Personal Lessons in Church Planting

I was involved in church planting with a fellow planter for much of my twenties. During that period of my life, church planting was everything. There was no financial support from a denomination, so I worked full-time to support myself. While working full-time, I gave every spare moment and ounce of energy into planting this church in Sydney, as did my mentor and fellow planter.

By the end of that period, I was tired. I felt underprepared theologically and pastorally. I needed to get training, recharge, and retool for a lifetime of ministry and service.

It was a good decision. My experience in church planting made the subsequent four years at theological college much richer and more meaningful. The skills and abilities I learned as a church planter helped launch me into other forms of pastoral ministry, as well as writing books and leading within Australian theological colleges.

The competencies I learned in church planting—skills in pioneering, innovation, risk-taking, and leadership—have shaped my approach to pastoral ministry and theological education, giving me the passions and competencies to start fresh expressions, launch innovations, take risks, and step out in faith and trust God even when resources are limited, and the task seems overwhelming. Church planting shapes adventurous, visionary, pioneering spirits. Significantly, it can shape generous and welcoming communities and loving, humble, and prayerful hearts. If you walk in step with the Spirit while planting or innovating, you’ll move from relevance to prayer, popularity to ministry, and leading to being led. Henri Nouwen describes this spiritual and leadership growth journey in his book “In the Name of Jesus.”

I'd like to reflect on some lessons I learned while church planting. These are just my lessons. They’re personal. They may not even reflect the feelings of our church planting team. It’s a long list, but it’s just my attempt to wrestle with what I learned during that time.

I won’t pretend my decade of church planting compares with the experience of those who’ve done church planting longer-term. But church planting was so demanding, challenging, exciting, painful, joyous, and all-consuming that I’ve reflected here on some lessons I learned.

I will be sharing 22 of these lessons in a series of articles over the next four weeks. Stay tuned for these articles.

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

"If you walk in step with the Spirit while planting or innovating, you’ll move from relevance to prayer, popularity to ministry, and leading to being led."