitations?
Ask the church where I have the privilege of pastoring, ‘How are we not like a restaurant?’ and they would (hopefully) tell you, ‘Because in a restaurant we wander in and take a seat, get what we want, leave our money and then leave a review on Tripadvisor.’
Church life, on the other hand, is more like a family meal where everyone is getting involved - some have been slaving over starters and others are perfect at puddings, some are busy collecting extra chairs from around the place because more people have turned up than we expected, and others are just saving up energy to wash and dry up after the meal. Some are pretty bruised and broken, so this time around are taking a back seat and simply looking forward to the food. Church isn’t a restaurant, it’s a family meal.
“Church isn’t a restaurant, it’s a family meal.”
It’s one of the beautiful things about church life: we’re all different - different gifts, backgrounds, personalities and capacities. And we’re all needed. It’s the way it’s meant to be. God didn’t call us to plant churches where one person does everything. Yet one of the overly-common dangers of church planting is that we give the impression that we can. Planters can be painted (or perhaps even paint themselves) as the reliable omni-competent all-singing all-dancing superheroes who can do it all.
Sometimes the analogy is given of a church planter being a bit like a Swiss Army penknife - one tool that can do many things. But do you see the danger with that? We can (at least functionally) end up thinking we actually can do it all; that we don’t need anyone else. The problem arises 2-3 years down the line as the planter may well end up burnt-out, disillusioned and isolated. They’ve tried to do everything and found they couldn’t, particularly as things begin to grow in size and complexity.
May I suggest a different way?
Let the church know early on that you are limited. That you are not a superhero. That you are simply an under-shepherd and the Lord Jesus is the Chief Shepherd who provides what churches need.
“The Lord Jesus is the Chief Shepherd who provides what churches need.”
1. Be honest with the church early on about where you are weak and so where you need others.
It’s fair to say that planters are often generalists. Yet just because they can, it doesn’t mean they necessarily should fill lots of roles. Let people know early on that you need them and that you can’t (or won’t) do it all. It’s a family meal. As the church grows, trust the Lord to raise up the people you need to fulfil the tasks that he wants you to do, enabling and empowering them to fulfil those tasks - even if they don’t do things as you might have done them!
It’s my experience that the Lord, in his sovereign purposes, entrusts to his ministers a kind of ‘perpetual weakness’ to daily humble and remind us that we can’t manage on our own and that we need to keep looking to him. It’s not that our weakness is taken away and we end up being strong and able to do it on our own. In his kindness, we keep being weak and so we keep looking to him.
Tell your people where you are weak and so where you need others.
2. Be honest with the church early on that you can’t run flat out and so you’ll need to rest.
To rest is an act of faith. To rest is to show that we know it’s not about us, but rather God is in control and working out his good plan to bring all things under the headship of Christ. Jesus explicitly teaches us this as he explains what happens when the seed is sown, “Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how” (Mark 4:27). I know for me, I struggle when we’ve planted seeds. Just to leave them and see what happens? Surely I need to keep watching them and making sure they get enough light, water and fertiliser? And to protect them from slugs and other dangers?! And yet Jesus is the Lord of the Harvest, not me. We can trust him with people’s hearts. We can trust that he is powerful. We can rest.
Jesus is the Lord of the Harvest, not me. We can trust him with people’s hearts. We can trust that he is powerful. We can rest.
As we model our humanity and our need to rest, not only will this mean others might step forward to serve, it will also model good humility for those watching us. It’s not simply our words that communicate, it’s our lives as well! We need to learn to march. Not to slide into a cycle of sprinting at capacity and then collapsing, but rather to ‘march’ at a sustainable pace, resting well and re-charging before hitting that pace again.
Let’s not end up bruised, broken and burnt-out. Let’s be honest earlier – with ourselves and our churches – about our limitations.