Wednesday Planter: "To thine own self, be true"

"To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." - William Shakespeare

If you're gonna be a church planter, you've just flat gotta know yourself: your personality, your emotional needs, your strengths and weaknesses, and where you fit into the world - and just as important: where you don't.

In 1994, I worked for a slowly imploding family-led NGO and, unfortunately for me, I was not part of the family. We clashed. In an effort to try to "fix" me, our patriarch took the whole staff for a pysch review to have our personalities looked at and to learn why we didn't mesh. (My favorite part of the review was when my boss shouted about me, "He's not a team player!" The Pshrink pulled out the paperwork and said, "Actually, he's the only who is a team player.") As a part of that review, I received hundreds of pages of objective observations/information about myself. As I read it, there was no doubt whatsoever in my mind that it was accurate. It was as if someone had looked into a hidden box in the secret closet within my heart of hearts - a place I didn't even want to acknowledge existed. I saw on paper, for the first time ever, my quirks, my actual - not "perceived" - strengths, my real weaknesses, and the challenges of my personality.

Hearing a Pshrink describe me was painful, but it was a good painful - like relocating a dislocated shoulder or having the stabbing pain of a broken tooth end when it's pulled. It was information I could use. It was a resource that gave me the chance to change and to do something about me, and it gave me a way to measure the change.

I still read that paperwork a couple times year - and it's been 17+ years ago since I was a part of that, but it reminds me of my nature and keeps me moving forward.

I've become content knowing I best serve in a blue collar, average Joe setting. I simply love and understand common people who are just trying to get by day to day and who struggle with living out the Christian life in a grimy, gritty, not-so-friendly world. And I can help them, not because I'm better, but because I'm only a little further down the trail in my own spiritual journey.

The bottom line is this: Because I knew those things about me, I could do something about me. And I did.

If you're interested in church planting, all I can say is that if you think you can skip or don't need the assessment process, you probably think you're the exception to many other things, too, and the universe levies a heavy tax against that level of arrogance and ignorance.

Wednesday Planter: Personal Transition #10: Identity and reputation are not the same thing.

I started learning this concept back in late 1994 just before I moved to pastor my first church in Iowa. I first saw it when I was checking up on that congregation during my interview process with them. (I'll guarantee I did more research into them than they did into me.) I called four unrelated congregations in the area, explained who I was, and asked those churches what they knew about the congregation I was interviewing. Three knew nothing except where it was once I gave the address, and the remaining one didn’t even remember seeing a church at that location. One of the three who remembered it only when I gave the address pastored in a church building about 100 yards south of the one in question – on the same street!

I worked hard at that congregation to make sure it had an identity within the community, but due to their reputation (in some cases a lack of one) I was starting with their deficit. The experience helped me realize how important this concept is.

I put a lot of effort into identity management when Adventure began 12+ years ago. To this day, when people see our logo or even my Jeep, they know who we are, but I've learned about something even better than identity.

I was driving to a meeting at my office one day when I saw a woman parked between the lanes on the interstate (yes, we have interstates in Iowa) with a flat. I made eye contact with her but kept going because I didn’t have time and was sure she’d call someone and be fine. As I pulled off my exit, I felt a pang of guilt and headed back to help her.

I pulled up behind her, got out, asked her to stay in her car, and if she could pop the trunk from the inside. She did, I replaced her flat with her spare, and went up to tell her good bye and to have someone check that spare for her. Her cheeks were wet with tears when I went up to the window. She told me something that shook me: “I saw your Jeep go by, and I saw you see me. I’ve never been to your church, but I’ve heard things, and I knew you’d be back to help me. Thank you.”

Your identity will get you recognized within a community, but your reputation will determine how you are viewed and whether or not you're accepted. Put your emphasis on developing your reputation, not your logo. Think in terms of the reputation and the identity will take care of itself.

Wednesday Planter: Personal Transition #9: People attend where they prefer, not where they are impressed.

I like cool stuff. I've always liked the bleeding edge of creativity. I like being unique. I like doing things that make other people just go "huh?"

I was pushing Saturday evening service as an outreach more than 20 years ago, and the congregation I proposed it to (the one I was pastoring at the time) nearly lynched me. One guy - an elder and a local school district administrator - actually asked me if I really thought the apostles (or any early Christians) would have ever gone to church on Saturday night. So much for the state of public education. :) That's how it's always been for me - a square peg in a round hole.

When I came to Davenport to plant, I was given more freedom than most pastor-types can even imagine in their wildest dreams...and with that came the freedom to be so novel and to be so *"purple" that people would flinch. I still like being that way, but I've learned that being novel and getting people to look at what you're doing and listen to what you saying isn't the same thing as reaching people. It's also not really that good of a goal.

A lot of people knew who we were, but they didn't love us. Being purple got us known, but I still wanted people to prefer us...I wanted them to want to be here with us. We had people, no doubt, but it wasn't until things got boring to me and people still kept on coming that I started to get it.

We were so broke at the time that we kinda gave up on being so unique and just tried to pay the bills. Then when I'd ask new people how they heard about us, it wasn't the direct mail, the (serious waste of money on) TV ads, or even our special events. The truth was that out best outreach was the changed lives they saw in their friends - and it was those changed lives that gave the personal invitation from their friends actual credibility. It was actually accomplishing our goal that made us purple.

That realization caused me to focus more on meeting basic personal needs via our teaching from God's Word and other ministries than worry about being unique. I still like uniqueness (that's part of how God has gifted me), but it's actually about people, about meeting their needs, about seeing their lives changed for the better, and about keeping the focus on those things instead. And now, there's been a different by-product: people not only love our uniqueness, they contribute to it! But better yet, they love us.

And they continue to choose us over many other things they could be doing or places they could be going!

-----

*Godin, Seth (2009). The Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. NY: Portfolio. ISBN-10: 1591843170 / ISBN-13: 978-1591843177

Wednesday Planter: Personal Transition #8: From perfectionist to friend.

I'm a perfectionist. When I was in high school, I often spent 30 minutes just on my hair! I think I was the paleontological ancestor of the metro-sexual. Ha! (I'm sure I would hate that kid today if he were still around!)

I think my perfectionism hurt me in my early ministry days. No. Actually I know it did. I didn't call it "perfectionism." I called it "excellence" because that made it God-honoring and sounded professional, but it was still perfectionism - something that masks the fear of not being accepted by others. Doing things “polished and shiny” was my goal. Then I had an epiphany in a really strange location.

It was a restaurant called "Meers" outside of Lawton, OK. It’s a dirty, out-of-the-way, greasy, dilapidated building (last time I was there it was insulated by being wrapping in plastic - the WHOLE building). I went there twice with a friend. The first time, the waitress addressed him by his first name. The second time, she addressed me by mine. It was a strangely welcoming event. I felt as if I were with friends.

I barely remembered her, but she taught me a lesson: People skipped Red Lobster and the Beefeater with their servers in starched and pressed uniforms and drove 25 miles into nowhere to eat in a plastic lined shack because the server knew their name. Their decision was made by personality preference - over quality, by choosing welcomed over catered to. They were choosing where they were comfortable over what made a better social impression. They simply wanted to like where they were.

In reality, the food was just "okay" at Meers, but it was the atmosphere of friendship and the preference people had for that atmosphere that caused the half-hour drive and the sale. Whoa.

Too many of us want the church experience to be perfect rather than comfortable. You can’t have both.

So I've worked hard to put my perfectionism to rest and instead worked to create a place that people would choose to enjoy. Things are still done well - competently, but I'm not so anal about perfection. And guests are greeted on their first visit with the words, “Welcome home.” Some smile. Some cry. Some don’t get it until later. But it works.

Wednesday Planter: Personal Transition #6: From self-focused to Kingdom-focused.

I've worked in a string of several very shallow, very selfish congregations. That sounds harsh, but it's true. It's also true that each of those shallow, selfish congregations had a shallow, selfish pastor at the time I was there. So, honestly, we both got what we deserved. :)

We live in a me-oriented society - so people (including Christians) are trained to be selfish from their first breath. That carries over into the church-at-large, too. Many Christians believe that the Church exists to serve and cater to them, but not to actually grow them or challenge them.

Rather than baptize people when they made their confession of faith, I saved up those baptisms until Sunday when we could do them in front of the church and people could say, "Man, that pastor's sure doing a good job getting those people baptized." You know, it was job security - as I've said before, I didn't see those people so much as additions to the Kingdom as I saw them as job security, the proverbial loaf of bread.

I had to move from fulfilling a perverted personal need (the need to be liked and affirmed) to instilling a kingdom motivation inside me: the desire to be like Jesus. Unfortunately, my unhealthy need for approval was burying the healthy choice I needed to make. I was trapped in a life-paradigm I couldn't get out of.

A pastor friend I admired finally confronted me: "I don't know what to do with you. You're so concerned about what people think. You're so locked into doing rather than being. You wanna do what the apostles did, but you don't wanna be what the apostles were. Ministry wasn't a career for them. It was a lifestyle. It had nothing to do with a paycheck. They would have done it - and did - for free while doing other things. Until you come to that point, you're never gonna get it."

Those were some of the most painful words ever spoken to me, and it took me several more years of professional abuse and quite a few hours with a Christian counselor before I could start to get it. Honestly, I know that I still don't get it, not at the level I should, but at least I've headed in that direction and away from my own phobias and insecurities. That feels good.

Wednesday Planter: Personal Transition #4: Jesus builds the church; I don't.

I used to flat old-school work my butt off and I prided myself on it. Yet my perfectionist side considered me a failure. I could not get my stupid churches to grow. I could blame a lot of different people and different things, and those would all be valid, but since I believe everything rises and falls on leadership, I can't hide behind those other things. I had to take responsibility for my part. I wasn't a leader. And I considered myself a failure - such a failure that I left pastoral ministry for a year and even messed up my body's ability to regulate itself and its moods, so I wasn't just a crash and burn. I was an epic crash and burn.

Then I went to a godly counselor in Columbus, IN, named John Brumbaugh, graciously paid for by our then-church home (a great congregation named New Hope Christian Church). John took me on a several days long cathartic journey that brought out my failings, my insecurities, my arrogance, and let me purge them for my own health.

One day he mentioned a verse where Jesus was talking to Peter about the foundation of the church, but it was the center section that hit me and rocked my life: "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it (Matthew 16:18 NIV)." In all of my years of study and education, how in the world did I miss that? Jesus said He would build the church. In fact, He didn't ask me to do anything of the kind.

With that new perspective, I went back into ministry and for the first time in my life actually enjoyed it - and it was a fairly unhealthy, dysfunctional church! :) I had learned that my role wasn't to do God's construction work for Him, but to make sure that I didn't interfere - and that no one else did either.

That's why I have a pang of conscience when I use the term "church planter" in reference to myself. I'm not really a planter. God's the Planter. I'm just a gardener that works to keep the weeds out of His way as much as I can. I still work my butt off, but my focus is now His, not mine pretending to be His.

Wednesday Planter: Personal Transitions in Planting

Personal Transitions in Planting

My whole entry into church planting was spurred by a series of ministries I had in congregations which (at least at the time) had no interest in being effective or in changing. They feigned interest in reaching new people, provided those new people thought like them, dressed like them, talked like them, and did what they were told by them. That raised serious concerns for me.

My brother Tim was the first up close church planter I knew. My brother Matt was the second. They spurred me on by showing me how we could break out of the traditional mold and reach people many Christians would simply write off.

Since my ordination in 1983, it’s always jumped out at me was how the rest of the world was changing its styles, tastes, focus, and energy, but the church wasn’t: The church saw change as a threat. Communities were growing, yet congregations in them remained flat or declining. I pondered, “Why is everything booming but the church?”

I eventually realized businesses and communities were thriving because of change, something in which the church seemed to have no interest. My Bible College years found me — much to the chagrin of a couple profs — questioning what was essential for the church and what was not. I didn’t question theology. I questioned methodology. I began working to distinguish the difference between biblical teaching and modern practice. (In my childhood, you'd have thought short-hair, suits and ties, and hymns WERE biblical!) To this day, I know if I ask a pastor whether he understands the difference between biblical teaching and his denom’s practices – and he glazes over – he's in trouble.

The conclusion I came to is that in order for the church to be relevant to real life and to survive into the future, it needs to understand the change taking place around it, and transition its methodology (not theology!) to reach people.

At Adventure, we say up front in our Articles of Incorporation and our By-Laws: “Each generation of this congregation will continually prepare itself to minister to the following two generations.”

The message stays the same, but how it's delivered and presented must change. That requires a lot of personal transitions for church leaders. Over the next ten Wednesdays, I wanna share with you the transitions I had to make for this to happen for me personally.