Jesus Never Said to Plant Churches

And other things they never told me about chruch planting

Trinity Jordan

• Publisher: Influence Resources
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781936699834
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Church planting is hard. Very hard. No, extremely hard. But no one ever told that to Trinity Jordan when he and his wife set out to plant Elevation Church fifteen miles north of Salt Lake City, Utah. What started with three families and a dog named Carson meeting in a house has now grown into multiple house churches and two public gathering locations, with more being developed. But those early days (well, even the current ones, too) would not have been so tough had Trinity been forewarned and well-armed to face the challenges ahead. A new generation of church leaders have begun planting churches in droves and at breakneck speed, which is wonderful in and of itself, but with this movement comes the need to understand all the pitfalls, hurdles, and challenges often overlooked. Jesus Never Said to Plant Churches reveals the secrets on church planting so leaders will have the insight and confidence to complete their mission to see God's glory reflected in changed lives.

CHAPTER 1

IF YOU CAN SEE YOURSELF DOING ANYTHING OTHER THAN CHURCH PLANTING, PUT THIS BOOK DOWN AND GO DO IT NOW!

“God has a way of speaking to the heart and spirit. A way of captivating our inner desires and drives.”

Honestly, church planting is hard.

Very hard.

No one ever told me that.

All the training I went through was from guys who proclaimed, “If I can do it, you can too.” I knew that church planting was going to be easy ’cause, hey—this guy did it and he looks like Guy Smiley.

It wasn’t easy at all.

I would ask the question, “WHY?” so many times. Lying in bed wondering if I had made the biggest mistake of my life. Did I do this right? Did God really call me to do this?

And that is what it always came back to.

God.

I couldn’t shake the God factor.

I’m not sure why anyone would want to start a church if they were not called by God to do so. I mean, I know why they try to do it.

The perception is that church planters are the cool guys in the Christian subculture. This church planting conference I went to one time even showed a video of a Mac spoof commercial where the church planter was the Mac guy and the typical traditional pastor was the PC guy. We all know that the Mac commercials are selling us what is cool and keeping us from what isn’t, so the message we are constantly communicating to our Christian leaders is that church planters are the coolest of the cool.

Or there are the people who plant a church because their home church made a bad decision and so they split. Wait, I mean plant a new church in their city to follow the vision that their church should have been on.

Really the list of “why try” can be exhaustive. Yet other than God, I don’t know why you would WANT to do this.

I can think of better ways of being cool and changing a decision in your former church than almost killing yourself spiritually and emotionally.

Yep.

Killing yourself.

Totally.

Called to Be a Church Planter

Maybe the question then is how do you know you are called by God? Which is a good question.

The answer is probably different for everyone.

I have this friend, Steve, who back when he was in his early thirties and single would ask a series of questions to every new married couple he met:

1. How did you know that you were in love?
2. When did you know they were the one to marry?
3. What made you so sure?

He so badly didn’t want to miss out on his spouse in life that he was constantly studying what to look for through everyone else’s marriage. The frustrating thing for Steve was that a lot of the people gave different answers, but the most heard answer was the most frustrating answer.

“I just knew.”

How do you know you are called to plant a church?

You might already have a great story of how God confirmed His call to you. I’ve heard some cool stories before. I heard this story about this guy eating at a McDonald’s in the city he was thinking of planting a church in, a city he had never been to until that day. Out of nowhere rides up a big football player of a guy on a child’s bike. The guy walks into McDonald’s and looks around for this soon-to-be church planter and tells him that he is to plant a church in that city. Then he leaves.

I guess if that were you or I, we would have an answer to our question. That is, if we were called to plant a church or not.

You might have one of those confirmation stories.

I do and I don’t.

What we will find is that all of our stories are different.

OR

If we would be completely honest with ourselves and we would sit quietly and answer my friend Steve’s question, we would probably say,

“I just know.”

God has a way of speaking to the heart and spirit. A way of captivating our inner desires and drives.

I don’t think He has to talk us into church planting at all. We can’t do anything else. We can’t rest until we have accomplished what He has laid out in our hearts for us to do.

That unrest drives us to our calling.

When the TV is off, the music has stopped playing, the kids are in bed, the house is creaking … you will feel the unrest inside your soul, that calling to start a church.

We might struggle along the way with questions about assurance; that is probably what it means to be human. Who doesn’t want to have the seal of authenticity?

Ami and I just knew.

No big story of how we knew. We just did. Neither one of us can recall the exact moment when we went, “Eureka! We should plant a church.” It just came to us. We couldn’t stop talking about Utah; we couldn’t stop talking about what ministry God wanted to do in Utah; and we couldn’t stop thinking about all of our friends and family members who needed to hear the message of Jesus. We knew this meant a church-plant.

No guy at a McDonald’s on a bike.

We just knew.

I tried to do something else.

I took the LSAT (the test you need for law school admissions) and even applied to a few law schools.

It just didn’t feel right.

For the first time publicly, I will admit that I didn’t get into law school on my first try.

What, are you kidding me?

I graduated at the top of the legal studies department.

I have an amazing GPA.

I scored higher than most of the people who took the LSAT.

What?

God had other plans in my life.

Funny thing is, I remember holding the envelope of the law school I really wanted to go to and thinking there is no way they said yes. I’m supposed to plant a church.

I Just Knew

Ami and I were both twenty-four years old when we set out to plant a church roughly fifteen miles north of Salt Lake City. We started with three families and a dog named Carson. We met in a house on Monday nights for an hour and a half. Our small Jesus community began to grow. Within ten months, forty-plus people packed our home for Wednesday night house church.

We knew it was time to start another house church. In fact, we felt like it was time to start a larger, very public, gathering. That fall we launched public meetings in a movie theater with 158 people showing up from our community that first Sunday morning.

Today, we have anywhere from nine to eleven different house churches in the Salt Lake valley, two public gathering locations, and we are working on multiplying our house churches even more as well as developing another large gathering location.

Knowing doesn’t mean you don’t want to be reassured along the way. For some reason, doubt will creep into your mind as you begin your journey to plant a church. It appears to happen the most that very first year.

Seven months into the birth of our church-plant in Utah, Elevation Church, I began to question whether or not I had made the right decision. Things were hard. Things hadn’t worked the way they were supposed to work. I was banged up a bit. I was worn out. Every job looked better than what I was doing. Why didn’t that law school application get accepted?

I prayed every night.

God, please let me do something else. Give me something else to just “know.”

A Night to Remember

On April 30, the day after my oldest daughter turned one, we loaded up our blazer and hit the road to speak at a church in Colorado. Our church-plant still needed the financial help of supporting churches, so we made the eight-hour drive to raise funds.

We headed off early Saturday morning, my daughter securely strapped in the car seat behind the driver’s seat and my wife in the front passenger’s seat.

Up through Wyoming we made our voyage.

My wife and daughter quickly fell asleep in those early morning hours. I was watching the road with caution because it was raining hard.

As we got past Evanston, Wyoming, the interstate took us up a small mountain ra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Chapter 1: If You Can See Yourself Doing Anything Other than Church Planting, Put This Book Down and Go Do It Now!
• Chapter 2: It’s About Discipleship, Stupid
• Chapter 3: Stop Copying—You’re Not Xerox
• Chapter 4: Professional Athletes Got Nothing on the Confidence of a Church Planter
• Chapter 5: Be MEAN About the Vision
• Chapter 6: There Is No “I” in Team . . . Well, Unless Apple Gets Ahold of It
• Chapter 7: Hardest Dude to Recruit Will Be Benjamin
• Chapter 8: This Will Save You Some Major Headaches
• Chapter 9: The 11th Commandment Is This: TEACH DOCTRINE Early and Often
• Chapter 10: Beware of the Peeing Pastors
• Chapter 11: Get Your Fat Butt to the Gym
• Chapter 12: Jesus, Thank You for Letting Me See This
• Author Bio