Epic

Boot Camp Chronicles; The Matter Of Motive

Why do men plant churches? No this question is not about to followed by a cleverly divised punchline designed to illicit grins and giggles. It's a serious question that springs from my thoughts at about 5:30 this morning while I was praying. It's a question that fits well with this series of posts as the thoughts with which I'll answer the question are born out of another lesson I learned while planting our church in Illinois.

Yesterday I was reading the blog of another church planter friend of mine from Canton, Georgia in which he laughingly mentioned an observation made by one visitor to their church plant. The visitor made the tongue-in-cheek comment that it looked like a bunch of middle-aged men who couldn't find jobs so they started a church instead. Though that was a light-hearted conversation I think the comment does bring up some serious questions that we must consider. Why do we plant churches?

I believe that some people plant churches more out of personal need than personal fruitfulness.

There are some Christians who are just plain difficult and can't get along with other Christians. They hop around from church to church and then finally after years of ticking people off they just gather together a group of others like themselves and form a "house church" (and I use that term loosely) where they can get together every week and complain about everybody else.

There are some men who pursue church-planting ministry because they need to be significant in the eyes of others. They get a rush from the idea of dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people coming every week just to hear them talk. It fulfills a narcissistic desire to be the center of attention.

There are some men who plant churches out of a messiah complex. They have a need to be needed so they percieve the world around them to be devoid of any spiritual substance and believe that they alone have the vision that will bring revival.

I know of one young man who has no employable skills and openly admits that he has to plant churches because he can't do anything else. In the few years I have known him he has walked away from 3 failed church plants and is now hoping someone will give him money to try a fourth time.

The question of the day is, "Am I planting churches as a means to fulfill my own needs?"

If we will allow the Spirit of God to pull back the curtain and fully expose our hearts we'll see clearly if this is the case. And if we can come to the place of admitting this truth we can then begin to face the reality that any church planting efforts pursued with this motive will be about as easy to pull off as it is to get an apple tree to produce oranges.

We will not be successful in planting churches - or any other ministry for that matter - until we come to the place that every spiritual, mental, relational, and emotional need we have is being fully satisfied through intimacy with Christ. The source for meeting all of our needs is found in a Person, not in an activity. If we attempt to fulfill those needs through minsitry we'll repeatedly find that the ministry never becomes what it could and we remain despairingly empty.

"I am the vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." ~John 15:1-4

There are men who are called to plant churches. We who have that calling understand what I'm saying when I say that it is something we can't resist. We can't stop it. We have to do it. To us it feels like a moral imperative. In our sleeping and our waking we think about it, we dream about it, we talk about it, we write about it, and we often feel like we would rather die and go on to be with Jesus if we can't do this thing. So yes, it is a need. How do I then reconcile these seemingly contradictory thoughts?

If we who are called to church planting are abiding in Christ and finding the complete fulfillment of our needs in him alone, then a church plant will emerge from our lives as naturally as apples emerge from an apple tree. To understand this, go find a healthy apple tree and try to prevent it from producing apples. You can't do it. Apples will emerge and there's nothing you can do to stop it short of poisoning or killing it.

If we are approaching minstry with the attitude that this is the only thing that will satisfy the needs in my life, then a healthy ecclesia will never emerge from you life. Oh, you may gather some people together for a period of time. You may be able to do some things that look like ministry. But seeing a vibrant, healthy, multiplying church emerge is as likely as walking into that apple orchard and seeing oranges hanging from the trees.

I end with the words of David. May this be the singular driving motive in my life.



technorati tag: church planting

posted by Bill @ 7:09 AM