Confessions of a Misguided Church Planter
For the past 8 years I’ve been involved in church planting in one form or another.
My initial foray into church planting began in a cabin on a hillside in remote southeast Ohio; a place where the only noise was cattle mooing from a green carpeted valley, and the occasional rumble of lumbering trains winding through rolling hills.
I had only been in full-time vocational ministry a few months when a weight of discontentment settled on me like strep throat on tonsils.
I had gone to the cabin to find an answer for the weight.
During the deafening silence of three days of prayer, fasting and listening for the voice of God the answer came in a vision for a church plant in the Short North of Columbus, Ohio. It was a place I wasn’t that familiar with, but knew that it was growing in popularity among artists, Bohemians and affluent upwardly mobile folks and a significant gay population.
The vision was overwhelming, so I demanded of God 100 confirmations before I would do it. A simple fleece was not enough for me; I’d screwed so many things up in life prior to this that I couldn’t risk this being something that was my creation.
It took two years for the 100 confirmations; they came in mysteries and circumstance, people and places and doubts and fears; and, out of all that, was born Ekklesia Church.
For six years I’ve watched God do things that could only be attributed to Him; redemption, transformation and journeys beyond a dreamer’s dreams.
Two years ago I was involved in my second church plant; a new work in Franklinton, aka The Bottoms. It was a collaborative effort between Ekklesia, some of our sister churches and our mother church. At times it was like herding cats. It was a hybrid church that the faint-of-heart dare not attempt, but that the senseless might, and the misguided plows headlong into.
My confession is that I have been a misguided church planter.
Not in total, but certainly over the past two years.
Like Jacob, I now walk with a limp because of wrestling.
I’ve wrestled with the truth, just as Jacob finally saw the truth of what he was—Deceiver. I walk with a limp because of the pain of truth—truth that I’ve been a misguided church planter.
I had the grave misfortune of being indoctrinated with the poison of “The Church Growth Movement.” My indoctrination was simply perpetuated by individuals who had themselves been indoctrinated with the same poison.
In 1972 my dad purchased several vacant lots in a township in my hometown of Lima, Ohio. The lots had been the dumping ground for a neighborhood of transplanted Appalachians; the lots were covered with tree branches, piles of brick and concrete block pieces, tires, scraps of metal, tossed wooden pallets and myriad other discards of life and living.
My dad had a neighbor bring in his backhoe and dig a large hole on one lot, then had everything shoved into the hole and buried. That year construction on the foundation of a new house began; the only problem was my uncle, who had been a brick mason, was doing the work. My uncle was a stone cold alcoholic who had been involved in a horrific head-on train accident between two trains while returning from WWII.
My uncle was one of two survivors of the train accident; he had a metal plate in his head, injuries too numerous to name, and buried it all daily beneath a sea of beer and sometimes whiskey.
As such, it was really no surprise that when the Framers came to begin constructing the walls they discovered the foundation was not squared. Part of the foundation had to be removed and rebuilt by somebody who wasn’t intoxicated while doing the work.
If there ever was a church that resembled my uncle it had to have been the church at Corinth in the New Testament. I imagine there was more mess at Corinth than Paul’s letters detailed, just as there was more mess in my uncle’s life than the symptom of drunkenness revealed.
This week I was reading 1 Corinthians 3, and God wouldn’t allow me to escape the mirror the pages had turned into.
The Corinthian church was steeped in disunity; in fact, I believe that denominationalism had its ugly roots in Corinth. Those roots were anchored in the soil of personality worship; various factions had started to follow Personalities like ants marching toward a melting Tootsie Roll on a summer sidewalk in South Florida.
Some followed Peter, some followed Apollos and some followed Paul; the Personalities had become more desirable than Jesus. It may have well been the first attempt in the church to place people upon pedestals; pedestals so high that when they fall they die.
I’ve observed the same disease in The Church Growth Movement.
Mega churches with mega Personalities more desirable than Jesus; all of whom desire to please the Lord, but rob him of his glory while in many cases feigning humility, building human kingdoms. Churches are built that number in the thousands, led by dynamic men (or women, or both) who somehow lack understanding that in churches of thousands intimacy with the Body is almost non-existent and Christ is not afforded his full expression through his Body because the Personality gets in the way. And those same Personalities perpetuate the very problems they preach against/about on Sunday—sin.
They are complicit in perpetuating sin because in churches of thousands people shut the doors of their lives to the Body in exchange for a feel-good service of two hours on Sunday morning, then walk out the door to live lives of anonymity and secrets; a dose of Jesus once a week to quell the conscience is all that’s needed.
Paul assesses the Corinthian situation and declared “But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.” The descent into man-worship was identified by “jealousy and strife.” In choosing to elevate Personalities the Corinthians revealed that they were spiritual infants.
I’ve seen firsthand the effects of the departure of the Personality from a church; the ants migrate to a fresher Tootsie Roll lying on the sidewalk in another part of town.
Paul lived the divine life, and addressed problems in the church in the divine life, rather than human ingenuity. Written policy never took the place of divine revelation. The divine life requires having the mind of Christ—which Paul had.
Church problems can be like bed bugs; the biting is painful, can be the cause of disease, and the problem becomes the focus. Instead of pointing to the bed bugs gathered in the corner of the mattress waiting to crawl up a sleeper’s leg, Paul did the equivalent of buying a new mattress—he painted a more glorious picture of Jesus.
Human reasoning, affection, action and flesh pale in comparison to the Master in providing an answer to the problems.
“What then is Apollos?”
“What is Paul?”
Servants! Just servants!
The words on the page grabbed me like Darth Vader did with Captain Antilles in the original Star Wars movie when he lifted him off the ground by the throat like he was a sock monkey. I saw the illusion like one sees in a Funhouse Distortion Mirror at a Carnival that makes a skinny man look like a distorted porker ready to pop with a poke of a Celestial finger.
Paul wrote, “According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”
In 1973 my uncle had laid an incorrect foundation for the house that was to be built. I’ve been a misguided church planter; I too laid an incorrect foundation in planting a church.
My foundation wasn’t Jesus Christ. Oh… I had a desire to please the Lord, but I’d been taught how to build a human kingdom in The Church Growth Movement; so that’s what I built.
Like most church planters weaned on The Church Growth Movement I talked a lot about Jesus, did things in the name of Jesus, worshiped Jesus and attempted to lead the congregation to do the same. I preached the Gospel of Jesus regularly, and even tried to live that out.
It was only the Framers who discovered that my uncle had laid the foundation to the house wrong.
It was only The Framer who revealed that I had laid the foundation to His House wrong. Of course, His House wasn’t a physical structure, it was a Body of living, breathing souls inhabited by Christ—it was a House, a Bride—The Church.
The truth was I had laid a foundation of… The Church. The Church was my foundation—not Jesus. I had planted a church with The Church as the focus; churches planting churches instead of planting Jesus Christ.
Like most church planters, I would say that Jesus was the foundation, but it wasn’t Jesus who was getting the most attention, it wasn’t Jesus who was the focus on Sunday morning, it wasn’t Jesus who dominated all that we did, and said, and believed, and lived—it was The Church.
It wasn’t The Church as the Body of Christ; it was The Church as an institution. The Church was the most important thing foundationally.
In Corinth, the Church had traded the Glorious King for not-so-glorious men. They were good men, godly men, sold-out disciples…but they were men—Apollos, Paul, Peter. The Corinthians were attempting to anchor their foundation in people and Personalities, not Jesus Christ. In fact, the Personalities had become a substitute foundation.
The more I thought about my misguidedness, and the misguidedness of other church planters (and churches for that matter) I grew to understand I had my own Apollos’s and Peter’s and Paul’s; they weren’t people, they were events and goals and programs and visions and ministries and the Sunday morning service and all manner of fleshly work; all in competition with The Foundation.
The manifestation of the truth became visible when I asked, “What dominated our gathering time on Sunday morning?” “Was it Jesus and him being expressed through his Body?” “Did we allow for each one to express Christ through a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation so that the Body was built up?” “Did we address one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord in our hearts?” “Did we give thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ?”
The answer was “no”.
We had a service.
We served the congregation as if they were patrons coming to The Olive Garden for lunch.
“May I help you? What can I give you today?”
Our service was programs, a sermon, and music and a set of things we did by rote and ritual? (In other churches it might be all of this and a funny emcee that kicks the morning off, it might be a skit or drama, events and opportunities, Children’s Ministry, Youth Ministry, Women’s Ministry, Men’s Ministry, Recovery Ministry, it might be Gifts instead of the Giver.)
As a church planter I’d laid a foundation of The Church; I would plant a church that served needy people, helped the homeless, feed the hungry, rescue the downtrodden, the drunks, and the drug addicts. (In other churches the focus and plan is having a Starbucks or Subway in the lobby, a kids jungle gym like McDonald’s, it’s an art gallery, a Serve Day once or twice a year, a Book Store, the best damn band in the land (I live in Buckeye Country), a Soup Kitchen or Clothes Closet or Food Pantry.)
I had misguidedly made The Church the foundation, more so than Jesus.
I had built The Church on works, not the magnificence of Jesus Christ; not the supreme worth of Jesus Christ, not Jesus himself. Jesus actually received just a tiny piece of Sunday morning; and likely, a tinier piece of our hearts and lives.
The truth is we could do everything we do on Sunday morning without Jesus—without God! Most churches can. Many churches do. It’s the Cult of the Misguided.
That’s The Church Growth Movement at its most sinister and all its wretched cousins; Seeker Sensitive, Purpose Driven, Word Faith.
This summer my wife and I went to the Palace Theater to see the stage version of The Screwtape Letters with Max McLean as the demonic Screwtape. It was an incredible one-man show with hellish props and monologue. How Screwtape would have belched a hideous laugh at me laying a foundation on The Church—it would have been something his Abysmal Sublimity would have contrived to own.
Earlier this week I met with some pastor friends who are ministering in urban Columbus, Ohio. Our conversation was to be about “what makes for healthy small groups.”
However, one pastor was being crushed beneath the weight of disappointment; crushed like innocent souls from the 99th floor of One World Trade Center as that concrete monolith collapsed on 9/11.
Our conversation turned to aiding our friend.
Over the past year or so, in his small church, three individuals in leadership had fallen prey to sexual immorality and had surrendered their leadership positions. Screwtape would have roared at those happenings too. That kind of thing happens when lives have a foundation other than Jesus, when we’re encouraged to live lives of anonymity and attend service once a week. We should be intellectually honest about that, shouldn’t we?
Disappointment can cause a pastor to be impaled on the iron rods of cynicism, doubt, fear, self-loathing and wondering where the hell God is in all of it. The pain of being impaled pushes one toward drowning in a cauldron of criticalness.
We listened to our friend and then some attempted to help him process how to best handle his current situation in which another Elder in the church is getting ready to surrender his leadership role. Things like that happen when we have a foundation other than Jesus; we should be intellectually honest about that too.
My soul shuddered as suggestions were bandied about like 7-year-olds trying to Pin the Tail on the Donkey, hoping to hit the donkey’s rear-end.
During our conversation those pastors attempted to help our friend process an increasingly depleted team of leaders in his church. Some suggested he identify things that were “successful” in the church and build on those. Some suggested he bring in outside Elders to help.
My belly roiled with a wish for a right Foundation for my friend.
My friend indicated that Children’s Ministry and Youth Ministry were going well, and so was Outreach. One pastor suggested that our friend utilize those ministries help stabilize the church. Screwtape would have hissed in pleasure, and then pulled on the ear of a wretched imp to get his attention to what was going on terra firma.
In his quest for answers to how to stabilize his church, our pastor friend was unknowingly laying a foundation of something other than Jesus. Like I had done, he was laying a foundation of The Church, not Jesus.
My voice grew faint as other voices vaulted higher.
I grew sad on the inside; it was all too fresh for me.
Surely, a stronger foundation of Children’s and Youth Ministry would be all he would need to right the ship; better Outreach, better events, even a better Sunday service—such flimsy pillars to build upon; pillars, not a foundation. That’s what they are in The Church Growth Movement—pillars—people, esteemed people, brilliant people,
numbers people, and programs and events.
Paul had laid a foundation of Jesus that The Church could properly be built upon.
The Corinthians were substituting people for Jesus.
I had substituted The Church for Jesus.
My pastor friend was seeking to rescue his church, not on Christ alone, but on Children’s Ministry and Youth Ministry and Outreach—just a different version of Apollos, Peter and Paul.
Paul had asked the Corinthians earlier in Chapter 1, “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” Christ wasn’t divided; Paul wasn’t crucified, none were baptized in the name of Paul.
To my friend; “Were Children’s and Youth Ministry and Outreach crucified for you?” “Were you baptized into programs, and events and music and the sermon?”
To me I ask; “Was The Church crucified for you?” “Was I baptized into the Sunday Morning Service?”
I discovered I wasn’t alone as a misguided church planter; the evangelical ocean is teaming with the misguided.
Like Jacob, I’ll always limp.
