If I were to tell you that church planting this year has been completely a blast, I would be lying. It has been difficult! But even in the midst of that difficulty, even when I have questioned God hundreds of times, in some way something happens and another person comes to join us at PlumbLine. I have learned so much about the "not-so-successful" things to do in church planting, including understanding when you are actually a church planter but rather a church revitalizer and when that work begin to take over your work of meeting new people and developing new ministries.
Isn't it all the same? No, not so much. The truth is that revitalizing is serious business. Most of the time we are talking about dealing with people's set paradigms, and people's uncomfortable process of realizing that their beloved church is now in the dead zone. This process is painful work because you can imagine that it is very much like realizing that your marriage is over. You think "this is not what I imagined when I said 'I do" and then you sign the paperwork. (Believe me, I know!) So, you can sort of put yourself in those broken shoes and try to walk in them for a mile or two.
Yet, at some point, you have to realize that this can't be good for your feet and you need to change. It has been hard for this aged congregation to see all these new folks with all kinds of different ideas of what church should be like, to start taking over their responsibilities. They want it, but then when it actually begins to happen, they are scared out of their minds. When I think about them, I think about my 79 year old father who lives with me most of the year. Change and my father are like mortal enemies, yet he has had to change addresses 4 times since he has been living with me because of this itinerate process I am in as a Methodist. Learning a new community, shopping at a new grocery store and now with his eye sight failing, getting all the things he needs for his medical care is all jaring for him. Yet, he has. Some how or another, he has and in the long run, it has been healthier for him. He fusses and barks, but he grows.
The most important thing that I have learned is that leadership has to remain focused and on the same page. When there is a convergence of waters over a body of water that has not changed in temperature, can you guess what happens? Hurricane and Cyclones! Its a mess and its extremely abusive to the congregation, because in many ways you stir the surface of the water, but the deep remains the same, that's why fish swim deep when they know that a disturbance is coming. Change for change's sake is not what we are looking for. Change has to have at the its very core, the best in mind and the deepest love and appreciation for the work and people that are already there. When people feel this, and realize this in the deepest part of their hearts and minds, they release and begin to trust. They trust you enough to push them to the next level, even to the point where they thought they could not go. Even to the point of realizing that some of them might have to release all the way, and allow other people to take over from that point on.
PlumbLine's name came from a core value of this church planter taken from the Book of Amos that there needed to be a place that produced disciples that would work for balance and equity in the world and that were committed to a life of centering and focus on God and Kingdom values. Little did I know that the place where balance needed to be brought first has been the church itself. We have been in the midst of working out what is at the core of our mission and vision and what is not. What is keeping us balanced and what makes us tilt in the wrong direction. Well, I should know better by now. God is the consummate multi-tasker, making the most out of every opportunity to bring two or three or four things to fruition. The other thing that I should know is to remember that old saying, however allow me to improvise a little "never pray for patience, because then God calls you into church planting!"
So its appropriate in the hurry up and wait season called Advent, that the lessons of the gestation period continue to be learned. I say that because I can remember all the things I learned about myself during the time my son was in my womb and that first year after he was born. I can't even imagine the things that Mary learned, as she watched over this precious babe. Often times, when I would rock my son to sleep her would put his hand on my ear, and he still does when I tuck him in bed. When I think of Mary and Jesus in those sweet moments, I also think of the Savior, Jesus was to become and that those same hands would one day heal the blind, and lift up the woman with the issue of blood. Would one day carry a cross and become destroyed by nails and one day welcome us home.
So here's the deal! Its hard work this planting business, but so is parenting, so is marriage and so is marine biology. The things we cherish in life are hard, and yet beautiful. Like a winter's day, cold, long but full of expectation. Wait and watch for it!
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