Church Planting and Lessons Learned

I didn't set out to be a church planter, a guy who starts churches from scratch. It just happened. Church planting is a young man's game. And I now only qualify as being young at heart.

And after some years of starting churches I realize my perspective is changing, and I've learned some things along the way.

Our first church plant was indirectly based on a church model that wasn't ultimately sustainable. And, if that model had been sustainable, I wasn't good enough to do the sustaining. I'm an okay preacher, but no one downloads my podcasts. I don't have any podcasts for you to download. I don't write books.

Our little church is now growing. A couple of people (really, just a couple) have asked me in recent days, "What are you doing different?" My answer: "nothing." (I won't be writing any books on church planting success, unless it's entitled" "Just Show Up.")

Now in our second church plant, I realize I've had to learn some things, some vital lessons. And these lessons have caused me to ask questions of myself:

1) Isn't it possible that there can be more than one right way to plant a church? (I'm not sure I necessarily have a corner on the methodology market.)
2) Is it really reasonable to think our church is the first one to "do it right" in our city? (Two problems with this: a) we're not the first, and b) we don't necessarily do it right.)
3) Am I confident that my chosen priorities and methods are what the people in this city need? (No, I'm not always confident.)

...and 4) When does a church plant stop being a church plant? (Maybe when we stop using church plant as an excuse for a lack of maturity.)

We're in a season at Radiant Church Juneau where we are learning what it means to be disciples of Jesus. Strangely, I'm learning along with everyone else. The more I know, the more I know I don't know.

We're learning that having more than one leader is a good thing. (My own capacities now need to intentionally emphasize quality over quantity. It's an age thing.) And here on a Monday morning, I am perhaps more encouraged by the guys stepping up to help lead than I am over anything else going on in our church.

Finally, I am learning that mission drift, losing sight of the role and purpose of the church to become and make disciples, is what moves any church from purposeful vitality to static irrelevance. I fear this more than anything.

It may be that our church will continue to grow. It won't be because of me. The credit for that will go to the One who is the real King. It's His church. Jesus said He would build it. And He's telling me to continue learning my lessons...and not get in the way.

Fog and Free Will

I picked up a work gig for the second half of summer, driving a shuttle van for tourists. These visitors pay for the fulfillment of bucket list items: flying in a helicopter, speeding on an airboat in a fjord, walking on a glacier. It's been fun, meeting people from all over the world. They ask questions about Juneau and Alaska, and I do my best to respond with at least nearly correct answers. On good days (depending on how you look at it) it means long days for me. And east-coasters are good tippers.

But, helicopters do not fly when the pilots cannot see. Rain and wind are not the problems, but fog is the nemesis, the buzzkill, the enemy of all things fun for adventure-seeking tourists, and the vendors who provide those adventures.

This week the fog has been in control; sometimes in the mornings, sometimes all day. All of "us" in the tourism business here in SE Alaska are busy checking weather forecasts and making friends with the NOAA forecasters. (I already have my inside sources.)

When we don't fly, we disappoint tourists. And vendors (including my bosses) go unpaid. Vendors work hard. The profit margin for the vendors is slim; profits may not be actualized until season's end. And someone asked me, "How does free will relate to bad weather?"

Interesting question. Caught me off-guard. Didn't have a thorough or even trite response to offer. But, in the fog-bound time since, I've pondered the question, which I think may be more akin to "Where is God in this bad weather?"

First ponder point: God controls the weather. He invented weather, so it is His to control. He controls it all the time. Mankind gets no vote in the matter.

Next ponder point: Everything God thinks and does is good...and right...and perfect. We humans still want to pretend we control our lives, therefore we want to play judge and jury, even over the God who made us. We want God to play by our rules. It takes faith, serious, trusting faith, to believe that everything God does is good and right and perfect, when our circumstances or unmet desires may not seem to agree.

Final ponder point: God always has a plan. His plan is always a better plan for us than any of us could conceive or contrive. He is a good father in that way; He gives us what we need, instead of just what we think we want. Sometimes children need their father to help them eventually desire better. He wants us to desire relationship with Him.

It. Could.Be. that God wants us to trust him, rather than the weather forecast, rather than the days's count of paying tourists seat-belted into helicopters, rather than the number of work hours and tips I can hope to add to the ledger.

It may be that God rolled the fog in this week so I would have more time to contemplate and appreciate God's greater purposes, that His intentions for me are greater than my own, that my trust in Him would learn to outweigh my interest in more driving hours and tips from east-coasters. I may have some measure of free will, but God controls the fog.

Your Kingdom Come, Your Will be Done!

My heart is broken today; broken over the hurts represented in our church, and in our city. Recent conversations have included people who are ill, people who are fearful for their unborn children, and with beloved people in our church whose employment forces them to soon relocate from Juneau, from us. It seems the gun crime, murder and suicide rates in our city have dramatically risen. We are politically and ideologically divided. Juneau is a beautiful city; and we are a mess!

We dream of, we hope for something better.

In this, I am increasingly aware of the depth of my own sin. I am not at all the husband, father, friend, church-planter, pastor or leader I want to be. I am, and we are a hopeless people...except for the abundant grace and mercy found in the gospel of Jesus. And the gospel trumps everything in the previous paragraphs. For it is only in the gospel of Jesus that we find our hope.

Together with the Radiant Churches in Anchorage and Fairbanks we here in Juneau have been preaching through the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7.) At the moment we are drilling down into the Lord's Prayer, where Jesus taught His disciples (and a large number of onlookers) "how" to pray, and more importantly, "what" to pray for.

This coming Sunday we focus on that (sometimes mechanically) oft-repeated phrase, "Your Kingdom come; Your will be done." When the preacher of all preachers, Jesus, preached, He proclaimed the "Kingdom of God," calling His listeners to repent and believe. All of Scripture points to Jesus as the hero and solution, the cornerstone of the already present and eventually fully consummated Kingdom of God; here, with us. Everything made new. Everything made right.

God is our Father, our "Abba," our Dad. Everything He says and does is good, and right, and perfect. And He wants everything good, right and perfect for us; for our goodness, our rightness and our perfection. He is a good Dad Who gives good gifts to His children. He treasures us, like a perfect King treasures the subjects of His perfect Kingdom.

"And the Lord has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession, as he has promised you, and that you are to keep all his commandments, and that he will set you in praise and in fame and in honor high above all nations that he has made, and that you shall be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he promised." (Deuteronomy 26:18-19)

But...and there's always a but...praying for (begging for) God to fix our lives and our city, to bring His Kingdom closer, asking that His will be done requires something of us - a willingness to experience a whole-hearted, grand scale, radically revolutionary transformation in us, His children, His Kingdom citizens.

"And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live." (Deuteronomy 30:6)

When we ask God to bring His Kingdom closer, when we pray for His will to be done, we are (intentionally or inadvertently) asking our Father in heaven to destroy our own little kingdoms, to break our own agendas, to force us to look upward instead of gazing at the altar of our own mirrors.

So that we, the Church, the Bride of Christ, purchased by the death of the Groom, can call on God as our Father, to seek His glory and the fame of Jesus. In so doing, He calls us His "chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that [we] may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called [us] out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once [we] were not a people, but now [we] are God's people; once [we] had not received mercy, but now [we] have received mercy." (1 Peter 2:9-10)

We are God's display people. We are His children, His Kingdom citizens, trophies of His grace. We pray for God's Kingdom to come, because we want to finally be home, here, with Him.

While I may be broken hearted, I pray for much better, His better
. Praise God for the hope we have in Jesus Christ, the hope for our city and her citizens.