Confessions of a Church Planter (Part 11)

Change & Conflict

In my own mind, Pace Community Church is not a large church. But according to national statistics 95% of the churches in America run less than 300 in attendance on Sunday, which means PCC is in the upper 5% of more than 400,000 churches. For this I am humbly thankful, even though I believe we can do better. One thing I have learned, however, is that as a church grows, it changes, and change causes conflict.

Every married couple knows that there is conflict in any loving relationship. The question is not will we ever have conflict, but rather how to deal with it. Having been successfully married to Renae for 29 years, (I’m still amazed that she keeps me), I can attest to the fact that learning to work through our conflict has allowed us to not fear conflict, but rather to use it as an occasion to build a stronger relationship. The same has been true for the PCC family for the last twelve years.

Church growth is good and to be desired. It means more people are being saved, discipled, and are worshipping God. Jesus Himself said, “I will build My church.” But the price of growth is conflict. I think many churches are afraid to grow, and even build theological justifications for not growing, simply because they are afraid of change and its resulting conflict; which means that rather than obeying Christ they are worshipping comfort.

1. Change resulting from growth means that some people in the church will lose authority or power when responsibilities are divided among others. Conflict arises up when people are given a change of title that they have been clinging to as a source for power. When told they do not meet the requirements to become an elder or deacon, for example, or are placed under the leadership of someone they perceive to be less qualified than they, such people can become insulted, even resentful. They forget that Jesus Himself took the title of “servant” as our model of humility, and they are not to act like the power-hunger, authority-grabbing heathens He warned us about. Power illicitly motivates some people, and when they lose power they fight to retain it.

2. Change also means that new people coming into the church will have access to certain information, and other people will feel left out of the information loop. This is because as a church grows, the lines of communication increase exponentially and become more complex. There is no way that everyone can know everything that is going on, so you begin operating on a “need to know” basis. Some people will bristle at this. While it is important to make every effort to keep people appropriately informed, those who are motivated by information will fight to be “in the know” and will incite conflict over who is allowed to know what in the church.

I’ll never forget the day in 2002 when one man in our church, who was a leader at the time, went ballistic because he was not informed about a certain activity that had taken place. One of our ministry teams took an overnight trip together, locally - kind of like a mini retreat - for the purpose of team-building, planning for the next quarter, and sharpening their ministry skills together. It was an amazing success. But when this man found out about it, he was infuriated. The very idea that people in the church were doing things without his knowledge or consent was too much for him to cope with, and it showed. We were in a leadership meeting and he actually began hitting the edge of the table with his hand, in a karate-chop fashion, saying, “I didn’t know a thing about this! Why wasn’t I informed?”

Oh man. I knew the fertilizer was about to hit the fan… and it did. This man had a repeated pattern of voicing objections and clearly had some 'control' issues. On more than one occasion he tried to exercise jurisdiction in the affairs of other ministries that were clearly outside his scope of responsibility or involvement; with his own role being clearly defined by our bylaws and church structure.

My response to him was as humble, yet as strong as, I could muster. I called him by name and said, “You have no right making this kind of demand on other people. That ministry team is under the direction of its own leader, not you, so you have no say-so in anything they do. The only area that you are allowed to concern yourself with is the ministry team that you serve on.”

Over the years, that very issue has been one of the biggest challenges I have faced among personnel in our church – church controllers who like to concern themselves with what others are doing. They will speak opinions into other departments or minsitry areas that are of no concern of theirs. Or one small group will start sticking their nose in some other small groups business. That kind of thing. But I am glad to say that we have overcome these conflicts by pressing forward and not allowing “controllers” hold everything back.

3. As a church grows another change occurs - new people become visible, while others who used to be visible become less so. Some people love to be seen and known in the church, and those motivated by visibility will cause conflict if their visibility is reduced. In some churches, this means that the guy who used to fill the pulpit when the pastor was away, the person who used to make the Sunday morning announcements, and the lady who played organ in the band, no longer do because the church now has more capable people to do those jobs. Sadly, by causing conflict over their loss of visibility, such people forget that Jesus is still watching their behavior and is quite disappointed by it.

4. Another change resulting from growth is that more physical, emotional, and spiritual energy is required than in previous seasons of ministry from leaders and church workers. Practically speaking, as the pace picks up, some church leaders can no longer keep up and are overtaken by stronger, more energetic leaders who can maintain the pace and take the church to its next level of fruitfulness. Some who gain their sense of identity and well-being from being a leader in the church, or some who feel that because they served well in a previous season have the right to retain their leadership position, cause conflict over the pace of growth. Such people might even go as far as to sabotage the ministry in an effort to slow things down rather than humbly accept their limits and find a place to serve that best suits their energy levels.

5. Growth also means changes have to be made in the decision making processes. In a growing church decisions have to be made quickly so that the church can mature and grow. These decisions cannot wait until next months board meeting. This means that committee meetings and slow-moving bureaucratic systems must be eliminated in favor of empowered individuals who can make critical decisions during normal business hours of the work week. Some people value their ability to control the decision-making processes, and it is the method they use to control and rule the church and will resist such changes.

While it is true churches can make decisions too hastily, what I am speaking about here are those people who obstruct decision making and delay change by pulling the emergency brake all the time. Such people tend to be in the minority and often cause a great deal of conflict by resisting anything and everything. Their tactics include various kinds of stalling, postponing votes, missing meetings, demanding unreasonable amounts of information, nitpicking over fine details that are truly unimportant, and even sharing confidential information with others in the church in an effort to gain enough of a following to slow down change.

At its best, a church is like a river that can be channeled to bring its life-giving flow to a dry and parched community who are in search of living waters. However, every attempt to prevent growth kills the church from maximizing its potential, or either kills the controller with stress-related illness. Therefore, churches must accept the fact that growth is messy and change brings conflict.

Because we want more people to worship Jesus, we must be willing to accept the inevitable. Such change can be perceived by some as a loss of power, or it can be viewed as an opportunity to share the gospel with many others.

“And this I do for the gospel’s sake” (1 Corinthians 9: 22-23).

Confessions of a Church Planter (Part 10)

Raising Up Others & Reaching Our Redemptive Potential

Our little church was rolling along rather well in its fifth year. We had purchased twenty-five acres of land, men in the church were clearing the property, we had added three part-time staff (which felt really good to me), morale was high, attendance was on the rise, membership was climbing, and we were very excited about the prospects of the future.

But the organizational needs of our church, its mission, and matters of congregational care continued to increase exponentially demanding more of my time and attention. Up until this point, nearly everyone in the church had been connected to me personally, and I could no longer address all the details myself. It was then that I realized changes needed to be made in regards to my role and assigning additional leaders who would serve as ‘go-to’ persons for the various needs in the church.

What comforted me most as I was prayerfully thinking my way through this process was what God promises to do for the church. As I studied the scriptures I learned that Jesus promises to build the church, select and call pastor-elders, raise up other leaders, save people, bless the teaching of His Word, endow people with gifts and talents that will build up the Body, empower His people to live victoriously, and providentially make up for human mistakes if people are truly repentant of their sins (and only God knows the number of mistakes I have made myself). By the time I finished this study I was confident that our future would be successful because all the heavy lifting and hard work would be done by Jesus Himself, and that we just needed to trust Him and keep going forward.

One glaring reality that I accepted was that I could not lead our church to its next level by myself. I needed other leaders; especially those who were opportunity seekers, goal setters, and risk-takers – the kinds of people who were willing to put safety on the sidelines.

I also started studying the major differences between smaller churches and growing churches. As I studied, I noticed certain principles that are consistent in growing churches which struck me as being very important. I began writing and speaking to people how I envisioned our church would be in the future. Some people were receptive to this vision, others were not. I could sense that a few key leaders and even staff members were not as enthusiastic as I was. This was disappointing to me. I can accept the fact that a certain percentage of our congregation will always be “ho hum” about church work and advancing God’s kingdom, but to get that kind of response from key leaders is unsettling to me, to say the least.

In any growing organization there are three kinds of people; and only two of them have a long-term future in that organization. First, there are those people who demonstrate the uncanny ability to grow as leaders and keep up no matter what. Second, there are people who attach themselves to those who are on the rise as valuable assistants, and end up rising themselves by being attached to growing leaders. Third, there are people who neither rise nor attach themselves to anyone who is on the rise, and cannot keep up with the growing demands of the organization.

This third group of people cannot be allowed to slow down the whole team. They cannot be the ceiling to which the church is allowed to rise. Sometimes they even have to be let go from serving because of their inability to keep up. This is difficult to do because they are often good people who have been partly responsible for the success of the church. But the ability of the church to reach its redemptive potential must be based upon what God wants to accomplish, and not upon the limits of certain individuals.

In the end I decided that it was in the best interest of PCC, our community, and the purpose of the gospel to forge ahead anyway. God was compelling me to state the vision of a large and growing church to our small church, but I knew it could result in people leaving. The ironic thing about church growth is this: the people who are attracted to a small church are drawn there because they prefer smallness and church leaders need them help get a new church going; yet those very same people are resistant to the church growing any larger than themselves. Thus, if a church continues to grow, many of those original people will leave as new people come in. It’s a catch-22 and church leaders must decide what they will do in critical times like these.

Somewhere in this time period I had to let our first children’s ministry director go. She was a young woman and wonderfully gifted to lead a small children’s ministry and had contributed significantly to our church at that level. But she did not have the ministry skills to keep pace with our church as we grew. Letting her go based on poor performance was very painful to me and it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. It’s much easier to let someone go if they are disloyal, get caught stealing, or for unrepentant sin. But to tell someone that they are not “good enough” is very, very difficult. After giving her every possible chance to grow and develop as a leader and finally realizing that she could not, it was time to make a change. We met at a local restaurant one evening and I broke the news to her. She cried and pleaded with me to give her another chance, and I almost did. Her tears were almost too much for me to stand up to and my compassion for her began to get the better of me. But as I sat there listening to her plead, I recalled the months and months of continual failures and knew I had to see this painful conversation through. I did. In the end it was liberating for both of us. She ended up finding a better paying job that was more suitable for her abilities and I found a more gifted staff member, Cathy Denny, to replace her which benefited our church significantly. Cathy was able to keep pace with our growing church and her efforts contributed a great deal to the current success of PCC.

Another important factor is the role of the senior pastor. If a church is going to reach its redemptive potential, then major shifts also have to be made in his duties. Here is some of what I have learned about growing churches through study and experience:

1. As the senior pastor I need to change from being everyone’s chaplain to ensuring that most congregational care is provided by other elders and deacons in the church.

2. I must develop and grow as a leader myself to keep up. Ministry skills will take a church up to 300, but leadership skills will take a church beyond that number.

3. I need to work less “in” the church and work more “on” the church through teaching, vision-casting, inspiring and empowering others. This means things like launching new initiatives but leaving the logistics and details to other qualified leaders. It also means that all clerical, maintenance, and most management issues are being decided by others.

4. We need to teach our people to accept the fact that we are destined to be a large church.

5. We need to ensure that the tension between caring for Christians and reaching non-Christians remains properly balanced; as well as our highest priority.

6. We need to accept the fact that our church is not for everyone, and some people will never feel connected to us or to me and will eventually leave PCC.

7. All staff should be equippers rather than doers of the ministry.

8. I must always maintain a birds eye view of the big picture and not get lost in the details.

9. We must deliberately and intentionally become a multi-celled church of small groups, ministry teams, and friendship networks.

10. My wife and I need to reserve the right to select our own friends without feeling personally obligated to everyone in the church.

To be a part of an ever-changing, growing church requires growing members and leaders who expand their vision and their capabilities as the church expands. The reason PCC is where it is today is because of these very kinds of people. Yet, we still have far to go.

I am confident that Jesus will continue to do the heavy lifting, build this church, and raise up other leaders just as He has promised in His Word. I’m most comforted by the knowledge that His grace will make up for our human mistakes, and all we have to do is trust Him and forge ahead so that we can reach our redemptive potential.

Confessions of a Church Planter (Part 9)

Should I Quit?

I love Christ. It’s some of His people who drive me crazy. The truth is I have a hard time liking some Christians. I’d rather hang around lost people than self-righteous, hyper-critical, narrow-minded types.

At the risk of being guilty of the same thing that I am pointing out in others, let me go out on a limb here. Some Christians can be very judgmental. They act holier-than-thou, and can be incredibly condescending. They will fight and argue about the dumbest things:

You are using the wrong version of the Bible
Your church uses the wrong kind of music
You don’t teach enough from the Old Testament
Why don’t you do more expository preaching?
Your church isn’t evangelistic enough
Your church is too evangelistic, and you don’t do enough discipleship

These Christian critics are often the very ones who don’t even know their lost next-door neighbor’s name. Ugh! Makes me want to scream. It gets even more fun when they start intruding into your personal life:

All R-rated movies are off-limits (Does that include The Passion of the Christ?)
If you listen to secular music you are of the devil
Don’t get a tattoo
Women should not wear pants
Don’t let your children go trick-or-treating – Halloween is the devils night
Don’t go to the beach
Don’t go to Disney World

I just can’t imagine Jesus drawing a line in the sand over these issues.

Another guy who torques me off is the Angry Street Preacher. “Turn or burn! You are going to hell, you sinner!” he shouts. Since he is made of flesh and blood just like I am, I have to conclude that he is sinning just as much as anyone else is.

And then, some Christians are just plain weird – really weird. Take Christian television for example. Some of those people make my job almost impossible. Here I am supposedly on the same team with them, and they are just plain goofy. Some are even crooks. I know there are some good ministries on television, but you have to admit, there’s some flaky stuff on the tube.

Then there are the people who are into “bling Christianity” who believe that Jesus will make you rich, give you jewelry, cure all your diseases, and give you anything you ask for. They teach that Jesus was a rich man and that only people who lack faith get sick, presumably like junior varsity players Job and the apostle Paul. For them, Jesus is a piñata, faith is a whacking stick, and all you have to do is wait for the goodies to fall out of heaven.

Unfortunately for me, all these kinds of people have shown up at PCC at one time or another over the years making my life pretty complicated. I am amazed at the baggage some Christians carry around with them. Instead of showing up to a church and taking the time to find out what its mission/vision is and then prayerfully deciding if God is leading them to get involved and support it, some people will show up with the intent of changing the church to their agenda.

We’ve had people show up here wanting to debate things like post-millennialism, dispensationalism, Calvinism, and other dumb things that only guys with high-speed Internet connections to bizarre websites could get into. And always, it causes division. The irony is that many of these people couldn’t even manage their own lives well but wanted to mange the church; they did not own their own homes, were in debt up to their eyeballs, had difficulty paying their bills, couldn’t get along with their wives, or worse yet were still living at home with their mothers. I tired to set them straight by telling them clean up their bedrooms and checkbooks first before they tried to clean up the church, but like most fools, they were not deterred. It is the typical young-buck-in-rutting-season folly.

When argumentative people eventually realize that we were not going to talk about stupid stuff that detracts from our vision and causes division, they will leave, which is a good thing. Over the years, I’ve accepted that if I do not open the back door quickly when God is trying to move people out, I am working against Him by keeping toxic people in this church who will infect others.

I was in a leadership meeting in 2002. One individual began to rail about this and rant against that. Actually it was much ado about nothing. Waving his arms like a windmill he waxed eloquent as he objected and complained about everything in the church. When he got about halfway through his prolonged speech, I interrupted him by asking, “What positive alternative do you offer?” He stopped and stared at me in blank silence. Finally he asked, “What do you mean?” I said, “What positive alternative do you offer as a solution? You’ve been pointing out all that is wrong but have not offered as much as a single idea on how to remedy the situation. This apparently bothers you, even though it doesn’t bother anyone else, so what is your plan of remedy?” Well, that took him back a bit because I put him on the spot to actually do something other than complain.

To be totally transparent there were times in the early days of PCC that I didn’t know if I could survive another month, let alone another year in this church plant. The whole mess was beginning to really bum me out. We were still meeting in the school, I was hauling all the church equipment back-and-forth each Sunday, my car needed new brakes, and too many people were giving me grief about nothing. Holier-than-thou types didn’t like our Christian liberty. Church controllers were trying to take over. I was feeling disrespected and abused by malcontents. Super spiritual types were trying to fix our ‘spiritually shallow’ church. Legalists were trying to put us in bondage - one lady even told me I needed to crack the whip on these people and pour some salt into their wounds. Suddenly it dawned on me - our church was experiencing an invasion of imbeciles.

It was almost too much for me.

I remember taking a long ride one day on the bike trail in Blackwater State Forest. After a strenuous hour-long ride to relieve the stress and tension I stopped and sat on a bench staring at the ground for a very long time, running through my options in my mind, trying to figure out what to do. Should I shut down the church? Should I turn it over to one of the trustees who thought they could do it better? Should I just jump ship and let it turn into a free-for-all? Or should I hang in there and turn things around or die trying?

I loved the people of PCC who God had sent to us – the good Christians from other churches who were supportive, the irreligious people who were on a journey of seeking God, the brand new Christians who were still babes in Christ, and the mixed multitude of sinners who were still living in sin. I loved them all and felt like God had sent them to our church and that I was their shepherd. I also felt obligated to hang in there to do everything in my power to protect these sheelp and to fight for the mission of this church - to take the gospel to the people our city. There was no way I could leave this church because I knew that certain wolves and other sons of perdition would not spare the flock. I decided that day, right then and there, to make a lifetime commitment to Pace Community Church and fight against these naysayers.

I vividly remember standing before the small congregation of PCC shortly after that day and telling them that I was here to stay. I have planted my flag in the ground and that I will give the rest of my life to them and our city. I promised them that I would die trying and asked them to do the same.

I knew that making this kind of commitment would result in some serious conflicts in my future. But I also knew that I was not going to run from it either. That’s what shepherds do. After making this commitment to the PCC family, as well as having so many of the people commit to me in the same manner, I realized that we were going to win no matter what.

Confessions of a Church Planter (Part 8)

The Role of Women in the Church

As I mentioned previously, setting a church in order is no small task. I had to settle on the matter of church leadership; specifically pastor-elders and deacons. Then there was the matter of women.

I have spent years trying to understand certain difficult passages in the Bible regarding women. My findings could fill an entire book, so I will keep it simple here. After hundreds of hours of study I have been able to summarize the three most common positions that have been adopted within Christianity regarding women. Those positions are:

Hierarchal – In this view men and women are created to operate in different roles in life and ministry based solely upon gender. Women cannot be elders or deacons, serve communion, teach men, lead worship, or speak in church services in any capacity. They are not allowed to usher or even serve as door greeters. In this view all women are under the submission of all men; meaning that even the strongest woman in the church would have to submit to the weakest man in the church. Women can only be involved in ministries for women or children. (Main texts are: Genesis 1:27; 2:18; 3:16-17; I Corinthians 11:3, 8-9; I Timothy 2:11-3:13).

Complementarian – In this view all church ministries are open to qualified women, with the single exception of pastor-elders, which is reserved for qualified men. Women can be deacons, serve communion, teach, lead worship, have participatory roles in church services, and be in full-time paid ministry. (Main texts are: Same as hierarchical with an emphasis on I Timothy 3:11 and Romans 16:1-2).

Egalitarian – In this view men and women are partners together in every area of ministry. All ministries and offices in the church are open to all qualified men and women. Gender does not exclude any person from any church office. Under this view women may be pastors, even senior pastors. (Main texts are: Judges 4; Acts 16:11-15; 18:26; Luke 8:1-3; Romans 16:1-3, 6-7, 12; Galatians 3:28).

In considering these views I quickly dismissed the hierarchal position. While it appears to have its Biblical merits, it is out of balance with other passages that obviously treat women with a more elevated status. The role of women in the church cannot be conclusively determined by a few restrictive passages that are often advanced by men who believe that subordination represents God’s will for all women. Scripture must be balanced against other scripture to arrive at a proper Biblical conclusion on any subject, and I believe hierarchal proponents fail to do this. Churches that hold to this view are often very legalistic in nature and oppressive.

Personally, I think the complementarian view seems to strike a good balance between all three positions. But I also think the egalitarian view has its merits as well; its interpretation of the scriptures is a sound one (though all don't agree with the conclusions), plus there are instances in which this position might be the best scenario for some churches. On the negative side, some egalitarian’s promote radical feminism which is unbiblical; not to mention being as extreme in their views as those of dominating men found in the hierarchal camp.

At Pace Community Church, we tend to lean towards a blended view of the complentarian and egalitarian positions; that is, all ministries are open to qualified women in the church with the single exception of the office of senior pastor. Other than that single office, women may serve anywhere and everywhere in our church, including a pastoral role and other levels of senior leadership, provided they are gifted, called, and qualified.

Men who fail to acknowledge and enlist the energy of women suffer for their arrogance. Pontius Pilate's wife, for example, tried to warn him not to be involved in the trial of Jesus. "I have a dream about him" she said. Pilate ignored her and signed Jesus' death warrant, as well as his own dishonorable place in history.

If not for women, PCC would not be here. Over the years they have performed most of the work which has helped propel us to the place we are today. Many of these tasks could have been carried out by men, but some of the men would not step up and lead. Churches depend on the financial support of women as much as they depend upon the financial support of men, not to mention their spiritual and physical contributions, and PCC is the better for it. Churches that ignore the postive impact that women can bring to the table, do so at their own loss.

Some men are real sissies when it comes to spiritual leadership; their prayer life is almost non-existent, they are too timid to pray out loud or lead in public prayer, they don’t pray with their families, very seldom crack open a Bible, will not teach a Bible class, have little desire for the Word of God, and fail to express any desire to work in the church. They will not man up and lead. Yet, many of these same men want to keep women submissive by limiting their role in the church based solely on gender. How convenient.

I decided early on that it would be a cold day in Hades before I will ever permit this church to rise no higher than the level of spiritually weak men. I have been often criticized for allowing women to serve in visible roles at PCC. I’m okay with that. If I had allowed spiritually weak men to dictate policy about gender roles at PCC, this church would still be running 37 people and headed by weak men who do not know how to lead.

Women on the other hand, will often jump into the action and get themselves involved in the ministry while the men stand back and watch. They will lead, teach, pray, take charge, get excited about God, read their Bibles, inspire others and motivate teams. If men are too weak to do these things, it’s their own problem. They are burying the talents God has given them and He will hold them accountable. Women sometimes have to fill that gap created by men. But even if men step up and fill their godly roles in the church, it does not disqualify women from serving because the Body of Christ needs both.

Pace Community Church has been very fortunate over the years because we have always experienced a healthy balance between the genders. A high percentage of both men and women employ their gifts, talents, and leadership skills in this church. The end result for us has been a healthy, thriving New Testament church.

When the Bible is interpreted comprehensively, by comparing scripture against scripture, it’s easy to conclude that God has placed both men and women in the Body of Christ to serve in His kingdom, and that ministry opportunities should be made available in the church based on giftedness, and not by gender alone.

Confessions of a Church Planter (Part 7)

Deacons

Now that my family was set in order, and I was beginning to set the church in order by installing pastor-elders, I had to arrive at some conclusions regarding the office of deacons in our church.

The Scriptures clearly describe two offices for leadership in New Testament churches - pastors and deacons.

Pastors (elders) manage the church; they teach sound doctrine, lead the flock, pray, make disciples, and provide oversight. Deacons serve in the church; in helps, mercy ministries, and any form of practical assistance. There is a clear distinction between the two offices, levels of authority, and the duties that each has.

Does PCC have deacons? Yes, we have deacons - as they are defined by the Bible. We do not have a deacon board that runs the church; our deacons run the ministries which have been authorized by our pastor-elders.

There are three words for “deacon” found in the Bible (diakonos, diakonia, diakoneō) and they all translates as “servant” or “service” or “to serve.” In some instances the word deacon also means "minister" or "messenger." In the Bible these individuals liberated the apostles from direct involvement in congregational care by serving in such areas as the daily administration of food to widows and the like, relief work to the needy, and waiting on tables, in order that the apostles and teachers might be freed up to teach the Word of God and lead the flock (see Acts 6:1-7). Deacons served as assistants to the apostles, and later, to the elders of the church. They were not called to supervise elders (pastors), but to serve as extensions of pastoral ministry by ministering to widows, serving others, distributing goods to the needy, and provide various forms of congregational care. As such, deacons are under the authority of pastor-elders, and the office, in itself, carries no authority beyond its immediate assignment. There are no specific on-going roles defined in scripture for deacons, rather they served as needed.

Thus deacons in Pace Community Church are equated as ministry leaders, ministry servants, or small group leaders in our ministry environment. Such a person in our church is a servant who drapes a towel over his or her arm and is actively involved in hands on ministry that is providing some type of congregational care, helps, visitation, or administration of a specific ministry in this church. This can range from parking lot supervisors, head ushers, the head of hospitality, leading our grounds-keeping team, building maintenance, hospital visitation, visiting widows and shut-ins, serving communion, locking and securing the building, welcoming visitors, building cleanliness, small group leaders, or any tangible form of assistance in preparation for the Sunday services. Without such people the ministries of Pace Community Church would simply cease to exist. That is why we need servant-deacons in our ranks.

Deacons are not elected positions. They are appointed by the pastor-elders of the Church (see Acts 6:3), on the basis of need and upon their unique giftedness for the task. There can be no limit to the number of deacons, as this is dependent solely upon the Holy Spirit's disbursement of spiritual gifts in the Church.

Additionally, by using this Biblical role of deacon (rather than a denominational or traditional one) we have created opportunities for women to serve in this capacity - such as Pheobe in Romans 16:1-2 (who is called a servant or deacon with the Greek word diakonon being used to describe her). We have long been taught that the New Testament does not show women in the capacity of deacon or deaconess and that God does not want women to be involved in the ministries of the church. However, this verse, which has either been poorly translated and interpreted, or ignored, lies like a little jewel in the Word of God and affirms women in their service to God. It says that Phoebe was a servant (diakonon, which means deacon) of the church at Cenchrea. Further still, the following passages, (Rom. 16:3, 12; Phil. 4:2, 3; 1 Tim. 3:11; 5:9, 10; Titus 2:3-4), makes it evident that females were engaged in various Christian ministries.

Rather than sitting on bureaucratic committees getting very little done, our deacons are with people and meeting needs every week! And that's one of the things that makes PCC such a great church.

I Timothy 3:8-10 (NIV) 8Deacons, likewise, are to be men worthy of respect, sincere, not indulging in much wine, and not pursuing dishonest gain. 9They must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience. 10They must first be tested; and then if there is nothing against them, let them serve as deacons.
Tomorrow – the role of women in the church.

Confessions of a Church Planter - (Part 6)

Pastor-Elders

Knowing I needed to set the church in order by implementing a Biblically functioning church government, I began an in-depth study and became very acquainted with the various forms of church government practiced by virtually all denominations. I consider myself to be pretty well informed on the subject. While this blog does not have space for a full discourse on the subject, I have written extensively on the subject and am saving the material for future publication. Here is what I discovered:

Some churches operate by Congregational Rule. This is an American invention and it appeals to our sense of democracy. Basically, the congregation as a whole makes all decisions in these churches by voting on matters of importance and appointing committees from its ranks to run the daily operations of the church. The pastor and staff are seen as employees of the congregation who are hired by church members and can be fired by church members. Pastors and staff who serve in these churches are routinely voted in and voted out by the membership. This form of church government is most often seen in Baptist and Pentecostal churches. These churches also have deacon boards that operate as official representatives of the congregation to the pastor – much like congress does to the president – often seeing their role as protecting the church from the pastor or either pointing out the shortcomings of the pastor so that he will do a better job as their employee.

As I studied the Bible, I found no justification for this form of government at all. Congregational forms of church government often wind up causing the pastor to be directed by the very sheep he is supposed to lead, and at worst reducing the pastor to a hireling. Such churches are not led, but instead make decisions by compromise to appease all the various interests in the church. In the case of PCC, the thought of having new Christians, immature Christians, backsliders, carnal church members, troublemakers, and porn addicts, outvoting me on Jesus’ will for the direction of our church sounded like mental patients taking over their hospital and trying to run it themselves! So I dismissed the congregational form of government rather quickly.

Then there is the Episcopal form of church government used by Episcopalian, Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox, and Methodist churches (to name a few). In this form of government the church is governed by a hierarchy. Basically, there is an outside bishop, or someone of similar stature called by a different name, who oversees a group of churches, appoints pastors to pulpits, transfers pastors, sets policy, and guides the vision of the local congregations. Unfortunately, this style of government, which grew out of European monarchies, leaves little freedom for the local pastor or congregation to follow the leading of the Spirit in self determination.

The Presbyterian form of church government, which is typical in Presbyterian and Reformed churches, puts the decisions of church polity in the hands of a select group of laymen who are called elders (the "presbytery"). These lay elders form an “elder board” (much like the deacon board found in Baptist and Pentecostal churches) and are over the pastor, who in turn is over the congregation. The problem here too is that this system operates more like a corporate board found in the secular business world that approves or disapproves plans brought to them by the pastor and staff. The pastor becomes a mere spiritual figurehead who has the appearance of leadership but no real authority. Real authority rests with the laymen who serve on the elder board because they are the controllers of the church. These elder boards usually bog down in too much hierarchy or too little leadership. They eventually turn into slow moving bureaucratic committees who accomplish very little because of their emphasis on turfism rather than mission.

Another form of church government is the Solo Pastor which is usually found in smaller churches. In this model, the senior pastor is the lone authority of the church. This model works well for smaller churches because they have a simple and decisive leadership with only one senior leader in place. But this model does not work very well for growing or larger churches because the solo pastor is prone to make big mistakes if no one is able to stop a dumb idea. Since the solo pastor is not accountable to anyone, the church is also very vulnerable to sin by the senior pastor, especially sexual sin or false teaching. Additionally, churches that are led by the solo pastor model are more susceptible to Satan’s attack; to destroy the church Satan would only need to get the pastor to commit a serious sin or merely be injured in an automobile accident – suddenly the church would be leaderless. So I rejected the solo pastor model as being unwise.

Finally there is the Elder Led Church. This form of church government is more apostolic or theocratic in nature, and is closest to the model used by the apostles and others found in the New Testament. By elder led churches, I am referring to those who are true Biblical elders. So, who then, who are the elders? There is a wide range of interpretations on this subject, and most denominational views are so complicated that the apostle Paul himself couldn’t figure it out.

In the Bible only pastors are elders. They are not laymen who do pastoral things such as visit hospitals, sit on boards, or make announcements on Sunday morning. There is no such thing as a lay-elder in the Bible. Only those who are called, gifted, anointed, and functioning as a pastor, or filling the office of a pastor, are Biblical elders. Once this simple fact is understood, the fog lifts.

Using this model, and under ideal circumstances, there should be a plurality of pastors (elders) leading a church. The senior pastor (as the senior elder) is most responsible for the church to hear from God about vision, and is the primary teacher of God’s Word to the flock. Beyond that, the other pastor-elders provide oversight to the administrative side of the church, its operations, as well as its varied ministries, and keep the senior pastor accountable in matters of doctrine, finances, and personal morality. This means those people who are gifted, called, trained, and experienced to lead the church are the ones exercising authority and managing the church. This model is sometimes referred to as a Staff Led church, provided the church is led by pastors and senior staff who meet the Biblical requirements of elder as set forth in I Timothy 3, Titus 1, and I Peter 5:1-4.

As I became convinced that this form of church government was most Biblical, I began to implement it (something I mentioned in part 5 of this series). One-by-one I replaced our unbiblical trustees (some of whom were not even good Christians) with true Biblical elders. I started by prayerfully asking God which people He wanted chosen as leaders in this church. I then sought out those who had expressed a desire to teach and lead, and who were already functioning as pastors in our church. I examined them to see if they met the Biblical criteria. I also looked up their financial giving to the church because Jesus said that our money follows our heart, and I wanted to see if these people were truly with me on the mission to take the gospel to our city and build our church. I was looking for people who loved God and this church as much as I do. It was easy to identify such people because their fruit was apparent, they gave heavily, and they donated more time to the church than anyone else.

These elder-pastors became a great assistance to me because they picked up a lot of the pastoral work, such as providing oversight to ministry departments, supervising entire segments of our church, teaching classes, counseling, and developing other leaders. This allowed me to pull back a bit from working IN the church and spend more time working ON the church.

With this kind of Biblical team in place, I could now focus more attention on reaching the lost, building membership, and feeding our people well on Sunday mornings with sound doctrine and the mission of our church. This was absolutely essential to our survival because a lot of people had found their way into our church that had different agendas, theological differences, levels of commitment, and ideas of which direction this church should be headed. I needed to create a filter to get the wrong people out of the church and keep the right people in. So I revised our Membership Class – Seminar 101, Discovering the PCC Family – by strengthening certain weak portions and emphasizing certain components that would press people to make a firm decision about commitment.

I did not want anyone else joining our church, to hold a leadership position, teach a class, lead a small group, or receive any training from us until they had first completed the seminar and signed the membership covenant that demands a lot from our members. To be brutally frank, I did not want our church to invest time and energy into people who were not on our mission.

At PCC, everyone who serves on our Senior Leadership Team, as well as our legal church board, are God-called pastors, overseers, or are functioning as pastors. As our church continues to grow in 2010 we will be installing new elders using the criteria mentioned above. Having a Biblical form of church government is a primary reason that we have grown, are healthy, are producing disciples, and have been able to withstand the concerted attacks of Satan that sought to destroy us.

Confessions of a Church Planter (Part 5)

Setting My Home and the Church In Order

Setting a church in order is no small task. By that I mean establishing its leadership structure, government, and appointing who will lead. Yet the scriptures teach that a pastor must have his own house in order first, because if he can’t manage his own family well then he will not be able to manage the family of God (I Timothy 3:4-5).

By the fourth year at PCC Renae and I were feeling the full pressure of planting a church. We had no money, the church offerings were still low, we were both working full time outside of the church while donating forty hours or more to the work, and our children were little and having to be shuttled to separate ball games over a two county area – not to mention the trips out of town for playoff games. The stress was incredible. It was a very expensive time in the life of our family at a time when our income was the lowest it has ever been, which only made things worse.

I knew I needed to put my home in order by relieving some of the pressure that was on the family and our marriage. Because all church business was still taking place out of our home, the boundary between family life and church work had been erased. It was horrible. So the first order of business was to find and rent office space in town and conduct administrative operations from there. I began to search for available office space, collected a sample of prospects and called a meeting with our trustees one evening in my home. After Renae and the boys left the house, being displaced for the umpteenth time, I presented this information to the trustees so we could make a decision on the matter. To my utter astonishment their first response was “it costs too much.” I sat there in disbelief. They knew the pressure we were under, not to mention how ineffective it had become having the church offices in our home, and there they sat – in my home – saying it cost too much. Can you see the irony here? Here we are having a leadership meeting in my home for the thousandth time, my wife and children have been run out of the house for the evening yet again, I’m living on a paupers salary, and they are more interested in saving rent money than saving my family. These men had gotten too familiar with me and Renae and were now taking our sacrifices for granted.

Aftert two weeks of wrangling level heads prevailed and we were able to secure office space in town. This move saved my family as well as the church, and kept me from going postal on somebody. I could only think how stupid and ineffective it was to take two full weeks to get these slow movers to agree to renting some office space, especially since the offices had already been in my home for more than four years! Once this move was completed our family relationships improved significantly and my home felt like home again. It also helped us to clarify when we were “on the clock” and when we were not. It also felt good going to work each day, having a real office and a quiet place to study.

As I began to put my home in order, I was also convinced that I needed to do a better job of putting the church in order. Our leadership structure at the time was deplorable, but it was the best that I could put together considering the people I had to work with. A few of these folks did a good job, but quite frankly most of them simply did not even meet the Biblical requirements of being a good disciple, much less spiritual leaders. Looking back on it now I shudder to think about the disaster that was in the making. My leadership team constantly changed, with people coming and going each year. It was like musical chairs. This created a great deal of instability, but on the other hand it also meant misfits didn’t become entrenched. That’s was a good thing because some of these people turned out to be sons of perdition.

After the fiasco concerning the office space, as well as numerous other incidents that raised alarm bells, I knew that major changes needed to take place in our church from the top down. So I set in motion a three-to-four year plan to phase out the current trustees and replace them with people who possessed better qualifications. I began looking for those who were as close as possible to meeting the Biblical requirements of a pastor-elder. As each trustee's term came to an end, I simply appointed a better qualified person in his place. There was no vote, no majority decision, no secret ballots, and no majority rule. This follows the Biblical pattern of Paul instructing Timothy – a young pastor – to appoint elders in the church he was pastoring (2 Timothy 2:2) as well as to Titus (Titus 1:5). I did this each year until there was a complete turnover in the senior leadership structure of PCC.

Of course this didn’t set well with some people, especially those who felt like they were losing power. But it didn’t matter to me. It had to be done. The very survival of our church was at stake. Although I was extremely frustrated with my home life and the church, I had to own the fact that they were both under my leadership and that I had done a poor job of organizing things to function formally. Besides, I had been thoroughly chastised by God by now and had learned my lesson well – if you play with hornets you are going to get stung. It was His church – not a religious club where fat cats and heavy weights get to make power plays - and He had already prescribed in His Word who is supposed to lead it, and what the eligibility requirements of those leaders are.

This led to an in-dept study about elders, deacons, and women, and their roles in the church.

Confessions of a Church Planter (Part 4)

A Turning Point About Growth

By the end of the summer of 2001 we were running about 125-150 in attendance and had purchased 25 acres of land. It was an exciting time for us because it gave us the feeling of being a legitimate church and we were now taking tangible steps towards having a permanent location. We put a sign up on the side of the highway that read “Future Home of Pace Community Church.” It felt good.

Many churches at this size often stall and do not grow any farther. The reason is simple – the highest number of people that the average person can connect with is about 150. In fact, the average church member knows only about 60 people in his/her church no matter what size it is. A church of 150 is one single cell where everyone knows everyone else; it feels like one big family. Therefore any church that is committed to evangelism and bringing the gospel to their city will find it very difficult to grow beyond this number.

When I told our people that we were going to continue growing beyond that number, some of them freaked out. The most common complaint was “Our church is going to change,” or “I like things the way they are now” or “If we grow I won’t know everybody.” I decided right then and there that was exactly the reason why we needed to keep growing – so that we are not held down at a level where certain people felt the need to know everyone else and everyone else’s business.

Our church services started getting better. We scraped together enough money to buy some honking speakers, poles to mount the speakers on, and an overhead projector for the song service. We added a few members to the band which helped. I thought "we've really got the ball rolling now" and will surely go over the 200 threshold and keep growing. But it seemed like we had to find a new drummer or new singers every couple of months because someone would sleep in and not show up, or would get mad about something and quit, or we would have to remove someone because of a morality issue. Each time that happened our church services would go back to stinking again, just like the smelly school cafeteria we were meeting in.

It seemed like for every inch of ground we gained, we would lose a foot in return. Satan certainly does not want God’s church to grow and will often use people to resist any efforts to do so. Spiritual warfare was involved here, not to mention a lack of Biblical understanding on the subject of church growth. So I attacked the problem with the scriptures.

I continually stressed the importance of taking the gospel to our city. I taught from the book of Acts showing how the early church was birthed and grew by the power of God. We discovered together that the early church started out with 120 people but quickly grew to 3000 because this was the will of God to happen. I also explained that if the early church had the same attitude that our church had, the gospel would have never spread from Jerusalem and we would have never heard about Jesus ourselves. I made it clear (in the Sunday messages and our membership class) that limiting the size of our church for our own convenience was a sin and that we should be a church that exists for the people who are not yet saved more than for the people who already are.

Looking back, I believe this was one of the most important moments in our church’s history because we were deciding if PCC was going to be defined by the size of our mission to take the gospel to our city or by the number of people who were currently attending.

The scriptures won the day.

Now the hard part began. We had to get our church functioning with healthy internal systems, competent leaders, and clear expectations from our people. This season of our church was marked by a number of critical beginnings, such as getting the wrong people out of our church and getting the right people to commit to our church, as well as doing whatever it takes to fulfill the mission God had given us.

It was time to set the church in order.

Confessions of a Church Planter (Part 3)

All Hell Breaks Lose

Church work always involves spiritual warfare and demonic attacks. But there are certain seasons that are more intense than others. By the fourth year at PCC I was neck deep in it and all hell broke loose.

I had naively gathered people into our church but was not discerning enough as to who would be allowed to attend, lead, or influence others. Just as I thought things were coming together, things began to come apart; heretics were seeking to hijack our gospel; trouble makers were trying to hijack our mission; church controllers were trying to take over leadership; and lazy consumer types were a drain on the church’s resources. I painfully learned the importance of evaluating people properly.

There were times when I was not sure our church would survive. Other churches in the area were criticizing us for meeting in a school, and nutjobs inside our church were threatening our very existence. Our reputation was being hurt in the community. And the soft church people from our core group started to wilt under the pressure.

I hit a particularly low point when a few families began leaving us. We had invested hundreds of hours in these couples and their children, going back to the beginning of PCC. I had been with them in crisis, in sickness, officiated at their weddings, baptized their children, led them to Christ, assisted in their spiritual formation, and had been into their homes as well as they being in ours. Renae and I considered these people to be friends until they began telling us why they were leaving. They complained that since the church had grown and things were busier now, my wife and I had become less available to them.

Renae and I were both working full time jobs on the side because the church could not afford to pay me a full time salary, and we were both volunteering more than forty hours a week to the church. Being rejected by these friends felt like a punch in the gut.

We were stunned, and hurt. We needed couples like this to help the church survive, not jump ship because my wife or I could not drop everything to take them out to tea, or whatever it was they expected of us. The odd thing was that many of these folks transferred to another church that was larger than ours, which made no sense because they would not get any closer to that pastor and his wife than they had to Renae and me. Yet they felt at liberty to inform us that we were not doing enough for them. It seemed obvious to me that they wanted us to bend over backwards and promise to do anything to make them happy in order to keep them in the church. But I did not play their game – I let them go. They were not on a mission to bring the gospel to our city like I was. Their mission was to get Renae and me to jump like trained show dogs upon command.

I have faced that same experience hundreds of times over the years at PCC, and it’s hard every time I encounter it. As a church grows, it also changes. And as the church changes, so does the accessibility of the pastor and his family. As the pastor gets busier with new people and responsibilities, some people are displaced and are not as close to the pastor as they once had been. Displaced church members expect the pastor to guarantee their access to him no matter what, and become resentful if he does not. If the pastor agrees to these demands, he will keep disgruntled people from leaving the church but will not be able to reach new people because his time and energy will be devoted to pleasing those who feel they have seniority rights.

No matter what a pastor does in this situation, he will lose people. So he must wisely decide who he is willing to lose.

By now our congregation was filled with two kinds of people. About half the people were committed to building a church that brought the gospel to the people of our city and they were willing to faithfully serve that mission. The other half had other agendas – with each one wanting to take us in a different direction – which would have deconstructed everything we stood for.

We had heretics calling themselves Christians. I had lazy, selfish Christians who considered themselves mature. There were sinners who needed to repent, leaders who needed to lead in the right direction, and hypocrites who just needed to leave. I knew it was time to start making some tough calls in our church family and clean up the mess that had been created.

Certain leaders on my management team resisted me and our church’s mission every step of the way. I began the cleanup by informing them that everyone who served in that position did so by my invitation, and the reason they were asked to serve on this team was to help me fulfill the mission and vision of our church – not to pull it in the direction they thought it should go. I accepted the resignations of half the team. This resulted in the loss of several families.

Next I fired the head usher. He was irresponsible and frequently missed. But when he missed two Sunday’s in a row without even so much as a phone call to let us know he would be out – I had enough. His absence created a security breach for us at offering time – not to mention making me look like an idiot when people asked me where he was and I didn’t know. I called him up as soon as I got home that afternoon and told him it was over. He was crying by the time we hung up the phone. This too resulted in the loss of his family and a few of his friends. I later found out that he had been visiting other churches (those two Sunday’s he was absent) because he was considering leaving PCC all along. In the end, I was able to make the decision for him that he seemed to be having trouble making for himself.

Next I had to tell another man to put a lid on his talking in tongues during the church service because it was interrupting my sermon and freaking people out. I believe in the gifts of the Spirit, but this guy was out of order and violated every principle in the Bible for the proper use of spiritual gifts. When I spoke to him he got so upset with me that I thought he was going to punch me in the face. He stomped out slamming the door as he went and never came back to our church again. Within a year he died.

A defining moment occurred one Sunday morning after service. In a tense confrontational showdown with a church trustee, the leadership authority of our church was cemented once and for all. This individual had been challenging me for months, and when he realized he had an audience listening, felt emboldened enough to approach me and demand that I report to him concerning my daily activities. It was an ambush. It was then that I Biblically corrected him in front of everyone who was listening, as well as the other trustees. I thought, hey, he doesn’t mind challenging me in front of an audience, so I will respond to him in front of the same audience. I informed him that I did report to him, nor would I ever, and neither did I work for him, but rather that he reports to me. He stared at me in stunned disbelief with a startled look on his face not saying a word. Apparently he had pulled this kind of tactic with previous pastors in his past and thought he would do the same at PCC. He continued to stare at me in silence while everyone else was looking at the floor in embarrassment. This was the moment of truth - it was all or nothing and only one of us is going to come out on top - either I'm going to be dominated by this church-controller or either he is going to follow the leadership of the person who God has anointed and authorized to lead the church. I broke the silence and asked, "Are we clear on that?" Instead of answering, he turned around and walked out the door without saying a word. Shortly after that event he stepped down as a trustee, left our church, and began a vicious e-mail campaign against me.

Another couple wanted to lead a small group using a curriculum that I could not approve of. I met with them and I tried to reason with them explaining how the material was contrary to our position at PCC. Furthermore, they were not members of our church and were not even willing to take our membership class to find out what our church’s mission was. I pleaded with them to take the class and get on board with our mission before I could release them to ministry in our church, but they would not budge. I realized they had their own mission and simply wanted to use PCC as a means to get there. Because they were not teachable, I kicked them out that day.

This kind of thing went on for months. It was a brutal season, but I kept going back to our mission and the vision that had birthed PCC in the first place. It was about keeping the main thing the main thing and not allowing others to hijack it.

This was the first season of dealing with widespread immaturity in our church. But it was not the last. There was more to come.

Confessions of a Church Planter (Part 2)

Lady on the Phone

For the first 4-5 years the church offices of PCC were in my home. We did not have enough money to rent office space in town, so my home became the logical spot. Because of this, it was very difficult to separate business hours from home hours – not to mention that the sanctity of our home was always violated and intruded upon by church business. I spent my days getting up, getting dressed, and sitting at a desk in my master bedroom acting like I had office hours, which proved to be unproductive. The kids were little and running around, there was noise in the house, and the phone always rang.

It was only natural that people would call our home phone when they needed to speak to the pastor. Being a normal male who hates to talk on the phone, I soon got sick of answering it. I also quickly learned that if I answered the phone, the same people would call more frequently, and I did not really want to talk to them because they were emotionally draining.

This was drilled home to me by one lady in particular. Let’s call her “Jane.” She stands out among all the rest because she literally called me every single day, often multiple times a day, and would tie me up on the phone for hours at time. She was the most self-defeated person I have ever met. At first I thought I could help her, and naively thought she would get better by my offering her godly pastoral advice. After a couple of months it finally dawned on me that she did not want to get better; she only wanted someone to listen to her misery. She talked about her last church, her miserable husband, her depression, and intimate details about her life; stuff I did not want or need to hear. It was grinding me down.

Finally, one day, I had enough. After several months listening to her unending crying, my patience had run thin. We were talking on the phone and I had now become the object of her criticism. She blamed me for taking her husband’s side in their ongoing feud, she condemned me for not fixing her emotional state of mind, and she even prophesied to me (over the phone) a curse upon Pace Community Church for allowing Satan to get in the church. With that I let loose on her in a way that she had never heard any previous pastor talk to her. She was startled at my response; in fact, I was startled at my response. After she hung up, I never heard from her again.

I’m glad.

I decided that although a pastor is supposed to answer the phone and help people, I would end up with a gun to my temple if I continued doing that. I also decided that I was going to keep doing what I thought God wanted me to do instead of what people in the church expected me to do. To address the on-going needs in the congregation I needed to find men and women who had the gift of caring and let them take care of the “Jane’s.” But for me, our church was not only about the ones who currently attended, but also the ones who we did not yet have, and I needed to be the one to go after them. I’m not sure most pastors are aware of this, but the church that God wants to build also consists of the people who do not currently attend. Those people will never come to churches on their own, so pastors need to go to those people. This follows the pattern in Jesus’ parable about the shepherd who left the 99 sheep (in the flock) to find the one who was lost.

Emotionally, ministry has proven to be more exhausting than I could have ever imagined. Because I deeply love people, especially hurting people who sincerely want to get better, the pains of other people’s lives began to take a deep toll on me. Many nights were spent in prayer, or at hospitals, instead of sleeping, and even on days that were supposed to be my days off, my mind was consumed with the painful hardships and sinful rebellions of our people.

Then it happened - all hell broke loose and it nearly killed me.

Confessions of a Church Planter (Part 1)

Mistakes I Made

Our first two years at PCC were both fun and challenging at the same time. Attendance was about 50 people. Like most pastors of small churches, I was doing a lot of deacon work. I would unlock the building, prepare the church bulletin and sermon guide, run them to the copy shop for duplication, set up our sound system on Sunday, set up chairs, welcome visitors, conduct the church service, clean up the room after everyone left, and haul the equipment back to my garage until next Sunday.

Thankfully a few people started helping out. But I quickly discovered that in a small church, ministry is usually something that the pastor does for his congregation, and people will chip in to help only when they feel like it. I realized that if this mindset remained in our church and was allowed to take hold, it would bury me in unending work for lazy and ungrateful church people.

In the first two years we were attracting an assorted bag of mixed-nuts to our church. Some came to simply watch the show each week; they gave nothing and served nowhere. Then there were the consumer-types who likewise gave nothing and served nowhere, but always wanted more and demanded more of my time, attention, and church resources. Fortunately, a handful of people were there to serve, give, and help out any way they could. They came to our church wanting to get involved and were enormously encouraging to me.

I continually repeated the mission of our church each Sunday – to obey the Greatest Commandment and obey the Great Commission – so that people who stayed with us understood that they were not welcome to bring any other agenda to PCC. (God, would you please rapture the charismatic lady who shows up each Sunday with a tambourine? She wants to turn us into a dancing church). The problem with many of the people we attracted in those first two years was that they had already been to every other church in town – sucking the life out of the pastor and the church’s resources – and now wanted to do the same with us. Such people were worthless for a mission-oriented church such as ours. Week after week, they would walk in to our church to see what they could get from us, never thinking that perhaps they should serve Christ by helping to build a ministry.

Looking back I realize that I made some strategic errors that nearly killed the progress of our church. First, I had an informal leadership structure, as is common in small churches, which permitted heretics, nut jobs, wackos, troublemakers, and pushy types to wield a lot of power. Worse still, it was hard to know how to remove such people without killing our little church. We were small – made up of one social network – and to remove one person from a leadership position was to risk losing every person.

Another mistake I made was not having enough formal small groups in our fledgling church family. The entire church was based on relationships that were connected to me, and we didn’t have enough groups to help people connect with each other. This kept me from focusing my energy on finding new people for our church, and I got stuck in friendship circles with a handful of people who were already members. They often became jealous when I tried to establish relationships with others, not understanding that is the nature of the work in the ministry.

A third mistake I made was underestimating the importance of money in a church plant and for carrying out the Great Commission. Somehow I got the idea that money was a dirty topic to talk about and felt guilty every time I mentioned it in church. To this day, I am not sure where I got this boneheaded idea from, but I was willing to have both my wife and I work full-time jobs to pay our personal bills and the bills for our little church, to the point that we began having stress-related health issues. Each week our church was receiving about $150 in the offering – with a lot of $1 bills – which was not enough to cover expenses.

Obviously, I knew this trend could not continue or I was going to end up in a padded room being monitored by men white jackets. So I began to formulate a plan to organize our church with a better leadership structure that included real elders, real servants, and real Christians who would get on board with our mission of helping us reach and disciple the lost – and hopefully save my sanity.

That’s when some of the first tension cracks began to appear in our little church family....