Confessing Church Planters Guilt

I’ve been going at this Church Planter thing for a few years now. I must say that it’s taken more years off my life than my previous decade in ministry. If there is one thing I’ve learned is that there are a plethora of expectations pummeling a church plant. I’ve experienced many nights tossing and turning over the projected wants lobbed in my general direction. At those moments I make my best attempt at getting still with God and releasing those burdens to the Trinity to deal with. I’ve experienced great spiritual direction over the years in how to root myself in the love of God and not the affirmation of others. All of this has been helpful, but I personally find myself susceptible to hearing, feeling and owning the expectations. The last five years I’ve spent dwelling with and coaching other planters and discovered I’m not alone. The sheer battering-ram of what a successful church plant should look like is felt in the chest of a church planter. Unless you have skin like Teflon, the cultural demands, and the interpersonal demands seep in and stir together a stew of guilt. Guilt that your church is not enough, doing enough, far enough along, dynamic enough etc.

Idealism
Many of the expectations put upon a church planter and their church are soaked thoroughly in the cultural waters of Idealism. Idealism is the epistemological doctrine that mental ideas are the most fundamental reality. Essentially, it is any philosophy which argues that the only thing actually valuable is what is brewing in our cerebral cortex. René Descartes was one of the first to claim that all we really know is what is in our own consciousnesses. Therefore, he claimed, “I think, therefore I am” is the only assertion worth pursuing. Idealism in its culturally appropriated forms infects our ability to accept reality, work within reality and find real contentment within reality. Idealism has infiltrated most of our society and cajoles us to exalt our preferred dreams as authority over the raw, complicated, messy, relational material before us. Idealism perpetuates self-love for our own ideas and creates a naive delusion that we can actually live up to our own ideas. Idealism doesn’t humble our opinions, it exalts them. Idealism perches us on a ledge waiting to criticize, measuring everything against our perceived perfect scenario of how things should be. Idealism sours us against the anvil of messy practice. Years ago I think a portion of idealism caused me to believe I could plant a church that mashed together all my ideals, theological idiosyncrasies, social convictions with a twist of attractive flair. I never considered the most important factor, my church would not be constructed of people that would think like me, feel like me, read like me, see like me and have a personality just like me. My entire church planting journey has been generously peppered with compromise and negotiation. Oversimplified, I get about a 25% to a 50% portion implemented of every ideal I have for my church. This can feel unsatisfying when the fullness of an idea is what beautifully captivated my mind in the first place. Here’s an unrelated metaphor that helps illustrate how this tension plays out. Almost every time my wife and I take a long road trip, about a few hours in I’m craving coffee; a drip filtered, fair-trade, freshly roasted, good cup of coffee. I know I’m picky but my palette longs for this. Every time without fail, the only thing we can find is Dunkin Donuts, a watered down, sugar-saturated, 2 hr burnt cup of imposter coffee. I’m miserable and my wife says “at least you got a cup of coffee”. Church planting can feel this way in the world of Idealism. There are vast regions of my church that I have to say “at least I got a cup of coffee”.

Expectations
Not only is this Idealism a torment within but it also comes from without. I’ve journaled over  the years all the statements of expectations and ideals made about my church plant:

• You worship’s not Spirit-filled enough
• Your church doesn’t have enough for kids
• Your church is not liturgical enough
• Your church has too much liturgy
• Your church is not diverse enough
• Your church is not multi-generational enough
• Your church is too small
• Your church is too liberal
• Your church is too conservative
• Your church is too hierarchal
• Your church has no strong leadership structure
• Your church is not missional enough
• Your church is not relational enough
• Your church is not intellectual enough
• Your church is not blue-collar enough
• Your church doesn’t use the Bible enough
• Your church doesn’t talk about relevant issues
• Your church has a weak website
• Your church isn’t into justice enough
• Your church seems like it’s all about justice
• Your church has too much space for conversation
• Your church doesn’t have enough conversation
• Your church is too institutional, not organic enough
• Your church is too organic, it feels chaotic
• Your church encourages doubt
• Your church gives no space for doubt

Push-and-Pull
I get exhausted reading through that list again. Reading that, the yoke doesn’t feel lighter it feels like a cinder block just got laid on my shoulders. Consumerism tempts me to find a way to purchase the ideal, or find a way to manufacture a shortcut to the perfect church so that people are happy. Part of my soul wants to please people so they walk away saying “that’s the church I’ve always been looking for”, yet I’m increasingly realizing that's not possible in the here in now. My theology of the Kingdom situates in a frustrated tension. The Kingdom has broken into the world through Jesus and there are parts of the kingdom that can be realized but there are parts that cannot be realized. An under-realized eschatology lulls me into apathy about the ideal, but an over-realized eschatology tricks me into hubris that my ideals can be fully experienced. Understanding this truth gives me both a sense of ongoing hope and cold realism as I’m cultivating a church community. The work of church planting is the work of the Kingdom and if the Kingdom is caught in a push-and-pull then the church is caught in a push-and-pull. Just as the kingdom is already here, but not yet here, so we should also consider the church as already beautiful but still kind of ugly.

Imperfection
Honestly, grace is becoming my soothing balm under the demands of idealism, over-realized eschatology, and my people-pleasing tendencies. Grace is not an excuse for not changing but it’s a consolation amidst the difficulty to change. I need grace because I’m humbled by how short my church falls of the ideal. We’re addicted to stories of dramatically “ideal” church’s, ones that have cracked the code on the above list. There is not enough information I can consume that changes the pain of working with real-humans, with real-differences, with real-complicated lives, with real-passion and a real-weak follow through. I’m encouraged by reading the stories of the churches planted by the Apostle Paul. These oikos (household) churches were a hot-mess, with minimal resources and with a minimal impress factor. Nothing but the Grace of Christ Jesus bonded them together in the midst of imperfection. The first-century church was not utopia, it was filled with strife and disappointment. The Apostle Paul embraced this imperfection and carried it in his own body by suffering as a “faithful intermediary, filling up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of laboring for his church."  (Col. 1:24) I feel the ache of imperfection but I must persevere and seek shade under God’s tree of grace.

Beautiful Mess
The pursuit of the ideal church is an idol. Dietrich Bonhoeffer slayed this when he said “Those who love their dream for the church more than they love the community of the Church itself become destroyers of that community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest and sacrificial… those who dream of this idolized church demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands set up by their own law, and judge one another accordingly.” Idealism can wreak havoc on the church planter’s heart, baiting them to be whatever the world needs them to be. I’m trying to let go of Church Planter’s Guilt. I’m trying to take the counsel Paul offered Timothy in the midst of a tsunami of church demands “seek a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith” (1 Tim. 1:3–5). Just the other day someone asked me “what’s your church like?” and a response slipped out of my mouth “my church is what it is”. We are beautiful mess in progress, learning to be faithful to the unique mission God has given us and learning not be crushed under weight of idealism.

The Renewal House: Locally Rooted Care

When I first co-planted our church, we struggled to find jobs with livable wages. Years ago we were strangers trying to cultivate roots in a new place but along the meandering journey we meet other strangers; strangers with greater challenges than our own. 

We encountered Refugees attempting to resettle in this city from Burma, from the Congo, from Somalia, from Sudan and from Cuba. Our city welcomes almost 1000 refugees each year and 12% of the children in our city schools are refugees. 30% of the population in our city live below the poverty line.  ~ Onondaga Citizens League

We listened to their stories and our hearts were broken open to their struggles. 

Many refugees struggle to find ways to survive as basic as finding a minimum wage job, learning how to drive, acclimating their children to our school system and most importantly finding faithful friends that will walk the journey with them. 

Over the years we've become bonded friends with those struggling to make a new life here; walking the path with them in anyway that we could. In our work we've discerned the need for a designated local space for pressing into this issue. This space will exist to empower our refugees neighbors to move beyond surviving into thriving.

This is a project our faith community is undertaking. If you feel compelled, please help us develop the Renewal House. 

Click here to help us meet our goal> [Our Project Support Site]. 

Please consider how you can support our cause?

Ecology of a Worship Gathering

The design of a space is never neutral; it always communicates some specific value. For example, what does it say about someone’s values if they set their living room T.V. off in a corner, while all the furniture is turned towards a window looking out into the back yard? The way a room is set up communicates certain values. Physical spaces have a way of shaping our feelings and even behavior. The church worship gathering is no different. How we design the physical space of our worship gatherings matter. How does our gathering space shape us for mission? How does it shape us for community? We already ask interrogating questions in relation to preaching since we are so intensely an information-transaction-culture. Yet we often forget to inspect the mediums we are using to communicate those messages. What if the medium we use has a message of its own? 

The very spatial mediums we use to communicate those messages shape and architect us in powerful ways. In fact, as a medium, the literal physical spaces we use may actually subvert the very messages we are preaching. What if the arrangement of spaces are actually speaking louder than what we are saying in our sermons?

Trained by the Climate

This exploration into how physical spaces shape us is called an Ecology of Gathering. Ecology is the branch of biology that looks at how organisms relate to one another, and to their physical surroundings. If we apply this field of study to our worship gatherings, then the non-living components (abiotic) of a worship gathering would be: the stage, the positioning of the chairs, the instruments, the volume of the instruments, the symbols, the place where the communicator stands, the video screens, the lighting, the communion elements etc. The living components (biotic) would be the people who are present at the gathering, including the collective vibe created by group dynamics. The premise of an Ecology of Gathering is that the non-living components dynamically interact and stimulate the living components (biotic), creating a living spiritual climate. This climate communicates a message, and over time, this climate controlled message trains us into a certain way of thinking and behaving.

The Early Jesus Movement

The 1st Century Church  had an Ecology of Gathering. Over and against the Jewish Temple-centered practices and the Greek Mystery Cults of the first century, there was an Ecology of Gathering unique to the early Jesus-followers. The early Church went through a new but vital transition that did not allow them to rely on public temples as the primary space for gathering. Meanwhile, the Mystery cults were primarily clustered together by shared social interests and were characterized by a volume of impressive rituals. The early Jesus movement was not bonded together by mere social or political rituals. In 1 Peter 2:5 we can see the transition from the Old Testament model where only a certain group of people (Levites) could dictate the gathering, to a more participatory model where every person is considered a priest, opening worship up to the priesthood of all believers. The clearest picture we have of an Ecology of Gathering is found in I Corinthians 10-14. Paul guides the Corinthians into a rhythm that centers The Lord’s Table, the expression of spiritual gifts, and the essential-ness of community. Paul was not only concerned about what they did, he was also concerned about how they did it. As an architect, Paul was paying attention to an Ecology of Gathering.

Clash with Consumerism

The gathered church does not cultivate an Ecology of Gathering in a vacuum; it will always be formed in the midst of the wider culture. Consumerism is the current we swim in, and is potentially the most exalted god in the Western context. We must become aware of how our approach to gathering has been shaped by the dominant cultural forces. The doctrine of Consumerism states that whatever dazzles us with words, with personality, with brilliant production, is worth our time. We measure our experiences by the immediate emotional return these things offer us. Consumerism is not so much an action as it is an underlying belief system, a narrative that tells us that meaning comes from the things we consume; what we take into ourselves. Consumerism sends us hunting for products that impress, productions that inspire and personalities that captivate in an effort to deliver us from our unsatisfying and bored existence.

Churches end up playing into this powerful narrative when they seek to find the relevant hot-spots for what people want, and then use them to design their “services” and “market” it to church “shoppers.” The stage, the sermon series, children's ministry that acts more like a glorified Disney Land-type babysitting service, all become covert tools to keep us coming back for more. This places all the emphasis on the veneer of the gathering not the ethic of the gathering. When we primarily design our gatherings around these marketplace sensibilities, the controlling questions end up being “Will people like what we produce?” “Is it quick and easy to access?” “How do we compete with other “service” providers?” We have to be cautious about how our gatherings can unknowingly malform towards consuming spiritual inspiration. Our worship gatherings must embrace an ecology that introduces frustrations to this stealth, rabid impulse to consume and judge the “presentation” purely based on how the experience makes us feel.

Discerning and Designing

As an architect of community, you have to begin to grapple with an Ecology of Gathering. This means asking questions and making choices based on the end goal of re-shaping people into a new narrative of self-emptying love, others-oriented community and costly mission. (Philippians 2:1-11) We can no longer simply adopt what has “worked” in the past, what works at a popular church, or what works down the street. Just because something appears to be “working” doesn't mean it’s actually working for the good. The medium is the message, which means every aspect of your gathering is either supporting your message, or subverting it.  

How can we design our gatherings in ways that build in a measure of resistance to the cultural forces of consumerism? The following are three overlapping categories for discerning and designing that help in the diagnostics of the Ecology of your Gathering.

Form

·        How is the room arranged?

·        What values does it communicate?

·        What is central in the room? What is peripheral?

·        Is the furniture arranged for consuming or contributing?

·        How is technology used in the room? What does it amplify? What does it reduce?

·        Does the room communicate one groups values over another?

Function

·        What is the purpose of the gathering?

·        Does the order of worship encourage watching or participating?

·        Does the liturgy perpetuate autonomy or community?

·        Does the content reflect being sent people?

·        Does the communication exalt one person or the priesthood of believers?

·        Does the worship communicate God’s transcendence and Immanence?

Frequency

·        How often do you gather for worship? Every week? Every other Week? Monthly?

·        What does the frequency communicate?

·        How is the frequency of this gathering situated in the life of daily community?

·        Is this our primary expression of being the church?

·        Is this a service to attract the curious? or to gather the People of God?

·        Is the marketing around our gathering sensationalized or over promising? 

It is unhelpful to prescribe exactly how you should construct your worship gathering. The missional church is not a cut and paste model. As architects of community, we have to enter into deeper, ongoing reflection as to how the Form, Function and Frequency of our gatherings are shaping people's imagination about what it means to be the church.

Submerge Schema: A Relational Liturgy for Missional Living

In 2005 I spent some time in Kenyan refugee camps. These refugees were from Uganda and had been uprooted as they fled from the LRA. The formation of the rebel group called the Lord's Resistance Army recruited 5000 children into the Ugandan government army. My role was to explore not the LRA itself but the issues related to attachment by families that resettled in Kenya. As we spent time in these refugee camps we compiled information and stories about the serious struggle for individuals and families to attach to a new place indefinitely. The issue we investigated was called the Displacement Affect.

Attachment

The Displacement Affect pioneered by Otto Fenichel is the ensuing influence that an extended season of uprootedness has on the process of rooting. What happens when people are put out of home, out of place and hover in a displaced state? Settlement Identity-Crisis takes hold when people are prevented from attachment. When the emotional muscle of attachment is suspended, severed or even underdeveloped it makes bonding significantly threatening, unfamiliar, frightening and difficult. It is an unconscious psychological state that causes one to stay above place.  

This exploration has made me acutely aware of the signs and symptoms of Displacement Affect.

In no way do I want to minimize those displaced by war but I do think we are experiencing a version of Displacement in many Western urban contexts.

Atrophy in Rooting

I believe the rigorous pursuit of Self-Actualization which generates the furious pursuit to land the ideal job, the ideal partner, the ideal status, the ideal education creates atrophy in the emotional muscles necessary for rooting. Rooting in a particular neighborhood with a particular people feels unnatural and potentially constricting. The cultural force compelling us to chase down our own dreams has made being present, really present an underdeveloped discipline.  This cultural trajectory has acted like a backhoe digging up the maturation of incarnational attachment. What we have fortified in the trek to maximize the self has actually become a source of accumulative violence on our ability to bond. I concede that it is covert but is ruinous on sustainable missional living.

Tenting to Tabernacling

In church planting I've seen this displacement within myself and others. I’ve seen it in the most passion-filled church planters armed with missional theology. I've seen it in the most fiery social justice advocate unwilling to work faithfully on the ground. There is a strong tendency to attempt to build something without grafting and super-gluing to a place. Most of us have attachment issues knowing how to Tent (Abraham made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in Tents - Heb 11:9) but not how to Tabernacle (The Word became flesh and Tabernacled among us - John 1:14).

4 Place Connectors 

A simple schema emerged. What follows is a neighborhood navigation tool for pulling a community into a real-time place; shifting our habitual patterns to draw us into the "other".  This acts as a primary tool for practical, ongoing, incremental submerging into a neighborhood. It naturally moves from the macro to the micro. It doesn't matter whether you’re new to a place or have been living somewhere 20 years, this Relational Liturgy will open up new space by plummeting your missional community into a social labyrinth. This Submerge Schema is intended to be an ongoing instrument in discipleship-processing-pods for reflection and direction in rootedness. A Place-based community will have to embrace their limits and active listening as they go about. When applied for the long haul, it nudges us below the buzz of marketing, self-promotion and event-dependence into the vital ordinariness that God’s mission requires in our world.

The Submerge Schema

Province - From Indifference to Partnership

Text: "Leaving Nazareth he went and lived in Capernaum" (Matt 4:13)

We must shape our location devotion. Our ability to emotionally attach and resonate with a place has a scope and size. We are limited in our sense of environment. A province is a manageable section of our city that we take some ownership of. We begin to seek out who is already doing significant work in our province, no matter the creed and color. How do we serve them, form solidarity with them and learn from them? The pains of this place must become my pains, the aches of this place become my aches.

• What observations have we made about our Province?
• What is beautiful in our place?
• What is the brokenness in our place?
• Who are the marginalized in this place?

Porch - From Independence to Interdependance

Text: “which of the three became a neighbor… the one who treated him kindly, so go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:39)

The Porch is symbolic of our literal residence. A typical home is a realm of personal privacy insulated from the public world. I've learned much from my minority Brothers and Sisters on how to use the front stoop, the lawn chair, the BBQ, the sidewalks and the front lawn. Inviting the “other” into our home is inviting Jesus into our home. There is something equalizing about sharing food together.  

• How do we extend shalom to our neighbors?
• Do I see my home first through the lens of Protective Security or Sacred Hospitality?
• How can we slowly begin to establish a common table?
• What are my fears associated with home generosity?

Pathways - From Repelling interaction to Impelling interaction

Text: “Walking along the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth and stopped to address him.” (John 9:1)

     

Our Pathways are the regular routes we take. God's dwelling is tied to the streets connecting us to each other. We easily become isolated from the places that we meander through, withdrawing into minimal interactions. The slow discipleship work is to transition from Unconscious Busyness to Conscious Habitation. The pathways we take shape our understanding of the city. 

• What roads and routes do we want to take to encounter those in our neighborhood?
• Do we walk? Do we drive? Do we bike?
• Are we open to stopping along the path?
• Are we consistent in our pathways?
• How do we move to astute listening along our pathways?

Pivots - From Consuming Perks to Beholding People

Text: “Jesus passed through Samaria… and Jacob’s well was still there. Jesus, worn out by the trip, sat down at the well. It was noon. A Samaritan woman, came to draw water. Jesus asked, “Can I have a drink of water?” (John 4:4-8)

Pivots are those places we park, spots where different sorts of people can mingle. Pivots are where relational intersections occur. When you pivot there are people within arm’s reach. Gain eyes of faith for holy interruptions and sustainable habits in these locations. Become a face in the place. Seek to build bridges that travel beyond suspicion to trust.

• Are you a regular there?
• Have you made introductions?
• Can your faith-community collide there?
• What tribes are already hovering there?
• What anxieties are inhibiting your presence?

Thoughts?

The Irritation of Incarnation

Incarnational Theology emphasizes that the Father has sent Jesus as one of us. God does not scorn the human condition rather God dwelt in the fragility of the human body (Phil 2). This human form brought the Glory of God down from Mt. Sinai to the streets of Nazareth. The fullness of God somehow, someway was displayed in the limitations of the God-man Jesus. He embraced those limits to model for us how to be present, really present. Jesus was a “manger wetter” as the poet Stephen Mahan states. This is not sacrilegious, this is sacred. God experienced human flesh and in it opened up space to observe his kindness. (Rom 2:4). The incarnation continues as we are sent (John 20:21) and now the Divine is being downloaded into the ordinary. An Incarnational God leads us to inhabit the world not as one fearing but as one searching; searching how the Kingdom of God breaks into the crevices of our world through tangible touch. This imagination is a burst of light into my life offering me a framework for being available in my local context.

Cost and Consternation

I’ve had the joy of meeting many young Incarnational Theologiz-ers springing forth with fresh vision about this vital spirituality. I too drank a firehose of books years ago that helped me visualize incarnation as a refreshing path forward in the world. Yet I’ve sadly observed that many with all this incarnational ideation often lose steam with little on the ground sustainable actualization. It’s not mentioned often that many who leap into “doing justice” burn out from discouragement or fizzle out because of boredom. It's one thing to learn about the content and another to live into the content. My suspicion is that our imagination for Incarnational Theology is still elementary and quixotic. For all my fervor, my imagination needed to be filled out with the cost and consternation. I’ll be honest, incarnation is a thorn in my side, and it’s exceptionally inconvenient and even irritating at times. Many days that I press into the mystery of the incarnation and attempt to move it into practice I get a bit ornery, straight up grumbly in my spirit. The incarnation confronts me with a private emotion; I don’t love people. I don’t hate them but I don’t love them either. I know that’s not cool to say as a church planter and community cultivator. I have sentimental love, maybe even theological love but practical love comes and goes for me.

I live in a cold, economically depressed part of the country that is fighting for progress. I’ve lived here for a few years now, buying a former abandoned drug house, gutting it and renewing it. We’ve had multiple families do the same, taking the plunge into this pocket of the city extending renewal. All of us champion a missional-incarnational life but we know it’s not a pretty scene at times. The sidewalks are littered with trash, the roads are peppered with boarded up houses, the gang violence can make you nervous to go for a walk and mental illness on the streets is no longer interesting, it actually frightens your children. My wife and I scratch our heads at times wondering “how the Gehenna did we end up here?”

Relentless Disappointment

The deeper we dive into this particular place the more inconvenient our lives get. I’ll give you some examples: people knocking on my door looking for a ride at weird hours when I’m exhausted laying on the couch, sitting and listening to a neighbor’s drama when I’m privately stressed on my way to an appointment, pouring the energy of love into someone and having them steal from you, cultivating trust with another and having them go "Gollum" on you. You can read about incarnation in a book and idealize it but translated to real life it is invasive. There is relentless disappointment in the up close and personal space of incarnation. The sheer dashed hopes can do an angry-dance on your perseverance. Sure I can gain applause outside of my hometown when I speak about incarnation but on my streets few are impressed. I preach and teach incarnation but I want to be truthful, I have a hard time in good conscience making it sound sexy.

The Curriculum is People

Yet something continues to happen on a subterranean level in our community: we are being discipled by the phenomena of being with people. The curriculum is people; they expose our attitudes and our actions. There is resistance within me. I do not want to bear with others. My un-love regularly rises to the top and I can feel it floating on the surface of my heart. At that point I either tackle it or pamper it. God is not interested in a professional compassion he wants to take us through the labor process of birthing the real thing. This practice of tangible love has brought me face to face with my own limits, impatience, stubbornness and resentment. Trying to be present, really present in a particular place has ironically made me aware of what is present in me. Everyday I’m challenged to bail on beholding the beauty and brokenness in others. Will I stay? Will I lean in? This is the battle ground in my heart. I share all this to summarize that I love Incarnational Theology but we must speak about its proletarian irritation to be truer to its actuality. We must be careful not to perpetuate the abstraction of "being incarnational" or we do a disservice to the Incarnation. To know the incarnate God you must experience the pain of incarnation.