Personal Lessons in Church Planting - Part 3

Some Personal Lessons from Church Planting - Part 3

This is the second article in a four part series by Graham Hill - Personal Lessons from Church Planting. You can view Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Here are some personal things I learned while church planting.

Church planting depends on hospitality.

It feels like people enter every part of your life. You embrace a deeper commitment to hospitality and welcome with appropriate boundaries, or you’re in deep trouble. You discover that everything depends on hospitality: community, worship, mission, discipleship, leadership, witness, and more. This isn’t a one-way hospitality. People (in the church and the neighborhood) welcome you and embrace you in humbling, astonishing ways. You discover the centrality of hospitality to life, faith, community, and witness.

Church planting is about reflective engagement.

In church planting, you discover how interconnected action, community, theology, and mission are. Each deepens and relies on the other. Action and reflection go hand in hand, and those who don’t seek to make the most of that quickly get into trouble.

Church planting is about holy discontent.

You are restless with the status quo, and you keep asking God to help you bring change, hope, and renewal. This holy discontent burns in your heart and shapes so much of what you do and how you pray, speak, and act.

Church planting makes you realise how dependent you are on others.

Want to discover how inadequate, unprepared, ill-equipped, and broken you are? Plant a church. This is why church planters need training, support, encouragement, connection with other planters, coaching, and mentoring. This support must come from established churches, other church planters, training groups, denominational bodies, and more. What do you discover you need? Advocacy, friendship, feedback, encouragement, training, finance, peer-to-peer conversations, accountability, resources, partnerships, and more.

Church planting helps you discover the power of stories.

For me, it was a revelation to discover the power of story. I realised that my story, the church plant’s story, the neighborhood’s story, the culture’s story, and God’s story all intersect and inform and shape each other. Church planting made me think a lot about the power of these interdependent stories.

Church planting takes a pioneering, apostolic, entrepreneurial spirit.

We often think of this as a “maverick” spirit. But it’s not. The apostolic, pioneering types in Scripture weren’t isolated mavericks. They served in a team. They joined a community of apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, and evangelists. They welcomed accountability and obligation. And they took risks, broke new ground, pioneered new communities, and refused to be constrained by small thinking. Pioneers aren’t mavericks but are ground-breakers and crucial to the church’s future. And they often engage in social and business entrepreneurship. They usually combine church planting with bi-vocational (co-vocational) life, fundraising, launching startups and fresh expressions, charities, and other organizations.

Church planting tests and deepens your trust in God.

You struggle for money. You feel out of your depth. You worry about your family. You feel like you’re taking three steps forward, then two steps back. And you learn to trust God. At its heart, church planting is about learning to pray and to trust.

Church planting is like sailing.

You are constantly maneuvering the vessel with the wind. As a community, you continually discern what the Spirit says through meals, prayer, service, neighboring, Eucharist, Scripture, culture, suffering, and more. You can’t be rigid, inflexible, or too set on one course. You must go with the wind of the Spirit.

Stay tuned for more lessons in Church Planting in part 4 - coming soon.

Personal Lessons in Church Planting is an except from Graham Hill's blog. You can find the blog post here.

You are constantly maneuvering the vessel with the wind. As a community, you continually discern what the Spirit says through meals, prayer, service, neighboring, Eucharist, Scripture, culture, suffering, and more. You can’t be rigid, inflexible, or too set on one course. You must go with the wind of the Spirit.