Church planting is difficult work. It takes a tremendous amount of spiritual, physical, emotional and relational energy to build something from nothing.
These first five years of getting Redemption up and off the ground have been some of the most personally taxing of my life. The difficultly is often a direct result of the spiritual war being waged, in which we stand on the front lines.
Yet, much of the pain planters experience is self-inflicted and unnecessary.
Church planting demands a unique wiring—you have to be one part called and one part crazy. I wish I could say that it was only the clear call of God that drove me and others like me, but I’d be lying.
Oftentimes there are drivers just below the surface impacting church planters.
1. Ungodly ambition.
It’s not that church planters don’t want to make Jesus known, it’s just that we often want something more.
I’ve been guilty of trying to build something that will validate my existence. The problem is, no matter how hard I work and how many barriers we blast through, I can still find it all horribly dissatisfying.
There is no joy in pursuing the god of personal ambition. Church planting is and must remain about making Jesus known, for the glory of God alone.
The moment it becomes about anything else is the moment my joy in God begins to melt away.
2. Unchecked anxiety.
Church planting is not for the faint of heart or the risk-averse. You start with no people, no money and no guarantee of what the future will hold.
This uncertainty most often births anxiety. The anxiety can produce an obsessive pace of work that pounds many planters into dust. We forget that God intends anxiety to push us to prayer.
Instead of trusting Jesus to build His church through us, we foolishly fight to build His church by our own effort.
