No Ordinary Work

Church Planting in the Shadow of the Church Growth Movement

Larry Snyder

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781666700350
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Ministro del culto cristiano

With so many church planters seeking to be successful, many of the ways we measure success can lead to personal disappointment, frustration, comparisons, and even depression. This can result in church planters who quit and churches that close even before they really get started, potentially ruining a witness to an entire community. What if we redefined and clarified the biblical metrics for church planting in a way that replaces frustration with fire, and replaces disappointment with direction? What if we stopped the comparisons to steroid growth and replaced them with a better understanding of kingdom growth? In this lighthearted and encouraging book we will highlight each extraordinary aspect to church planting and detail the biblical metrics that can infuse in each planter a better understanding of success.

1

Metrics – The Necessary Evil

“So How Are You Doing?”

One of the great guarantees of church planting has nothing to do with your church family or your accomplishments. It is the questioning that you will receive from those outside your church plant regarding what kind of “success” you are experiencing. They may not know you at all and simply feel they are being polite. They may love you and have life-long relationships with your family and in-turn ask questions about your progress as a church plant because their concern is genuine.

I have found that the most common question from those outside of my church plant towards me is usually, “So how are you all doing?” It is such a simple question to others and yet it can throw me into such a nauseating tailspin that I’m looking for the eject handle on a previously delightful conversation. The sister question is equally intimidating: “So how many are you all running?” One minute you’re swapping stories about your respective children and the next minute you’re scouring your brain for any relatable, significant thing that has happened in your church plant.

Your brain thrashes with potential responses. There was that family that came to small group and never came back because they’re allergic to your cat. What about the guy who came with all the ideas on how to make your worship program look just like his last church? Or you might try the man who walked out halfway through your sermon causing all thirty-eight people in attendance to crane their necks and sigh at the sight of his exit. However, you know that those responses probably won’t work because you don’t want the person to doubt your abilities as a church planter or pastor. You certainly don’t want them to feel bad for asking the question out of what appears to be a genuine concern.

So, you regroup in your mind and kick out one of your rote responses that involves you blathering on about some potential upcoming outreach or kids’ ministry event. Maybe you even throw in the random new small group you hope to start soon, even though you’re pretty sure that there’s not one person in your small church capable of leading such a thing at the moment. Probably because they have cats too.

When I was dating my wife back in what now feels like the days of Lincoln, I made plans to visit her during her last semester of college at Auburn University. I’m a northerner who married a southern girl so each trip to Alabama was a real fun adventure for me. Maybe I was blinded by love, but I was genuinely fascinated by the south. People seemed way more interested in me and often took time to listen to my response before moving on to their next statement. In addition, the food was so good and the weather brought me a little more joy. I arrived in Atlanta where she picked me up at the airport and she surprised me with a trip to go see Jeff Foxworthy in concert.

Jeff Foxworthy is one funny man. His self-deprecating humor and storytelling is second to none. But what he is most known for is answering his own question, “You might be a redneck if…”. For example, during our concert he said, “You might be a redneck if your retirement plan consists of scratch-off lottery tickets.” Well, you might be a church planter if you’ve ever heard someone ask, “So how are you all doing?” I’m sure that most average church planters in North America can relate to the question and the difficulty of a response.

I remember taking a vacation sometime around year two in the life of my first church plant. We spent that first precious Sunday morning of vacation at the church where I used to serve just prior to planting. As a bit of background, when I left my staff position at that larger church in the south to go plant in the northeast, I became quite the head-scratcher to many in the congregation. I’m sure they were thinking to themselves, why would a fairly gifted and bright young man move his family to Pennsylvania and leave all this. In some regards this was still the days of, “Those who can’t pastor, plant.” I’m sure to many I was like Fonzie jumping the shark or Rocky getting in the ring with Ivan Drago.

After two years of slowly developing a core-team in our church plant in Pennsylvania and bringing our second child into the world we were basking in the fellowship of that Sunday morning. Vacation had given us a respite of warm Florida sunshine and people who snuggled our children and hugged us lovingly. Then the question came. Before I had a chance to grab my seat and feed once again under another pastor, the long-time greeter extraordinaire, Miss Bernice, caught me in a corner. “So, Larry, how are you all doing up there? How’s the church going?”

Still green to the church planting thing and not knowing any better I joyfully responded, “You know, Bernice, it has had its ups and downs but we’re good. We now have about 21 people on our team.” My response was confident. That was good. My response dealt in numbers. That proved bad.

For the remainder of my life I will always remember Bernice’s response because it has shaped my view of church planting, discipleship, metrics and success. She frowned just a little, glanced at my wife then turned back to me. Then as serious as a traffic stop she said, “Oh my. I knew when you left it was probably not going to work out.” In that moment, every ounce of momentum, joy in ministry and confidence in myself and my calling felt like it was set on fire. The desire I had to worship the Lord that Sunday morning just had the largest bucket of ice water poured upon it. If not for my amazing wife slipping her arm around my waist, I might have hit the exit in Olympic speed.

Obviously, the statement hurt, and it forever created fear in me to be able to honestly answer someone who asks the earnest and sincere question, “So how are you doing?” But I was also able to use it, along with other uncomfortable questions like “So how many are you all running now?”, to begin to have an honest conversation with God about what our metrics should look like as church planters. What timetable should you be on as a church planter? Which numbers matter most and should we be measuring other things as well? What defines my personal success and failure as a man of God? Is it wrong to step out and try something in faith even if it doesn’t go according to your plan or someone else’s plan? You see, the value I placed upon my life was based on metrics, and I wasn’t even sure that the metrics were correct to begin with.

Stories and Spreadsheets

Like many pastors, my life prior to ministry involved another job and passion. I have always loved numbers and I was blessed to be able to spend four years studying business at Penn State prior to spending another three years working my way up in public banking and investing. While the call of God on my life to serve in pastoral ministry trumped my love for business, it did not wipe out my geeky passion for numbers. Numbers and spreadsheets to be more specific. I don’t remember whether it was in high school or college that I was first introduced to spreadsheets, but watching numbers, formulas, and records at work is still like a healing balm to my brain.

When my wife informed me that she felt led to become debt free and she wanted to revisit our family budget to try and squeeze out a few more dollars to pay everything off I sprinted for the laptop. When our mission sending agency informed potential church planters that they would have to develop a funding strategy, I proudly held my printed spreadsheet aloft for all to see. I guess what I’m saying is that if you give me a number for just about anything, I will most likely turn it into a spreadsheet. And maybe if I’m feeling really adventurous, I’ll spit out a graph as well!

The danger for me is that numbers can become just that … numbers. In my denomination we even add a spiritual spin to numbers by saying things like, “Numbers are noses and noses are people and people matter!” On the surface this is so very true. Numbers are people and people do matter; but time and time again I’ve wondered if our worth and success is based upon the people behind the numbers or the numbers themselves.

Hear me clearly when I say that numbers mattered to Jesus during his earthly ministry, but the numbers didn’t dictate His ministry. More than numbers, the ministry of Christ was measured in human stories and individual life change. Christ had no building. What He did have were the homes of those who loved Him. Christ had followers that ranged in crowd size from just a few to thousands. Yet by the time of his death all but a handful had deserted Him.

We know that God considers numbers because the scripture gives us obvious examples of this. When the hungry crowds had swollen late in the evening in order to hear more of the master’s teaching, the gospels deal in numbers:

Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” But Jesus said, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” They said to him, “We have only five loaves here and two fish.” And he said, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. (Matt 14:15–21)

This is fascinating on a number of levels. We are given exact numbers on how much food went into the making of this miracle; five and two. We are also given the exact number of leftovers; twelve. We are given the exact number of men or households; five thousand. Yet the numbers are not the most important part of the story. The five thousand most likely consisted of some who were earnestly seeking and some who were interested in the “show”. The crowd was filled with disciples, antagonists and opportunists. So what do those numbers tell us? Not much.

This amazing work of Christ demonstrated his divine power and His authority over all things in order to care for the needs of His people; that’s the bigger story than the numbers. The sufficiency of Jesus Christ is the bigger story. The bigger story is the stage being set for all mankind to recognize Christ as the bread of life, our manna from heaven. We can lose the significance of God’s most telling traits because numbers have become the priority. Numbers matter, yet God is more than numbers and hence, so is His kingdom.

Allow me to draw your attention to one other example from scripture that may be even more relatable to a church planter. Consider the New Testament church just after Pentecost. Some t...