Home Outreach Leaders Articles for Outreach & Missions 3 Drivers That Crash Church Planters

3 Drivers That Crash Church Planters

3. Unhealthy approval.

Daddy issues are a dime a dozen in church planting. If it’s not a daddy issue, it’s often a dysfunctional relationship with a pastor or authority figure from the past that puts a planter on a quest for approval.

We end up striving for praise or a pat on the back from nearly everyone around us.

Until we rest in the approval of our heavenly Father, poured out in the perfect and atoning work of Christ, we will run ourselves ragged for approval that will not come.   

If these motives go unchecked, it’s only a matter of time until the planter comes undone.

The work is always difficult, but doing the work for the wrong reasons will destroy us. Allowing ambition, anxiety and approval to drive our mission of disciple-making robs God of the glory He deserves and the joy He desires us to experience in Him. 

Church planter, the greatest discipline we must develop is not preaching, leadership or counseling, but repentance.

We plant churches to make Jesus known. We plant Jesus’ church and trust Him to do all we cannot.

We plant from, never for, God’s approval.

When we forget this and function for any other reason, we must repent and return to the true mission of making Jesus known.