by Doug Paul on April 10, 2012
It should come as no surprise that I’ve been thinking about church planting lately.
My friend Dave Rhodes and I have been talking about it every now and then the past few weeks and one of our conversations turned to the Core Teams people are starting churches with.
Here’s what I want to ask: Is it possible that WHO we are planting our new churches with is far, far more important than our finely tuned thoughts on WHAT this new church is going to look like?
There’s been a long-standing thought in church planting world that you need to build a team out of scratch and there main job is to help get the church off the ground. However, they are usually called “scaffolding” (no joke) because they are often the scaffold that gets the building up, but then the scaffold disappears. In fact, I’ve read a few books that suggest you should expect about 80-90% of your Core Team to disappear after the church is started. Their primary role is to execute your vision and then, as long as your vision was taken care of, who cares if they leave?
But clearly we are in a new world.
My observation, lately, of some really successful church plants thriving in post-Christian contexts is that the people who made up the Core Team were far more important than the amazing plan the planter had come up with. And here’s why: All the maps for church planting in post-Christian contexts virtually no longer work, so it’s more important to have the right team with you than the right plan because “The Plan” is going to change, morph and adjust almost the second you begin. You need a team who you like, who you believe in, who won’t leave when it gets hard (because it will), who are willing to learn as they go, who are willing to lead and aren’t always looking to you, who can be flexible and who know how to do extended family well.
When I planted our church 4 years ago, I don’t think I would have had the discipline or wisdom to wait starting the church in order to put together the right team; one that I’d want to go into the trenches with and come church plant failure, hell and high water…they’d be people I’d want to do life with. I think I’d assume the original plan would carry the day and would arrogantly believe I was gifted enough to make it work.
I guess here’s my question to church planters:
- Are you willing to wait for God to bring you the right team? Are you willing to put your plans on hold for a year or two so that when you go to the missional frontier, you’ve got the people you want to really do this with?
- If you have been waiting and you don’t see a team coming around you, what is this telling you? Do you need to change something? Are you not good at developing leaders? Are you not called to church plant?
- How firmly do you believe your plan and detailed vision is what will win the day? I promise you, I PROMISE YOU…it will change. Things never work in reality like they do on paper. Do you have the team with you who know that going in, expect it, and adapt with you as you listen to the Lord?
by Doug Paul on April 3, 2012
This past weekend I get to speak at a fairly large worship service.
That’s not really terribly significant or novel, but more to the point, I hadn’t done this in over a year. Sure, in my work with 3DM I’m regularly teaching groups of leaders, but it’s not really content I’ve developed for a specific Sunday, from a specific passage, for a specific group of people. I really enjoyed it quite a bit and it was a reminder that it’s one thing I miss doing on a regular basis. That being said, I’m quite content with the season God has me in right now.
But it did get me thinking about how I learned to teach in the first place.
You see, like every pastor, there was once a time when I never regularly taught in front of large groups of people. But somewhere along the way I had to learn a skill set that was slightly unfamiliar to me and over time, it was one that I got better at (and hopefully continue to develop even now). But as I was thinking about it this weekend, a few things stood out to me:
- I learned to teach by listening to one particular pastor quite a bit. This particular person had a teaching that did a lot in bringing me to faith and opened up the Gospels and the narrative scriptures and ways I’d never seen before. Their rhetorical style was different. Their diction was different. The way they told jokes, structured the sermon, even moved on stage…everything about it really captivated me. And this was the person that I started to sound like when I began to teach.
- The more I taught, the better I got. I know, this isn’t a terribly revelatory statement. But it’s really true. What Malcolm Gladwell says about putting in your 10,000 hours really does work. For the first 5 years I was a pastor (maybe even longer), I was teaching between 40-50 Sundays a year. The first teaching I ever gave, my sister stopped counting the number of times I said “like” at 46. (Yes, it’s humiliating even now, all these years later.)
- People recognized someone else in me. The first few years I was teaching, people would often say, “Wow, you really sound like (insert name of person I was listening to a lot).” That got really annoying. But they were definitely right.
- But I found my own voice. It took some time. It took a lot of practice. It took being exposed in large doses to a few other really gifted teachers. But eventually, I found a style, a structure, a process and voice that was truly me. But funny thing: You can still hear the traces of that first teacher, even while hearing a teaching that is definitely “me.” And now…honestly…I don’t really care.
What I came to see is that a very simple process was at work, but one that people have been using in the Church for thousands and thousands of years to pass down certain skill sets.
- First was information: I read books on rhetorical theory. Commentaries. I asked lots of questions. Researched. Critiqued. Found out who the people were I thought were worth getting solid resources and information from about this skill set.
- Second was imitation. I found someone who truly embodied what I was looking for. I studied him. Listened to him. Practiced like him. Prepared like him. Read the same books. Copied his diction and style. Even used a few of his teachings, from soup to nuts.
- Last was innovation. After building a solid foundation, I was got to a place of competence in the skill that allowed me to innovate on all that I had learned and imitated and I developed a voice that was true to me. And actually, the fact that there are traces of a few people in me that people can recognize every once in a while speaks to a lengthy process of healthy development.
But notice that the point of Information and Imitation was to get to Innovation. But there’s no short-circuiting the process.
So here’s my thought: If that’s what it took to learn to teach well…what would that process look like for other things? Like building teams and multiplying leaders? Discipling people? Reproducing missional communities? Planting churches? Starting reproducible movements?
In case you haven’t read it yet, my good friend Ben Sternke wrote a killer blog post along the same vein, but with some really keen insights about movements. Definitely have a look.
