And Then There Are Days...

Church-planting (a term used by its practitioners to describe starting a new church from scratch) is usually limited to those with an entrepreneurial bent. Dropping with a proverbial parachute into a new community is either adventurous and brave, or foolhardy. Church planters are applauded by churches, if they're not in the same locale. Parachuting church planters are applauded by only other church planters.

Each church planter, me included begins his work fueled by a deep sense of God's calling and commission. Each church planter envisions a future community of Christ-followers who will be joyfully and faithfully engaged in mission. But the calling of God and the commission to plant and the vision of the future all come up against the reality of real life, real times, real people, real personal shortcomings and real challenges. There are those days, and there will be those days when the vision seems to hit a cloud bank and the entrepreneurial work seems like a slog.

As yesterday ended I realized I had run out of scheduled people to meet with. Some others apparently don't view meeting with me as a necessary priority. I had spent the day, unsuccessfully I might add, trying to find the main point in the sermon text I am to deliver this coming Sunday 600 miles away in Fairbanks. My attempt at a run in the afternoon lasted all of three laps around the high school track before my right Achilles tendon told me it was not of a mind to cooperate. Working from home always includes my executive assistant, our dog, who was acting particularly weird. In a weak moment of self-pity I asked God if He had moved us here to southeast Alaska only to leave me high and dry, a church-planting failure waiting to happen, a statistic waiting to be recorded.

I am not the first to ask this question I learned this early morning. "Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion?" (Psalm 77:7-9)


The answer then, and now to me is "no." The psalm writer goes on to say that pondering God's covenant love and past works informs the present. And more often than not we are blind to the present acts of God in our midst, and in our own hearts. But our momentary blindness does not negate the activity of God.

"Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen." (Psalm 77:19)


Church planting is entrepreneurial; it requires stepping out in faith into the unknown, hoping God will intervene and do a great work. Maybe God's most dramatic and necessary present work in this endeavor is happening in my own heart, even if I don't yet see it.