The Underside of Church Planting

Confession … I’m like all the people out there in the church planting world that gets geeked out about talking church planting “shop talk.”  We’re into strategies, methods, modes, and terms … “missional, incarnational, contextualization, indigenous, and so on.”  We endlessly debate issues like attractional vs. missional, steps to church planting, do you do preview services, organic / house church vs. conventional church, and so on.  Ya, we all “know” that this is really a spiritual endeavor but is it?

I’m convinced you can actually plant a church without God at all.  Look at the cults or other religions who amass thousands if not millions of people without the help of the Holy Spirit.  We can focus on all of our methods and modes and apply business principles from the world with slick marketing a voila!  A church is born!

But where is God?  It says that Paul planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth … is that for real?  How do we find and live in the tension between utilizing our God-given gifts and abilities versus complete dependence upon God?  Why do we find so many church planters who’re great CEO-types but their inner world is crumbling?  How do we have keep and maintain a robust faith?  How do we factor in the reality that there are dark spiritual entities that are out to bring our ministry down?  I read countless books, blogs, and articles on church planting and it’s almost rare that we talk about spiritual forces / warfare or the inner life of the planter.  Where is the corrective measures to bring us back into balance otherwise we’re simply slaves to creating cool websites, hip and trendy worship experiences for the convinced, marketing, strategies, and so on and all the while the inner workings of the Holy Spirit can be set aside …