I knew it—it is the Church planters fault. That’s an easy out. Just blame it on the Church planter. While he may often be at fault, it seems this list puts all the blame on the planter.
Something I vaguely remember in the Bible about GOD giving the increase.
Bruce got me thinking. Eventually I concluded it IS about the leader.
What about God?
We look for leaders with a track record of trusting God in tough situations.
What about the team?
We look for leaders with a track record of building teams and mobilizing others.
Who’s to blame?
It’s not a question of blame.
Although we could blame:
- Decision-makers who do a poor job of selecting the right people.
- Observers who write off a leader because the church plant doesn’t get off the ground.
- Driven church planters who can’t separate who they are from what they do.
- Established church leaders who aren’t intentionally growing pioneers.
- Denominational systems that deselect pioneers.
It IS about leadership. That’s what makes the challenge of church planting so attractive to the right sort of (crazy) people. Our job is to find them, grow them, select them, and get out of the way.
On a personal note, our first church plant was a “success”, the second one was a “failure”. God was in both. Without the second I would never have got my call to fuel church planting movements. The only certainty is God’s faithfulness. That’s what makes life and church planting so interesting.
4 Comments
I came to the same conclusion as you Steve. But as a church planter you should take the responsibility. Its completely differnece to taking the “blame”. I’m glad you responded to the post.
This will sound like a smart arse emerging church question, but its not.
Why was your first a failure and second a success? What did you fail to achieve in the first and why?
hamo, it was our second plant that we eventually closed. a long story. might be worth writing it up as a post. I’ll give it some thought.
I think it’s a gross generalization to suggest that a church plant failure is the fault of the planter/leader. That may be the case occasionally, but certainly not always. I, for one, came into a church plant situation many years ago that had begun its work five years earlier with a highly successful church planter. It struggled to take off in this setting. A second church planter was brought in a year and a half later — again, a man who had had much success in other settings. After 3 yrs under his ministry they were ready to close the doors. I entered the picture in the fifth year. I am not a church planter, but rather a shepherd of established churches. I was younger then and the hope was that I could attract younger couples into the church. I worked hard for 5 yrs and our church began to slowly grow. Then the devil entered the picture and caused a church split. We were a small church to begin with and the loss of key older families really hurt the work. We were left with mostly newer, younger families that had recently joined the church, but we couldn’t make it happen financially, and after 8 yrs of my ministry we closed the doors.
Does this mean that the first two church planters were failures, and that I too was a failure? I doubt it. In this case there were so many variables that it was a miracle it stayed open for 13 yrs.
The reality is, sometimes (and apparently often) church plants just don’t flourish and grow. Jesus Himself warned His disciples that there are different soils when the seeds are planted. To always blame the leader is to ignore some spiritual realities, and places a terrible load of guilt on many dedicated and hard-working planters.
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