Don't plant a church

I recently went out to lunch with a great guy who wants to plant a church in Santa Cruz. I believe he’s gonna’ do a great job. That said, what was ironic about our conversation was my response to his question, “what should I do?” I responded, “Move here, but don’t move here to start a church.” 

A few months back I got an email from Shawn, who was about to finish his M.Div. He felt God calling him & his family to plant a church in Santa Cruz; (BTW: I am a huge fan of more Cplants in Santa Cruz). He wanted to meet & hear our story to get an idea of what to expect. He’s a great guy (great family too.)

There are several things that make each location within the U.S. unique. St. Paul Minnesota isn’t Buffalo New York; Dallas Texas isn’t Santa Cruz California, etc. Out of the several distinctive things that make up the Bay I will share a couple in regards to our challenge. 

First: The Bay is a post-post-Christian-neo-pagan culture. They don’t want church, they don’t need church & they aren’t indifferent to our hopes. Most of them know enough about Christianity to reject it & scratch their spiritual itch with some form of Buddhism. To them we are the imperialistic remnants of the George W. Bush Religious Right. We are the closed minded, gay hating, anti-fun fungus that drags down the freewheeling liberalism which is destined to set mankind free. 

Next: The Bay is very expensive. Granted our Father “owns cattle on a thousand hills,” yet each time I try my landlord says he doesn’t accept cows; he wants cash. When we moved to Santa Cruz it was ranked the 7^th most expensive city to live in the United States & I’m sure almost every other city in the Bay is the same. As you look around you see that almost every parent of a young child is in their 40’s. Why? Because most people in the Bay are consumed with a career to pay the bills & starting a family has to wait; for us who want to start a church, just trying to pay the bills takes a large portion of the prayer life. 

Too, as Shawn discovered there are two types of jobs for church planters; the wrong jobs that pay the bills & the right jobs that don’t. The wrong job (for a church planter)  is a construction job where you get paid $35hr, but all you work with is middle-age men who don’t live in your city (my first job in SC) The right job (again for a planter) is right down the street at the local coffee shop where thousands of locals stop by each day & “everybody knows your name;” however, your mom just called because she saw you & your family on the latest episode of “repo man” because you can’t pay your bills. Cattle anyone? 

Last: You’re the pastor of a small, slowly growing, filled with wonderful & challenging people (as they all are), church. On top of that you have expectations of where the church should be, so do your friends, & so does your denomination. You live in constant tension with what should be & what is. A friend shared a story of a very promising church planter in the Bay receiving $200,000 to start a church. 4yrs later he had gathered 50 people. The other pastors in the city agreed it was typical growth; his denomination wasn’t as impressed. This ain’t Ohio. 

These are three of the things making church planting, in the Bay, a grueling exercise in faith based obedience.

Last week Shawn & I met up for lunch. He looked tired. He was worn-out because he’d been looking for jobs, coffee shops, etc, & the reality of what he was trying to do was sinking in. He still hadn’t found a place to live because the place he got accepted for reneged on their agreement: no job, no house, only a call to start a church in Santa Cruz.  He asked for my opinion. 

I told him “move here, but don’t move here to start a church.” You see, we moved here to start a church. We had a particular vision for what God was going to do (or was it what God was going to do for us?) & that plan never materialized, which made many of us struggle because it failed. However, the only thing to fail was our idea of what God was calling us to & not what actually materialized, which is really a great thing; yet the process is a hard road to travel & an easy road to wander off of.  

We’ve realized starting a church in the Bay might take a lifetime. Too, what you think of church might not be what God is calling you to: Sermons, seats, video clips, young people, Caucasians, middle-class, heterosexual, etc. It’s a bit more complicated in the Bay & one thing God has shown me is: Slow down long enough to live life because that’s what everyone in the Bay (everywhere actually) is having the greatest difficulty doing: Living life, which is exactly what Jesus came to give…life.  

So I told Shawn “move down here, get a good paying job, allow your wife & family a transition time, learn the rhythms of Santa Cruz culture, make some friends, & then after about 2yrs get your support team & start a church.” I don’t think we’re doing church planters, in the Bay at least, any justice when we front load them to death with unrealistic expectations on top of an unrealistic financial situation. 

What used to take a shingle with the name Vineyard, a few Sundays, & a few good songs is a thing of the past. We’re drinking new wine & need new wineskins, which take time to mature.

Dear Sean: Don’t plant a church, go live a life.  

The Perils of a Godly Man

I recently opened a message from a woman I assumed I went to Highschool with. What followed was a rather interesting dialogue as I discovered I was being given a "proposal." I think we get proposals often, sometimes from simple things, & other times we get a proposal that will shipwreck who we are. I wish I always made the right choice when presented with a enticing proposal, but "very often" will have to sustain me to the finish line.

Below is the actual dialogue between my suitor & I via Facebook:
--You look good in your profile picture, are you still single? Smile!!!!
--What's up Nancy. Thanks for the compliment. I've been married for 11 years & have 3 incredible kids. I hope you're doing well. Blessings.
--Yes, i am doing good and you?
--We're doing great. We live in Santa Cruz & are a part of a really cool faith community here following Jesus. What have you been up to?
--Nothing much just wish we could get to know each other and see how it goes, how are your kids doing as well?
--How do we know each other Nancy?
--well, maybe we can exchange email
--Hey Nancy I don't know if you caught on or not, but I'm a happily married man. Too, I have three kids. What would it have been like for your dad to accept some invitation from another woman? What would that have done to your life? Is that what you'd like to do to my family?

Maybe she's still thinking about my questions... 

Bi-vocational Church People

What's up party people. Well I'm sorry I haven't been posting on this blog, but summer time is when the livings easy, yet at the same time it's, as usual, chaotic. That said it's been chaotic in wonderful ways.

The Rainbow Gathering was incredible. We met all sorts of wonderful people, met all sorts of Santa Cruz people, worshiped God, served a ton of hippies veggie food, prayed & saw an ear healed, bathed in a 40 degree creek, & drank rocket fuel coffee.

Tomorrow night we are going to host our 2nd open invited Kirtan. A Kirtan is an Hindu time of worship; however, we worship Yeshua through the form of Kirtan & so host Yeshu Kirtans. We expect 20+ people to come worship Yeshua with us, which will be amazing.

When we moved to Santa Cruz we knew church would be different. We didn't expect to go to Rainbow Gatherings & sing songs to Jesus in Hindi. However, our plans get us to a place where God is able to shape us into what He desires for a specific local. "Plans are worthless; planning is paramount." 

That's about it; I'm off to my landscaping job, which is in a good way keeping me busy & well fed. I would assume many more church planters in the Bay are going to be Bi-Vocational. I wish I could devote more time to other things like this blog, but that's not where God has me.

I hope to write soon, but would love for anyone who wants to post on this blog to send me an email & I'll put it up.Got any thoughts you'd like to throw up on this blog?

Namaste

The Rainbow Family

Hey everybody I hope you're doing great. One of the things church planting has taught me is that you never know where the relationships you create are going to lead you. More than that, you never know how your plans will lead you into the incredible dreams God had for you & your church plant.

This week my family & I, & some friends from our church, are off to the Rainbow Gathering in Washington. This is a festival dating back to the 60's where people from all walks of life gathered together in a national forest to pray for peace. Now, several years later, this event hosts upward of 10,000 people from all over the world to eat, drink, pray, smoke weed, & enjoy life.

We're headed up there with a great group called the Bread of Life. They are a "Kitchen" who serves the Gathering by sharing both food & Jesus. This will be our first Gathering as a family & we're excited to see what God is going to do as many of the Rainbow people hail from Santa Cruz. We're not sure what to expect, but sharing food & Jesus seems simple enough & both have a special place in our hearts.

This last week I sat at the graduation of some of our church family. One of the speakers shared a quote I thought was very applicable to church planting: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” -- Dwight D. Eisenhower We never planned to share a week of our lives with 10,000 hippies in the forests of Washington; however, in our planning we decided to see where God wanted us to go & see what doors that led to. Our plans might not be totally worthless, but our church plants, lives for that matter, are often less the result of our incredible ability to predict the future & more the result of our willingness to be prepared.

Namaste,

Sean

Failure?

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

These posts apparently struck a nerve. I’m grateful for the long list of people who wrote. Most of those correspondences were private, but a few were public and added significantly to the insights I was trying to capture:

• 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

My sincere and humble thanks to all who have written.
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.

Now you tell me...

“Pastoral work is slow and tedious. Be patient. It’s not easy or exhilarating. It’s plodding. In some ways its easy. Just stay there and be faithful. Pray. Know the names of the people in your community. Trust them and see them as blossoming saints, even if they don’t act like it.” Eugene Peterson