Planters grow the church; pastors grow with the church.
Early in your ministry as a church planter, you will probably notice that God calls you to primarily use the gifts and talents that come naturally to you.
For me, that was preaching, teaching, and leadership. Those things are things that I find enjoyable and easy. As a planter, God used those gifts to grow His church.
As I transitioned from planter to pastor, however, I found that God desired to produce growth in my life as well as grow the church. I find budgets, personnel issues, and other administrative tasks to be boring and far less fulfilling than sharing my faith, counseling and meeting with new believers, or preparing a sermon.
However, over time, as the church grew, I discovered that God was increasingly insistent that I develop my administrative skills as well. After I became a decent administrator, He started to place me in situations that made growth in other areas like grief and divorce counseling, senior adult ministry, and capital campaigns.
All of these things are areas that I am not naturally comfortable in or good at; however, God saw fit to help me grow in each of these areas and others over the years. If you avoid God and refuse to do anything other than the things you are naturally good at, then you will perhaps never see the full extent of God’s grace or His plans for the ministry He has placed you in.
Planters get all the credit; pastors give all the credit away.
Church planters frequently get tons of credit. This is especially true when the church plant is growing exceptionally fast or making a great impact in the community.
The local paper or even TV news station may call and desire interviews. When you go shopping, everyone wants to talk to you. When you are eating with your wife, many will stop by your table and tell you what a great job you are doing. This is a great feeling and one you are free to enjoy for a short time. I think it is God’s way of building you up because a time will come when you will get the blame along with the credit.
As a pastor, it is imperative that you give the credit away to others. You are the person everyone sees on the stage so they assume you are the only person God is using. This, however, is not true. Without the hard work and dedication of the many volunteers, most churches would get very little done.
The church is a body made up of many members. As the pastor, you are only one of those members that make up the entire body.
Planters organize; pastors synchronize.
As a church planter and a pastor who has mentored and coached over a dozen other church planters, I have learned that most planters enjoy the challenge of bylaws, teams, structure, and discipleship programs. Once all of this is in place, your job becomes keeping it all in sync.
I know many church planters that never stop reorganizing the church, and the end result is frustration on the part of many in the congregation. It is possible to over organize something, and unfortunately, this happens all too often when church planters fail to morph into church pastors.
As a planter, you probably enjoy the challenge of organization, but trust me, if you do it too much it becomes confusing and demoralizing for the church body. There comes a time in every planter’s life when you do far less organizing and more and more synchronizing.
