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Re-imagining church planter training | Part 4 | Barriers to the proposal (Reasons 1-3)
Part 1 adressed what I believe are the biggest hurdles people are facing in church planting that are most directly connected to training.
Part 2 looked at what I believe are the key missing ingredients of training: Apprenticeship and Immersion.
In Part 3 I laid out a loose proposal of what an alternative approach to church planter training might look like in the future.
In this post, I’d like to explore the barriers and reasons people will need to get beyond to embrace this kind of training. I’m going to, for the sake of this post, pre-suppose that we can create exactly what I’m proposing.
First, a quick recap of some of the main points of my proposal:
- Church planters/family moves and spends two years in a church community where they learn to do the basics of what they want to do in their church plant. If it’s Missional Communities and Huddles, they move and immerse themselves in a community successfully doing all of those things and do MCs and Huddles in a safe environment where there is a safety net and can’t really “fail.” By the time they leave, they will know how to do everything they want to do rather than just the theory.
- They are discipled by someone and learn to disciple people (not talk about it…actually do it).
- They develop a skill-set that allows them to be bi-vocational which provides the finances, flexibility, mobility and emotional margin needed to plant a church (Part 4 will go more in depth).
- They raise support to cover their two years of training and first year in their church planting context. Furthermore, their support covers the expense of health insurance and they are able to buy into an affordable group plan with great coverage.
Those are some of the more salient points. Now…what would be barriers to people choosing this kind of training?
- Instant gratification. It’s a difficult thing to have a clear vision from God for the future and not begin for at least two years, isn’t? Having experienced this, I can’t explain how hard it is to know what you want to do, desperately wanting to begin and to have to wait. Patiently waiting. Allowing God to form you. And not just “letting” the waiting happen, but EMBRACING the waiting and abiding as just as important as the new work itself. But you’ll probably be thinking, “Why wait for later what we can start today?” We live in a culture that waits for nothing…even the good things. Think about college. Rather than taking a year or two off before college to save, we simply take out loans that have interest rates that can be criminal. College is a good thing, but it’s certainly a less good thing with monthly payments that cripple us for years. Same thing here. We want the hit of the new thing, to jump in now, but we are far better served embracing two years of training that prepare us to be successful. We often forget that before Paul began his first missionary journey he spent 3 years in Arabia and then 10 years serving at the feet of the Apostles in Jerusalem. THIRTEEN YEARS! These were preparation years for the time that was to come. If we want to plant churches that look different than anything we’re really seen before, we’d be wise to spend these years of preparation. Are we open to setting aside a few years, waiting, and learning well?
- Forsaking the original idea. I’ve written about this extensively, but church planters, by and large, want to be people who come up with the next and newest big idea that will save the Western church. Go big or go home. We are largely entrepreneurs and will rely on our own ingenuity. Not surprisingly, there can be a large amount of ego involved.
We don’t just want to plant a successful church, we want to plant one that everyone else will follow in our wake. What if we could be the Thomas Edison of church planters? The problem, of course, is that there isn’t anything new under the sun. I currently work for 3DM who is one of the first pioneers of the “missional movement” that started in Europe and spawned the vehicle called “Missional Communities.” But let’s be honest, Mike Breen didn’t invent Missional Communities; they’re littered throughout Scripture. And even beyond that, in the late 1980′s there were a number of other communities across the world I could point to who were doing the same kinds of things. That’s because it’s something the Spirit was at work in. When you immerse yourself in a community who is training you, you forsake the “original idea” and surrender the glory that would come with it. You are choosing discipleship (via the means of imitation) over getting the glory for the next big idea. I wonder how many of us church planters are willing to give up the ego hit that comes with possibly being perceived as the discoverer of the next big idea? - Moving. This is legitimate, isn’t? Let’s say I live in Chicago, IL and I want to plant a certain kind of church. But I look around me and there isn’t a church around me that is even remotely close to the vision God has put on my heart. Now let’s say I know of a church in Boston that’s very close to what I’m thinking about. They aren’t just talking about doing it…they are actually doing it and seeing Kingdom-oriented success. The idea of moving me and my whole family to Boston for two years, being trained and then moving back two years later, well…that’s not terribly appealing. And you know what? You’re right. But I don’t know what else to tell you. I don’t see a better way. But honestly, this isn’t really a new paradigm. This is what overseas missionaries do all of the time. They uproot their families, go to “missionary school” for 12-24 months, where they are trained to be missionaries, learn a new language, often learn a new vocation, learn to exegete culture, etc. After the time there they are sent out to the culture they will be a missionary to. Well, in post-Christendom, isn’t it the exact same thing? Sure, it would be great if our churches shaped us to be missionaries and we were disciples who knew how to disciple people already, but that’s not the reality we find ourselves in, is it? So yeah, maybe it’s not what we’d prefer, but it’s what we have. I think we’re going to have to move locations to get the kind of training we need. At least for the next 10-20 years until we have enough churches in enough locations. We need to create for the next generation the reality we wish we had. Would we be willing to move if it meant we really got the training we needed?
Post 5 will have reasons 4-6 I think people might balk at this kind of proposal.
What about you? Would any of these be reasons you would choose not to engage with this kind of training? What other barriers do you think are out there?
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13 Responses to Re-imagining church planter training | Part 4 | Barriers to the proposal (Reasons 1-3)
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Doug Paul
Doug Paul serves as the Director of Content at 3DM, where he works alongside Mike Breen developing books, blogs, webinars, whitepapers and other content initiatives. Before moving to Pawleys Island, SC, he served as a Teaching Pastor and Director of Multi-Site at a church in Richmond, VA. He went on to plant a church using Missional Communities and Huddles while participating in 3DMs first Learning Community.
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If people will move for grad school or seminary, I can’t see moving for church planting being a huge barrier. Although that crowd would probably skew younger. The older we get, the more rooted, the more difficult to imagine uprooting, etc.
I’d have the moving van at the house tomorrow to relocate to where someone is knocking the ball out of the park in making disciples in order to be trained by them.
Ben, I think you bring up a really good strategic point about age and roots. The older you get, the harder it is…if for no other reason than you’ve got to think about schools, health insurance is a lot more important, you can’t live as frugally as when you were first married, etc. Strategically, what are things we can do to reach people younger for stuff like this? Also…how young is too young? (at least for the type of training I’m talking about)
As far as age goes, I’m not sure there is a thing as too young. We’re looking at heading into a field that requires a great deal of emotional intelligence as well as a great deal of skill - both of which require years of training. If doctors train for so many years in order to work on the body, shouldn’t we have similar expectations of those working with souls? If we can begin casting a vision for this by getting to students as undergrads - and pitching it as a long term commitment/calling/career - I think we’ll start seeing far more success stories. Students need to see this as a way of life, not just a fallback option if the whole institutionalized church thing doesn’t work.
On a side note, it might take a significant bite out of the number of churches that are planted in reaction to disappointment - as we’re taking a proactive approach.
I’m not really sure “moving” ranks higher or separate from the entire economic barrier. As I believe you’ve mentioned, many of us are trained/skilled at doing more than reading and speaking . Most of us obtain our education by mortgaging our future through student loans and subsidies from our denoms. Additionally, what if you get there and it really sucks?
Malcolm, can you clarify your question? Are you asking “What do we do if we move somewhere to plant a church and don’t like where we are at?”
Yeah, basically, what if we move and we find that it’s not working for us or we don’t like where we’ve found ourselves?
I mean, I think it’s first and foremost about calling. Have you been called to be in this place? Sometimes I think we choose to stop doing things because it’s hard or not a bed of roses. That being said, I don’t think our discernment process for choosing “where” should be a short or light process. I think we should make sure we’re called there. But at the end of the day, if it’s not working out, if you can’t pay the bills and your family is bearing the brunt, it may be the right place and the right idea but the wrong time.
Doug, I think I was referring more to the training process being not what you expected it to be, but the passion for your calling and the location of your calling is without a doubt. I do think one of our biggest challenges is getting passed the urgency we feel in living out our callings. Often times our impressions of the “need” for evangelism based on the “impending end of the world” can cause us to go forth prematurely. (I guess that ties into your first barrier.) Thanks for making me think through this and for offering a different way.
Wow, there sure are a lot of, what ifs, to think about.
May I suggest rather small book titled:” CHURCH PLANTING in the Book of Acts”, by Malcolm Webber. You will have to go thru (www.StrategicPress.org) to get it.
Our congregation is presently evaluating our only church plant to make plans on how to go forward with other church plants. I stumbled across this book while purchasing Malcolm’s book on purpose, which I highly recommend and use at a local county jail. I am sorry I joined this forum rather late but have found it interesting and very important because God is still going to build his church with us or in spite of us, my each one be on board with what God is doing.
Wendell
Doug, this was really spot on for me when it comes to the original idea peice. I struggle with this as an entrepreneur, and had to negotiate my own ego and desire for originality when I first started linking up with 3DM. The tools are so good it made me envious that I did not create them My kairos moment one day was along the lines of pride and ego about using someone elses tools to do what I wanted to do. It was a moment of humility for me, and I went ahead and humbled myself and said “I cant innovate everything, just go ahead and enter into a season of training.” I did exactly that, and am so gald I did not let pride or ego stand in the way of some really good resources and tools for discipleship and mission. Very insightful post here dude.
Thanks, Tim. I had the EXACT same moment. I realized the thing holding me back was my own arrogance at coming up with that original idea. I’m not going to pretend that the ego/pride is gone, but that was a big moment for me in my own spiritual journey.
Hey Doug and Tim,
I’m way late her but thought I would say “ME TOO!”