Church Planting - The Largest Dose of Humility You Will Ever Know

By Jon M. Hammond

Introduction: Hi, my name is Jon, a grateful believer in Christ and a pastor who struggles with insecurity. The crowd says, “Hi Jon”. It's good to know you are not alone.

So…have you ever felt insecure? Have you ever compared yourself to someone else’s ministry or church? Don’t lie to me! Have you ever caught yourself complaining about your denomination or talking bad about your church board? Have you spent countless hours reading the latest church planting and leadership articles looking for that illusive “key” and after trying everything you still seemed to have failed? Then maybe this article is for you.

This article is more about the church planter than church planting. It’s more about looking inside of yourself then what you see around you. If you want the how to of church planting this article may disappoint you. But if you are looking for help with your own heart, your own motivations, your own struggles, then you will want to read on.

Why? It’s more about who you are than what you do. It is more about your heart than the church you serve. It’s about taking an honest look at you and becoming a part of something that is bigger than yourself…the worldwide effort to bring people to the Lord.

When I was in Bible College there was a guy who had on his dorm door, “I am God’s gift to the women”. We all laughed at him. Trust me, if you think you are God’s gift to the world people will be laughing at you too. So whether you are a successful church planter or consider yourself a failure, or a pastor that is ready to throw in the towel or perhaps an up and coming emergent leader, this article may be for you.

Who am I? I have been a youth pastor, a senior pastor and a church planter. When I was a young pastor I used to think I was God’s gift to the church. I used to think I knew it all. I was arrogant and towards all of those I thought I was better than. Maybe I was just jealous of them or intimidated or something. I could preach pretty good and even lead in worship but I had a blind spot that affected many things. I wanted to be recognized by my leaders and my peers, by the “powers that be”. But as I got older and tried all of my great ideas, and after I came to the bottom of my list tired and exhausted from 18 hour work days, I began to see that I really didn’t know what I am doing as much as I think I did.

Twenty five years later, (and a bit older!) I wonder if I really know more in what I am doing now then I knew then, but I do know that I have learned a few things along the road that I think might help speed up your “mistakes time” required to learn and grow as a leader. After all, gray hair is earned right?

I do not claim to be among the great leaders in the church but I have had the privilege of knowing and walking besides many of them. One of them happens to be my wife. She has taught me so much about myself, I mean, sometimes it is scary to listen to the truth. But something happens when you get the privilege of watching “irons sharpen iron” in your own life. Truly others can inspire and change us when we open our hearts and minds. But pride comes before a fall and if you are going to plant a church you will need the largest dose of humility you have ever known!

I’ve experienced the power of God and seen people saved in the revivals, healed of sickness and disease and even thought it was pretty cool that God would use me in some of that stuff. But I let things get to my head more times than I should have. I thought I was pretty cool when someone got saved or healed at the altar. There is a sense of awe and respect when God moves but it’s easy to try and take the credit when something big happens through your ministry especially when people say you are awesome.

After many mistakes I made and after watching others chart their courses who claimed they were from God but did huge destruction on the church I began to wonder if I was “all that” after all. I mean, they thought they were. What makes me think I am better than them? Maybe the truth is that I am a fellow struggler looking for my next fix. Your next fix could be growing your church, or pulling off a big event. I so needed to be honest with myself with my weaknesses and get a healthy view of my gifts and strengths. We say it’s “all about Jesus” but in the end I wonder if it was really more “all about me”.

Maybe this article is just my own therapy and if so that is good for me. But I wonder if there are others that have felt or experienced similar things like I have and have amazing thoughts that need to be shared. We need to get the dialogue going! That would be good for all of us. We need to get this out and help one another! Maybe then we won’t have to be a part of another new movement or feel like we need to start our own movement but instead we can join the original one that started 2000 years ago with Jesus and his twelve disciples.

So I say that it’s time to stop pretending we know everything and admit we still need to be students. It’s time to realize that everything you have and everything you are has come from God anyway and you can’t take credit for it. In a moment’s notice your very life could be snatched away from you. So I suggest that we could all just fall on our faces at the foot of the cross and let Jesus rise up within the church and give him back the reigns. Not that we could actually take it from him but at least our own delusion of control would be dissolved.

Let’s all go down to the cross together.

So then what do we do when we get down there? We can hold each other’s hand, cry, weep, laugh and get real. We can sit down together with our legs crossed listening to the words of Jesus. But before we can get there, the first thing we need to do is kill the big “E”, our ego. I mean murder it. Slaughter it. It’s not the image of Christ in you and it’s what has been making you so miserable all this time. Your ego has promised you the moon and all you have gotten from it is sorrow and heartache. (At least that’s what you have been giving to others…)

This article is my futile attempt to share a few of these painful lessons with you. After I stumbled enough times I found myself sitting with people, just like you. Some of it is the obvious and some of it is my crazy ideas but I am hoping that at least something will grab your heart and make you sit up and listen for a bit. Perhaps when you are done reading this you will be ready to kill the big “Ego”.

Maybe if a few of us decide to do this more often we may see a change. Maybe we will see a change in the church and in our own lives. Maybe the kingdom will grow in ways we never dreamed of because it will be Jesus growing it…maybe this time this new growth  may leave us in the dust and with no recognition. And we will be ok with that.

So here they are...my 7 thoughts.

Thought 1 – It’s not a competition thing but it’s a Jesus thing

10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

James 4:10 (NIV)

a.     Examine our lives: Fall on your face before God into his mercies every day so your heart is in the right place. Honestly examine your motives for doing what you are doing. Consider this…if you spend 5 minutes alone with Christ each day how would that change your heart, your direction, and your motives? What if you increased that time to one, two or even three hours? How would that change you on the inside? Sometimes I think we become experts at building our own kingdoms and then giving credit to God hoping that others will give us credit. After all, people will say, “how’s it going at Jon’s church?” We even call it our own ministry by our own names. This might cause confusion if you ever left that ministry.

What are possible motives for serving in the ministry?

·         Feel good about ourselves: If we are a gifted speaker then we feel good about ourselves when people give us praise for “a great sermon, pastor”.

·         Our need to help others: We have a need for people to need us so we pour ourselves into hospital visitation or spend hours counseling hurting people.

·         We love ourselves: It’s fun to see our name on the church sign, website, or mentioned in our radio broadcast.

·         We love power: We like to be in power and when we are the lead pastor we get to exercise that power. If the board disagrees with us then we get angry.

·         Provides a creative outlet: We are a creative person and being in the ministry gives us an outlet for our creativity through speaking, teaching and other media ministries.

·         Always love a good debate: We love intellectual arguments and challenges so we pour ourselves into teaching theological classes and discussions.

·         Climb to the top: We love politics so we climb the ladder of leadership in our organization.

·         We see the cross, we see the lost: We know the world is hopelessly lost without Jesus Christ and we have a burning desire and passion to see people come to Christ and disciple them.

Honestly I am not saying all of these things are bad and each and every one has a healthy and unhealthy side to it. If we open up and get transparent about ourselves maybe we can admit that we likely see several of these in ourselves. I see a bunch of these in me. 

I believe that until we are honest with our motives then we can’t make the important adjustment in our ministry to “keep the main thing the main thing.” Unless our motivation is simply down to what God has called us to do (end of discussion) then we better fall on our knees and repent and ask God to forgive us for stealing his glory.

I preach that people need to invite Christ into their lives to be their Lord and Savior. But more recently I have discovered that having Christ to be my Lord and savior is what I need and not just what I should preach to others. So Jesus Christ actually being my Lord may be a larger issue than I have been willing to admit. Allowing him to be Lord in my personal life must carry out into my ministry.

Is Jesus Christ truly the Lord of your ministry or have you been calling the shots taking away the glory from the only one who is worthy of it and capable of handling it?

b.     Your don't own the city: Stop being territorial because you don’t “own the cattle on a thousand hills”, God does. If a new church was planted on every single block in your community then we should rejoice!

     What If your goal came true and everybody “got saved” this Sunday...what building would hold all of these people? Who would disciple them? Would you be capable of this? Should you build a multi-billion dollar facility to house all of them in the same building or would it be wiser to allow the church to spread out and minister to those who are physically closest geographically? If you were in charge of all of these little churches would you call them by your church name or would you allow them to take on their own personality?

c.     Your church size is only a perspective: The Kingdom of God is the biggest church. The largest churches in your city are tiny compared to the entire church. Your denomination is tiny compared to the entire church. The American church is tiny compared to the entire global church. The entire church is made up of believers all over the globe.

d.     Other churches might be better than yours: Learn from other strong neighboring church leaders instead of criticizing them. How many years of blood, sweat and tears, (and prayers) have gone out for that other church to get where they are? Every strong leader and growing church has its critics. People say terrible things either out of jealousy or out of revenge. Even though these things may or may not be true, what is our motivation to criticize? Does it make us feel better about ourselves somehow? Is our self esteem so low that we have to pull ourselves up by knocking down others? Wouldn’t it be better for us and others if we praised the good things they are doing and (you won’t believe I am suggesting this…) you might even learn something from them.

e.     Give to other churches: Help the “bigger church” i.e. the Kingdom of God in your community to grow even if your specific church is left behind and gets no recognition. Would you be willing to sacrifice the advancement of your church to help another church that may be struggling financially or in resources? In the United States we pride ourselves in helping the misfortunate around the world, in our poor, so we create welfare systems. Large corporations and wealthy business owners sometimes donate multi-millions of dollars to help others. Why can’t we do this in the church? If you and another congregation were both trying to get the only facility available in your community (say a public school) would you be willing to allow the other church to have it before you even if it meant stunting your church growth for a season?

f.        Serve other churches: Serve another church in a practical way on a regular basis. Is there any other church in your area that you know of which could use your help and assistance? If you don’t even know of any of the needs then perhaps it is time that we was leaders met together to fellowship, to talk and pray together. Wouldn’t it be cool to see resources shared?

g.     Love the leaders of other churches: God placed a vision in your neighboring pastors hearts and it is as sacred and viable as yours is. It’s easy to think that our own vision is superior to someone else’s. If they fail then we quietly rejoice. If they succeed beyond us then we either  ignore them or only say critical things about them. The call of God is a serious thing and each pastor is pursuing that call the best they know how. We ought to encourage one another in our callings. Who knows which pastor is about to have a nervous breakdown and experience a failed marriage? If all of our visions are from God then maybe those visions can be harmonizing the kingdom of God beyond just the confines of our own organization?

Thought 2 – Build a team because you’re not that good (you’re not all that)

a.     Find out what people’s gifts are then release them into it

b.     There are only some things you do great and you need people to surround you who do great at what you don’t

c.     Give ministry away like it’s not your own because it really isn’t

d.     Give the team credit when there is a win

Thought 3 – Knock down denominational walls without knocking down denominations

a.     Don’t criticize your denomination, you need the covering and they are probably trying the best they can (put yourselves in the leaders shoes)

b.     Don’t criticize other denominations, you probably don’t understand a lot about them anyway

c.     Be a part of any movement that promotes the unity of the “bigger church” over promoting your own church

d.     Don’t start new denominations or rip away from the one you are in. Bloom where you are planted.

e.     Non-denominational or inter-denominational groups are not better than denominational groups. Nor is the opposite true. The Kingdom of God is what’s great.

Thought 4 – Pour your heart and soul into your family and not your coffee

a.     Spend more time with your kids then at the coffee shop.

b.     Seriously, have you considered getting off of caffeine and learning how to use your body’s own ability to wake you up? i.e. try exercising. The adrenaline rush can be invigorating.

c.     Date your wife more than your spend in unnecessary meetings

d.     Put your family into your hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and annual plans – reinvent your calendar if you have to.

Thought 5 – Cut through the bureaucracy without cutting what counts

a.     Church boards and memberships are not evil – imbalance of power is (Boards should not be in ultimate control nor should a pastor have little or no checks and balances with his dreams.)

b.     Set up your constitution and bylaws to promote teamwork and keep the balance of power while at the same time allowing leadership to see dreams come to reality.

c.     Set up an accountability structure.

d.     Choose leaders that hear from God but pray for leaders that have great skills to bring to the team.

e.     Create and live out core values that guide everything you do.

Thought 6 – As a good citizen get involved in your community without tooting your own religious horn

a.     Help your community win it’s battles without taking credit for what you did.

b.     Find a need and fill it without your church getting recognition.

c.     Don’t push away people and organizations by pushing your agenda for Christ on them since Jesus doesn’t need a PR man anyway, right?

d.     Civil leaders are not evil, they just need a hand from you.

Thought 7 – Invest in yourself because you are the only one responsible for how you lead

a.     Read your Bible for crying out loud!

b.     Soak in God’s presence every day because He is the one who can change you.

c.     Be honest about your hurts, hang-ups, and habits and get into a support group if necessary.

d.     Always have a mentor.

e.     Be reading at least one book, article or blog at any given time.

f.        Avoid isolation at all costs because it is the #1 trick of the devil.

g.     Eat right and exercise.

h.     Real, real, real! Let your preaching be real – use your real voice (what is a “preaching voice” anyway?)and be honest about your life because it’s the real person in you that is the real leader anyway, right?  People are looking for something that is relevant to their life and being phony is not going to give that to them. So be enough transparent to lead them to humility.

i.         Make a “Spiritual Bucket List” of dreams you have before you die and start working on that list now.

Conclusion: These are only a few thoughts about our own motivations and character. The development of those thoughts are by no means complete and could easily be expanded into an entire book, however, I am hoping these ideas can get a dialogue moving.

Planting a church is not the most courageous thing in the world, dying to oneself is. Jesus is in charge of his church, so let him by stepping aside long enough to know where he wants to take you.

The only way we are going to kill the big “Ego” is to be honest with ourselves. It’s time to stop pretending we know it all, being territorial and defensive. It’s time to help others succeed and to make a change by being a part of the bigger kingdom. Remember that the Kingdom of God is the biggest church. What the church you lead becomes is most likely where you decide to take it. It’s more about who you are than what you do.

It all begins with you, the leader. If you are going to plant a church you will need the largest dose of humility you have ever known.

We need to get the dialogue going! Wouldn't that be good for all of us?