Of course it’s helpful to reflect on mistakes, especially if it will help prevent new ones, or if it can be an instructional tool to those follow after you. With grace, we reflect on those things, and we learn from them. But every now and then, a decision stands the test of time. Here are five good decisions I’ve made during my days in ministry and planting, things I would recommend to you.
I. I thought five years ahead.
As we began Imagine, I consistently had two distinct but connected thoughts that helped me go as deeply as I could before we ever went wide: (1) The environment and culture we create now determines what we can grow in five years; and (2) Other people will get what we’re doing in about 5-7 years.
Leading into the beginning of our church, I had heard too many stories from younger pastors that were about 5 years into the life of their church, wanting to grow, and evolve, and to create initiatives or establish rhythms in the community that reflected this growth—but they were constantly met with resistance. No matter how hard they preached, no matter how well they tried to communicate the vision, it didn’t work.
[Tweet “What we create now determines what we can grow in five years.”]
What they didn’t realize was that they had created a cultural environment in the church that simply could not grow these new things they wanted to see grow. The lack of attention to what kind of a culture they were creating early on worked against the very thing they wanted to create later on.
I knew that not only the nature of the conversations we had in the beginning, but how we had these conversations was helping determine what we could talk about and how we would talk in the future. I knew the kind of hospitality we wanted to be known for in the future was going to be shaped by how radically we welcomed people in the beginning. I knew the degree of honesty and vulnerability in those early days was going to affect the honesty of our church as a whole for the rest of its life.
So we were patient, we focused on quality, and we did not allow the conventional ecclesial imagination and all of its expectations for growth to validate anything we were doing in our church early on. We knew the first year and the fifth year were a lot more connected than people realize.
II. I asked the question “Is faithfulness enough?” every morning in prayer.
Consciously or unconsciously, every single church planter and pastor is asking this question beneath the surface of their lives. Another way of asking this profound question is: Is doing the best I can enough? Because if the answer to this questions is yes, then we are free to completely be ourselves, and to do the best we can to create the kind of church we believe God desires to create though us and with us.
[Tweet “Is doing the best I can enough? “]
If in times of silence and solitude, we experience the substance of the divine “yes” that is the only answer to this question, then we are liberated to move forward in a committed and free way. This is so critical to not only giving everything we have to the church, but to also maintain joy and not lose our souls in the process. The unexpected truth for some people, is that when we consciously or unconsciously ask questions about whether what we are doing is enough, what we are really asking is, “Am I enough?”
This question enables us to experience that comforting and liberating “yes” from God before we continue to say yes to the work of building the church.
III. We reclaimed the ordinary as the sacred.
The unique culture that was being created in Imagine was both expressed in and strengthened by the language we used. After about a year of gathering in our home for worship, for meals, for times of storytelling, one of the words and phrases that was used most frequently was present and the idea of being present.
This was new for people. Waking up to what we already have, going deep into the place we already are, not putting off joy, peace and life to some distant future—these concepts were realities people were experiencing for the first time in our shared life together. When we shared a meal together, we acted like it was the most important and powerful space in the world, because we believed it was. When we listened to each other’s stories, we made it seem like these stories were the most valuable artifacts we could get a hold of, because they were.
When you genuinely believe that the sacred is always lurking beneath the surface of the ordinary, other people start to recognize it as well.
[Tweet “We made the stories the most valuable artifacts, because they were.”]
IV. I understood that our church was a small part of a big story.
It is common for people to live as if the thing they’re doing is the most important thing in the world. When we do this, we end up carrying the weight of the world because we are living as if our thing is at the center of or even is the world. But here’s the thing, it’s not.
I knew from the beginning that our church was not going to revolutionize church planting for the entire world. I didn’t need to save the church. I didn’t need to do everything. The future of the church with a capital “C” was not primarily contingent on the unfolding of Imagine. I knew not to carry weight that was not given to me by God to carry.
[Tweet “I knew not to carry weight that was not given to me by God to carry.”]
V. I Started the Church without Christians.
Now, I will confess that this is not entirely true. There were people that are already identified with Jesus that were a part of our church from the beginning. While even most of them would probably not fit within most conventional church settings, we did have some Christians from the beginning.
But the reason why I say this, and why it is so important is connected with my first decision. I knew that if were were going to create the kind of culture and environment I desired and knew was essential for us to become the kind of church I dreamed of, we could not do it with Christians. I knew that if we had too many Christians early on, they would unconsciously and inevitably—while not doing so maliciously—recreate and perpetuate whatever church cultures they were coming from.
So we were adamant about not starting with a large number of Christians, and saying to Christians early on “If you could survive or especially thrive in the church you are already in, then Imagine is not for you right now.” I was not the insecure church planter that needed a bunch of people to be as present as quickly as possible in order to help me sleep at night. We did this not because we were being exclusive, we did this to work against the consumerism of the church that leads people constantly seeking the new and the novel, and to protect the culture of the church we felt called to create.
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