When church planting puts a marriage to the test
Dan Steel
There’s no doubt that church planting is personally costly.
Both the organised events and organic needs can be costly: whether it’s the ongoing reality of evening meetings and early mornings, the weighty mental ‘to-do lists’, or the growing number of pastoral burdens or stress and uncertainty about the future and the viability of the project. Will we have enough money? Somewhere to meet? Enough people? What will this thing look like in 12 months-time?
The myth of the swiss-army-knife pastor
Dan Steel
Have you ever been in one of those meetings where a church is looking to recruit a new pastor, and the leadership opens it up to the whole church family to share their priorities for what they think should be sought in a candidate?
It would be an understatement to say the list can get quite long, quite quickly! For some, it’s preaching; for others, a love of evangelism; for some, administrative strength; and for yet others, pastoral warmth and the ability to handle complex, nuanced situations. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!
When your church plant is failing...
We don’t often say it out loud, but church planting is deeply vulnerable. We go in with dreams, hopes, vision statements - and then we meet reality.
In nearly two-thirds of the cases I’ve seen where church plants faltered or failed, the issue wasn’t moral failure or bad theology. It was that they didn’t get what they hoped for. People, place, and property - the practical stuff - simply didn’t materialise as planned.