I was a church planter for only about three years. Like many planters, I was co-vocational. I have said many times that those three years were among the most difficult, and yet most spiritually rewarding of my life. They forever changed my perspective, not just on how churches get started, but on how church should be. Let me explain.
Before I was a church planter, I was a church member, a youth minister, a choir and worship leader, a Sunday School teacher, and a deacon. In each of those roles, my mindset had been to get ready for the next Sunday and weekly cycle of activities, because that’s when my church family needed and expected something.
As I grew into church planting, I still saw a weekly cycle of opportunity. But my primary motivation changed. It wasn’t that my church family needed something. It was that the lost people in our community needed something, something that our church already had.
In fact, we referred to our church planting family simply as our “core group.” The weekly cycle and schedule weren’t primarily about their needs, though we continued to worship, study God’s word, fellowship, and serve one another, perhaps more deeply than before. But that core group also had a unifying, missional purpose. Together, we committed to joining Jesus in his mission to “seek and save the lost.”
And that changed everything about the way we did church.
Our posture changed. We became an inviting church. We invited people personally to our new church at the local grade school. We mailed postcards, placed ads, and walked our neighborhoods distributing door hangers. Instead of church events, we hosted community events.
Our new church moved from ‘spiral’ to ‘stairway.’
Our language changed. New people came every week, and we realized many of them didn’t know church language, or where to find things in the Bible, or how to use a hymnal, or where to find the event “at George’s house.” Like missionaries, we learned the language of the people we were trying to reach, and we translated the gospel and the Bible into that language.
Our direction changed. The direction of doing church for a church family is often like a circle, or maybe a spiral that moves gradually upward, or gradually downward. Each week, often each quarter or year, a church develops patterns of behavior, activities, and schedule that are comfortable and predictable. Pastors and leaders work hard to prepare for and deliver those patterns, and members participate in as many of them as their busy lives allow.
The direction of a church plant is more like a stairway, where you are always planning a next step in a new direction, with the goal of reaching people. There are next steps for those who don’t know Jesus personally yet. There are clear, next steps for new believers. Static members are challenged to next steps of maturity and engagement that lead them to places of service or leadership. Leaders are continually and intentionally challenged to next steps of responsibility, creativity, and problem solving. And the entire, growing “core group” that knows Christ personally is continually being shown next steps to becoming more and more missionary in their mindsets, and in their lifestyles.
And so, we changed. That forward-leaning direction and purpose united us, transformed us, matured us, and motivated us. It was exhausting and exhilarating at the same time. But ever since I experienced that church plant, I have desired that each church I lead or attend demonstrate or learn that missionary mindset. I am forever changed. And the courageous journey from the spiral of church routine to the stairway of church movement is one I long for each church to experience.
Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association. Respond at IllinoisBaptist@IBSA.org.