Wise church planting: two pitfalls to watch for

Recently we had a friendly plumber at our house to investigate a patch of damp by the shower and a slightly strange smell. We ended up having to replace the whole cubicle; pipes, drains, tiles and all.

Sometimes in life problems are not immediately obvious, but over time – and in the hustle and bustle of life - they are revealed. Well, so when it comes to church planting. Sometimes problems that are there from the beginning don’t show themselves at the beginning.

I said in my last article that one of the pitfalls when it comes to starting a new church (or indeed any church ministry) is the problem of you. Issues of character or temperament or indwelling sin have a way, in the ministry furnace, of rising to the surface and causing problems. Sometimes though, they lurk behind the scenes and it takes a couple of years for their fruit to be seen.

Burn-out and isolation are two common external out-workings of deeper internal problems. These occurred in a quarter of the church planters I spoke to.

We’re not machines

Starting a new church (or any new ministry) often requires long ‘to do’ lists, long days and overly long working weeks. There are many tasks to be finished from fundraising to hiring a venue, writing sermons and budgets and websites, recruiting and envisioning a team and designing a logo. The common danger is that the planter seeks to maintain that early pace, rather than slowing into a more manageable march. Think of the 1500m race where everyone bustles for position at the start, but then slows into a manageable rhythm. Well so in ministry - perhaps there’s an unhelpful perfectionism? Perhaps there’s an inability (or an unwillingness) to train and build others up, which far too often results in an unsustainable pace leading to exhaustion, disillusionment and burn-out.

We’re not islands

We live in an increasingly ‘connected’ world but often the planters I spoke to felt a kind of isolation - both inside and outside their church family. Inside as they struggled to work out who their friends were, to delegate or to train up and rely upon a team. Leadership is often lonely but planters especially found themselves on their own. Outside the church though - even if they were part of a planting network - many struggled to make and maintain friendships.

The advice this month for wise church planting, is, early on, for people to prioritise finding both their pace (to establish manageable and sustainable rhythms for the long-term) and their people (for it takes a community to plant to a church).