If you are thinking about starting a church, I want to encourage you to keep working as long as you can. If you quit your job in order to plant a church, you will soon start asking yourself two questions; “How can I raise money?” and “How can I meet people?” You don’t have to leave the marketplace to enter the ministry. Try not to think of church planting as a career change and the church as an economic system.
A New Testament church is a community of disciples of Jesus Christ who are living missionally 24x7. Therefore, it is not necessary for someone to leave a marketplace mission field in order to start or pastor a church. A church planter here in Orlando recently entered the work force to (as he put it) “fund my church planting habit.” Although economics was his primary reason for going to work, he quickly found that his job gave him plenty of opportunities to develop relationships with people who are spiritually seeking.
It has been my observation that most failed church starts in Central Florida didn’t die, they were killed. Most of them simply ran out of money. Their outside support dried up and the young congregations could not cover the overhead of rented facilities, advertising expenses and staff salaries. So, someone made the determination that “we are no longer church” and told everyone to go home. This has been such a pervasive problem that Orlando has developed the reputation of being a church planting boneyard.
What if you could start a church with 0 start-up costs and no monthly overhead? What if you could do it without wondering if you were going to get paid or could afford medical insurance for your family? What if spent your week-days in an environment filled with hurting people searching for answers and got paid to do it? What if you planted a First Century church in the Twenty-First Century?
You can keep your job and start a church. You don’t have to rent a building to be the church. You can gather small groups of people in your home, community center, break-room, a coffee house, restaurant, etc. You can be the church wherever God plants you.
4 comments:
Great post Mark! I agree whole heartedly. I have been long burdened by "former pastors" that populate many of our churches. Why are they not out leading a church? I believe it is mostly because they did not reach enough people to pay a salary or reach the point where they could afford a building which would "validate" their call. However, I think the tide is turning and we will again see churches as a body and not buildings.
I am praying for guys who will start churches knowing that their role is to equip the body to build and reproduce itself.
It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up. (Ephesians 4:11-12)
True, true my brother Mark. There are several nasty little side effects that come from "quitting day jobs". One is more quiet (i.e. sinister?)...let's call it "the paid for 3rd place".
If I stay productively employed I remove the extra motivation to go out and rent or, it hurts me to say this, MORTGAGE meeting space. Guys unemployed gotta look busy. Best way to look busy and buy validation is to "get space". Mobs are crazy enough to assume that if the guys got space the guy must be active working on...Well heck, we have no clue what he is working on. But we'll assume he at least has a PLACE if he ever did find something eternally significant to do.
If I have a real home place (#1) and a day job work site (place #2) then I'm starting to run low on time and money. I have not so much desire to go out and buy a pretend 3rd place. A 3rd place is where folks eagerly go when they are not at home or work. It could be a pub or a scuba shop or a cafe or a churchy building.
Now even assuming that this paid for 3rd place was given by a generous sugar daddy, I still got the REAL problem...if I am tied up with three places to care for already then what are the chances that I am leading people to take church to the third places where lostness already loiters?
Busy, busy, busy...in all the wrong places.
Some great points. However, maybe part of the financial problem is because church planters are not trained properly to focus on building relationships, networking, and evangelism, thus depleting any chance of building community.
I think these are great ways a church planting team can pursue a dream. However, when God calls one person to be a church planter, the quality of messages can be depleted and family time may be compromised, creating an even worse burden.
I think there should be a healthy medium between the two. Most successful church plants had supporting churches that developed a coaching culture for the church planter, or they had a church planter with uncompromising vision such as LifeChurch.tv.
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