(This is a longer than usual post, but it is because there are so many things about this that we get wrong - and the Kingdom pays for it.)
People have often asked me, "When did you feel 'called' to church planting?" Honestly, I never did and still don't. For me, it was a matter of seeing a challenging need and feeling I could meet it. There was nothing romantic or mystical about it. No fire on the mountain. No sense of floating or destiny. No burning, tearful moments of anxious prayer. No feeling of exploding if I didn’t. It just made sense to me.
There's a lot of debate on this subject. The whole idea of a "divine calling" gets bantered around a lot - and it gets used very loosely by a lot of people who don't wanna have their wishes questioned, so they yank out a divine trump card intended to protectively closes down the conversation and stop the questioning.
I think the most common thing I see is guys who have personality challenges and social skills issues that keep them from fitting in somewhere else, so - at best - they wanna be a part of something bigger than themselves; at worst - they wanna be in a position of "authority"...so they feel "called" to full-time ministry. (Weak men are always drawn to positions of power.) This somehow leads them to church planting.
All of that has brought me to the conclusion that if someone has to tell me they are "called to vocational ministry" (especially when they are not currently active in one), they are not - just like the guy who has to tell you he's handsome. You can see whether he is or not with your own eyes. If he has to tell you, it's because he's trying to convince himself, not you, but he desperately needs you to participate in the delusion.
I never wanted to be a church planter. In fact, I even got out of the ministry for a year. All of my vocational ministry life, I've been a square peg in a round hole. I've always been around congregations who - at that time in their life anyhow - valued form and decorum over reality and effectiveness. There was always a lot of posturing and politics - a lot of roles and posing. I've really tried, but I'm just not that kind of person.
My heart, since I was a teen working in our church's bus ministry, has been for the average Joe, teaching him, and seeing him come to Christ, but all the politics and busy-work of ministry prevented me from that. I could see what needed to be done, but my congregations all fought it. They were more about taking care of their own. I would work hard to bring my friends and neighbors to church, and after they'd come, they'd say, "We love you, but we don't get all that posturing and form. We just wanna know what the Bible says. We don't wanna hafta join some club and become like people we don't respect."
After a year long break from ministry (and my massive battle with depression due, in large part, to my rejection of how God had wired me), we accepted a ministry with an older established church Midwestern congregation. Almost immediately, I realized there was a big problem with many of the congregations of our State: there was the "graying" of the Church. Many of the congregations were very stable, but they were aging and not attracting younger people, and in decline. The two-fold problem with this became very clear:
1. It was simply a matter of time until congregations literally died of old age.
2. There seemed to be no serious effort being made to reach the younger generation of Iowans.
Congregations talked about the need to reach young people, but in reality very little effort was being directed toward actually reaching them.
I came to see what I call "The Problem of the Unwanted Harvest." Congregations all prayed for the salvation of many people in their community, but they wanted them to get saved at the church down the street. They didn't wanna hafta deal with the stress and baggage of new believers within their own little already comfortable church families. My heart ached to be the Church Down the Street.
I'd been asked to serve on the Board of Directors of the Christian Evangelistic Mission of Iowa (CEM) and had done so for several months when the other board members began to ask if I’d be interested in planting a new church in the Quad Cities.
About that same time, I'd driven to Kansas City to participate in a church growth conference to learn what I could do to help our congregation break through the 200 Barrier. I loaded up all of the information I could gather about our congregation including stats, newsletters, and maps, and headed out to be there when the doors were unlocked at the conference site.
The conference speaker was C. Peter Wagner, and I was sitting in the dark auditorium when he and the janitor flipped on the lights, and immediately we hit it off and spent several hours over the next day-and-a-half talking about growth ideas for our congregation. At the end of the day, Wagner said to me, "You know, it's gonna be very hard in an older congregation to do the things you need to do and make the changes you need to make to reach the people you need to be reaching. Older Christians in older congregations have a vested interest in keeping things they way they are. Have you ever thought about planting a new congregation?" "No," I told him, "that's not something I've ever wanted to consider." "Well," Wagner said, "I think you should consider it. You've got the right ideas and approach. If I were you, I'd find a way to start a new church with the new style you're thinking about.”
I went home and began to share this plan with our elders and deacons, but the deacons pretty much didn't accept the idea and, it became clear to me, probably never would. (That congregation has continued to struggle since.) Steph (my wife and best friend) and I began to pray about what to do - convinced the status quo was not the Lord's will for His church - and within a period of about ten days, we received unsolicited inquiries about planting new churches in California, Texas, and Colorado!
We slowly determined that a new, non-traditional congregation was the way the Lord was leading. Our love for the Midwest opened us up to to investigating CEM's suggestion for a new congregation in the Quad Cities, specifically Davenport, Iowa. I made several trips here to the area to assess the need and learn about the people. I studied the growth and ministries of other congregations in the area, visited with countless people, and surveyed a large number of unchurched people about why they weren’t involved in church. After much prayer and study, we resigned our ministry in Des Moines and on Labor Day 1997 moved to Davenport under CEM's sponsorship to plant a new congregation.
Once we were located here, the Lord began to draw people to Adventure — slowly at first, and then more quickly as the final launch date approached. God brought us people with little or no church background — people with a desire to participate in a place of grace, a place where people matter more than tradition, a place where a person's future matters more than his past — a place where it was never church as usual.
Over a period of months leading into Labor Day of 1998, Adventure developed and grew until the day of its official birth, September 13, 1998.
Back to my original point: Do I feel called to here? No, and never once have I claimed to be. It was just obvious to me that this was a place where we could serve the Lord and thrive in ministry the way Jesus wanted it to be. In hindsight, it was clearly the right thing.
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