Boot Camp Chronicles; On Substance and Strategy
This post is going to be a little dis-jointed because I'm hurrying to crank it out before an appointment. Please bear with me.
I recently read on a message board these words (paraphrased) from a church planter:
"To make a church plant work you have to have state-of-the-art technology, a kickin' band, a massive marketing campaign, and a public launch of over 200 people."
When I made a subsequent post saying something like, "Ummm...AND intense prayer and fasting" I was chastised for my "condescending, holier-than-thou attitude."
If there is one thing that I most clearly learned from our church-planting experience it is this. The emergence of a new church is a supernatural occurence. What we are looking for when we untertake the task of planting a church is for something to happen that cannot be explained by human ingenuity. Almost anyone can gather a crowd and hold their attention with slick marketing, a good band, and flashy technology. Only God can raise up a passionately missional, reproducing ecclesia who are willing to give up their life for his Kingdom.
Do we need strategy? Of course. Any missionary worth his salt knows that to reach a people group they must, through the Spirit's guidance, develop a strategy that will communicate the truth of God in a way that can be heard and embraced. Church planters must understand who God is calling them to reach, exegete that culture, and develop a plan to speak the language of their tongue and their heart.
But there must also be an unexplainable supernatural force at work in our strategy and that supernatural force working on our behalf occurs as God responds to a heart that is devoted first to running passionately after his heart; as a deer pants for streams of water.
I am a strategy guy. Strategic thinking comes easy to me. And I definitely had a strategy for our church plant. Oh, I prayed all the time for God to do something through us that could never be explained by human ability. But honestly, I relied on my strategic thinking far more than I relied on God to do what only He can do.
What is the bottom line of planting a church? Simple. We want people to be drawn to us so that we can share the gospel with them, see them come into relationship with Christ, and disciple them. What is it that will draw them to us? Is it our marketing? Is it our band? Is it our speaking ability? Is it our strategic plan? Is it our building? I would say that some people will be drawn by these things and some good things might happen. But I would also say that a church plant built primarily on these things will be like driving a V-8 Hemi with only 2 cylinders hitting.
One morning during the spring of 2005, as God was in the process of deconstructing me, I was sitting in my office reading the scripture and praying. I don't know how I got to this book, but for some reason I turned to Zechariah and my eyes fell upon this verse that I'd never read before.
This is what the Lord Almighty says: "In those days ten men from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and say, 'Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you.'" ~Zechariah 8:23
Words cannot explain what I felt in the moment that I read this passage. It was almost as if I had just found the hidden key to a treasure chest. After all of the reading of church planting and church growth strategy books I had done the past few years, in that moment God said, "Dude, in this one verse is everything you need."
Yes, I'm pretty sure God actually called me "dude." But He was right! No surprise there. Check this out: In this one passage you see in simplest language both the strategy and the substance for any ministry to accomplish what God desires for it to accomplish. The strategy: You have to be going somewhere meaningful. The substance: God's presence with you is percievable by others. The result: People who are hungry for more than their present earth-bound reaility will come from the woodwork to take hold of you and go with you.
The people of Judah and Israel had been desimated. Israel was utterly destroyed and scattered by the Assyrians. Judah had been crushed and carried away into exile in Babylon. They were a broken, defeated, shamed people who had arrived in that state because they had forsaken the substance of God's presence among them. But God was saying to them that a day would come when they would turn their hearts back to the God of their fathers and in that day something supernatural would happen. Instead of being invaded by people seeking to destroy them, they would be invaded by hungry, hurting people who were desparate for the presence of God in their lives.
This is what church planting is. Every church planter is simply a broken, defeated, shamed person who has found forgiveness, restoration, victory, and glory in Jesus Christ and seeks to draw others into that reality.
Strategy without substance is hollow and devoid of supernatural power. Substance without strategy is unfocused and unfruitful.
As we plant our churches, may we be faithful in understanding the culture around us. But my prayer is that people searching for God will be drawn to me not through my strategy but through the tangible substance of the presence of God surrounding me, my marriage, my home, and my ministry.
"But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphant procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing."
~2 Corinthians 2:14-15
technorati tag: church planting