My friend Jason & his family set out to plant a Vineyard Church in San Diego. Things didn't work out how they thought they should. That said, Jason has a great deal of wisdom to share with all of us who desire to be a part of following Jesus with & from within a community. Here's one of his blog posts. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Missional postmortem: Conclusions
It’s been 5 months. I’ve taken my time with this postmortem because it’s been tough to separate my emotions from my observations, but after stepping away from blogging (and from my faith) for Lent, the time has come to wrap this up.For those who aren’t up to speed, here are the series installments:
- So when does the fruitfulness begin?
- Ikon timeline
- Intentionally unorthodox decisions that may have led to morbidity
- Complicating factors and personal reflections
- Some personal struggles, part 1
- Some personal struggles, part 2
- Jamie Arpin-Ricci: Surviving Missional
- David Fitch: Death of a Church Plant – Some Reflections and Hope for the Future of Missional Church Planting
- Everyday Mission (Mike Bishop): An Open Letter to Jason Coker
Conclusions
Why did Ikon fail? Why after about a year of strong momentum did we experience a fairly rapid loss of energy and decline? There are, I think, a few essential reasons:
1. We didn’t have partners.
Over the 18 months we gathered we had at least three individuals or couples who expressed some level of interest in joining me and Jenell as leaders – but the timing just wasn’t right for any of them. Moreover, ultimately everyone lived too far apart to spend much time together and everyone (including us) was too busy working and raising kids to commit the time necessary to build the strong sense of community that might bring this about.
If I could do it again: I would hold off calling our gathering a “church plant” (or anything) until there was a small core of truly committed people – even if that took years. In fact, I think Ikon would still be meeting if I hadn’t impatiently raised the stakes by declaring we were going to become a “church.” Doing so prematurely increased the pressure on everyone, especially on myself and my wife.
2. We didn’t have an aesthetic element of worship
I’m a good teacher, and I can facilitate contemplative practices – but that’s not enough to enrich most people’s spiritual lives. The absence of this element in our gatherings took a toll on all of us.
If I could do it again: See #1. By prematurely calling our gig a church plant, I elicited an expectation for “worship” in people. It would have been better to wait until we had the gifts we needed to fill out a church mission. We should have just gathered, dialogued, laughed, played, broken bread, drank wine, and made some waves by serving in the community now and again…in short, we should have just had fun being a fringy group that didn’t have to be defined until enough people came along who had the gift mix and commitment to be more.
3. I ceased to be a disciple
Three years ago when I left my job as an Executive Pastor in a large church I set out to become a non-professional pastor – what I found out was I didn’t know how to be a non-professional Christian.
As a pastor, I loved spending all my time, energy, and thoughts on my faith. I loved going to my office every day of the week. I loved the pace, the studying, the constant contemplation of theology, the time for prayer, the counseling of distraught people, and, most of all, the preaching in front of attentive crowds. I loved doing this for a living. It was a great life.
But I’ve discovered that was a privileged life that shared little in common with the people I led.
I’ve found it is incredibly difficult to be that kind of Christian when you’re not getting paid for it. When I work 50 hours or so a week (at one or several jobs), and have a family to attend to, and constantly stress about not being able to pay the bills, it’s incredibly hard to spend time reading scripture, or being attentive to the work of God around me, or think in a disciplined way about theology, or be involved in a ministry… or even pray meaningfully.
So, I didn’t do much of any of that. After about a year of leading the group that way I simply ran out of steam. I’d lost my spiritual depth and that, coupled with the professional and financial difficulties I encountered, led to a pretty severe crisis of faith.
If I could do it again: I wouldn’t. Frankly, I don’t have any business leading any kind of discipleship group until I’ve learned to be a disciple myself (without getting paid for it).
What’s next?
I really don’t know. What’s interesting is that while I’ve had very little favor with the church effort, I have had tremendous favor in my professional life in the last 10 months since getting hired on by my current employer. Last week I was offered a promotion to a high level position in the organization, which I’ve accepted and that new job will be completely engrossing, so it’s hard to imagine being involved in any kind of ministry effort on the side. Maybe that is the direction God has for me.
So I’ll work and wait – and try to learn to be a Christian again.
