Church Planting is Hard.
I just read this FANTASTIC post by Shaun King, I highly, highly recommend it if you have a moment. It really resonated with me and some things I have been wrestling through the past 2 weeks or so in this crazy church planting journey. (here’s another really great post from his wife about the failures in church planting)
Church planting is hard. I don’t mean bad hard, but it’s hard. There is nothing stable about it. No guarantees that people will come, no guarantees that there will be any money, really no guarantees if you will succeed…and as a business owner, wife, soon-to-be-mom…I like guarantees! 
However, I would not change a single part of this journey. It’s funny, about 2 weeks ago I was having a conversation with my best friend about how the guys at Acts29 were telling us at our Boot Camp to be ready to go into battle, that we were going to be tested and that it wouldn’t be easy. I was literally saying to Lo (BFF) at 10:00 on a Friday night that church planting has been a really cool journey for us so far – an encouraging adventure and an exciting one at that! I said “I’m sure the hard times will come, but I doubt it’s as intense as people try to make it out to be.” Literally at 8:00 the next morning I understood what these guys were talking about…and I have now learned to keep my mouth shut. 
Chris and I have had an intense few weeks, however, probably the most amazing and defining 2 weeks of this entire church planting experience. We have been tested and questioned, yet through every single step of the process it has been confirmed FULLY that we are EXACTLY where God is calling us to be. We are supposed to plant this church…we have to. It might look different than we thought it would, but that really doesn’t matter. There is nothing in me that makes me second guess if this is what we are supposed to be doing at this very moment in our lives. But it is making me realize that this is a really, really scary journey.
One thing in the article linked above that Shaun talks about is “Few disciples of Jesus Christ actually exist in the world.” This really hit home with me, probably because it’s talking about me. Chris has been really clear in this planting process that he doesn’t want to pitch some kind of storybook romance to people joining us that starting a church is easy, especially starting a church that is going to look kind of different. Honestly, the vision of Resonate is one of the things that scares me the most and has been the biggest challenge to me personally. This church is not going to be Sunday focused. Yes, we are meeting on Sundays, but that is a very, very small part of the equation. We are asking people to invest HEAVILY in their community (or workplace, or whatever it looks like to them) and truly make disciples. This is not about us continually feeding each other and making ourselves feel good as we gather together as believers in our closed groups…we genuinely MUST make disciples. People NEED Jesus….desperately. Can you not see that when you look around? How is it that as believers we are not in a constant state of grief at the fact that people are leaving the church and turning away from the Lord? It is the only thing that is true in this world…how could someone leave it? Or worse, what about the people who have never even heard it.
Honestly, and I have said this before, this whole idea really does terrify me. I really like my closed small group. I like meeting with people who know me and talking about ways I need to change, etc (and then never really doing it). Yet when I look at the past few years of my life, I don’t see that radical transformation. I don’t see a desperate longing in myself to soak in the word of God and proclaim it to people who don’t know Him, and that makes me really sad.
Resonate is not going to be an easy church to be a part of. The reality is, if people are looking for a new church to come to on Sundays to come and get a feel good message, great worship, get fired up talking about change, and meet some cool Christian friends in the process, it’s probably not for them. Does that mean we are probably going to be a pretty small church and people will probably think we are weird? Yeah – I think it does mean that…at least to start. But what if this mind-shift starts transforming our communities? We truly start living to what we were created to be doing and pouring the love of Jesus into those who don’t know Him…doesn’t that sound more amazing? I want to come to the end and be told “well done, good and faithful servant,” yet…I know that is not what I would hear if I keep living how I have been. I’ve been really selfish, especially when it comes to sharing my faith and investing in people who don’t know Jesus…and that in itself is a tragedy.
I’m not really sure where I am going with this post, but I can tell you 2 things: 1 – church planting is hard…it really is, and I don’t just mean for Chris and I, I mean for anyone who joins us – and I am not saying that this reality is a bad thing. 2- I am so excited about what God is doing in our new, little community and I can’t wait to see lives radically transformed in this process.
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