Planting Pitfalls: What are our priorities?
As part of the Planting Pitfalls series building on his research among struggling plants, Dan Steel, local pastor and part of the Acts 29 UK network, encourages church planters to build wisely and so avoid some of the most common risk factors. This article looks at the ways we allocate our time and what we trust to deliver results.
Any sort of pastoral ministry brings complicated questions about what not to do.
That is, there simply aren’t enough hours in the week to do all the things that we might. What’s more, we can easily end up choosing to do the wrong things with the hours that we do have. That seems to be particularly the case for those involved in the world of church planting.
Here are two reasons why: the propensity towards activism, and the pressure to deliver.
The propensity towards activism
Planters by nature are very often the go-getter generalist types who can do all kinds of things.
They are the plate-spinners who can multi-task and who, more often than not, end up delivering and getting the job done. And, as anyone who has been involved in a church plant before will know, at the beginning there is always too much to do! Too many plates to spin. Someone has to raise funds to pay for people or things, to look for and book the venue, to write the copy for the website, to design the launch flyers, to choose the coffee, to meet up with people, to connect with the community, to sort the children’s syllabus, to sort the signage, to write the sermon, to give the talk…
Often the team is small, time is stretched and activity abounds. It’s why planter burn-out in the early stages is so common, but that’s a story for another time.
The pressure to deliver
For many who plant, the reality is that money is limited and often diminishing, so there’s an early pressure for the plant to thrive. If it’s not self-sustaining 3 or 5 years in (or however long funding has been promised for), might it have to shut? That pressure can be crippling and can easily push planters into prioritising the wrong things. Rather than digging deep and building for the long-term, quick fix strategies can become the priorities.
Proverbial ministry silver bullets are tempting for planters! We can get lost down all kind of blind allies and dead ends by prioritising the wrong sorts of things, subtly finding ourselves trusting them for growth. If only … we could meet at that venue, or had a better-looking website, or put on weekly church family meals, or could run that evangelistic course or served that coffee (or fill in whatever *that* might be for you in your context).
Have a listen as one planter from the Planting Pitfalls study speaks of their reflections on what they had learnt from their planting struggles:
Q: What would be the main lessons you would want to pass on to other church planters?
A: It's hard. Things happen really slowly. That there's very little feedback. That it relies a lot on prayer... That the Word is powerful. That you need people you can rely on, train up and delegate to. That you need people who will tell you that you are wrong.
Notice two things from their testimony which are particularly relevant for the wider community that seeks to promote and support church planting:
1. Patience
Gospel ministry takes time; yet the short timescales so often employed for funding do not serve planters well. From what we know from the experience of these ministers, and more importantly what we know from the Scriptures, real gospel growth takes time.
Jesus talks about sowing seeds and patiently waiting. Ground can be hard, perhaps increasingly hard in our secular West. Thorns and thistles are a daily reality – indeed we have a real spiritual enemy who is seeking to squash and thwart our plants from thriving.
How can we serve our planters better with generosity in terms of how we fund them, but also a generosity in time in giving them the freedom to build for the long term rather than having to seek to justify their funding after an overly-short season?
2. Priorities
This testimony was not the only example of someone seeking to encourage planters to ‘hold their nerve’ when it comes to prioritising weekly tasks. Rather than the next ‘silver bullet’ from the next planting conference, how about focusing on the means by which the Lord Jesus has promised to build his church: namely the preaching of the Word and prayer?
We must not let our prayer and preaching time get habitually squeezed by the necessity of the now.
That might not result in quick growth or the kind of numbers that funders might be impressed by, by to grow any kind of building that will last, you need to be patient and work hard at the foundations.
We must not let our prayer and preaching time get habitually squeezed by the necessity of the now.
How can we encourage beleaguered planters to continue trusting in God’s means to grow his church?
What do we need to change within our planting systems that can serve planters well and encourage them to patiently prioritise the right things as they pastor?
Will you partner with us to enable us to give long-term support for healthy church growth?