I (Tim Zuck) officially began my church planting journey in 2008 at the age of 33. I was called to minister as the church planter of Saucon Community Church in Hellertown PA where I had served as an intern while studying for my Masters of Divinity at Biblical Theological Seminary.
Now eighteen years later, I’m looking back and reflecting on what I would have done differently. With that in mind, here are the top three things I would tell my thirty-something church-planting self.
1. “Be mean” about the vision.
It sounds harsh, but it’s not what you may think. The phrase comes from the title of a book by Shawn Lovejoy. “Being mean” is not about harshness towards people but being intentional and disciplined about vision and refusing to let it drift. The reality is that people walk into church with their own agendas and assumptions of what the church should be and how the church should operate. I wasn’t prepared for this reality. I chose to “be nice” and wavered on my commitment to the vision
Conversely, Jesus displayed this unwavering commitment in his ministry, from which he did not drift (Luke 19:10; John 4:34). Jesus exhibited a laser-like focus on His divine assignment. In the same way, effective church planters must demonstrate a similar focus on the vision and guard against distractions and compromises that might derail the church.
2. Join a church-planting residency before launching.
As a novice church planter, I often felt like I was “building a plane while flying it in the air.” I was learning on the fly. I would have greatly benefited from the training offered through a church planting residency. A church planting residency is a structured, cohort-based training program designed to equip prospective church planters with core competencies to plant a healthy and thriving church. Passion for Planting offers a nine-month church planting residency that we plan to use to train future BFC church planters. Providing planters a longer runway with more training will prepare them to launch more effectively.
3. Focus more intently on launching a disciple-making movement rather than solely on launching services that Christians like to attend.
Last year I was reading Church Plantology: The Art and Science of Planting Churches when the following assignment to prospective church planters posed by author Peyton Jones arrested my attention. I couldn’t read past it. Here’s the challenge: Design a strategy for your church plant with the only prohibition being that your plant cannot convene a Sunday service. The assignment is genius. It reveals a bias towards launching a church service rather than launching a disciple-making movement.
In hindsight, I have to admit that I unknowingly operated under this bias. I assumed that planting a church meant launching a Sunday service and then building discipleship around that gathering. Part of what contributed to it was the unspoken pressure to start a church by gathering a large crowd to support and sustain the church long-term. Additionally, planters can face pressure, sometimes internally from the core team, to launch prematurely. The pressure to launch often comes from two places: emotional pressure and ecclesiological pressure.
Emotional pressure is the excitement that says, “We need to launch.” Ecclesiological pressure is the mistaken assumption that a church isn’t really a church until it has a public worship service. Does worship matter? Absolutely! But we ought not confuse starting a worship service with making disciples and forming a church. The endgame isn’t to launch a church but to launch a disciple-making movement that results in a church.
I’ve completed my time on the field as a church planter. I can’t go back and redirect my missteps. But I can learn from them by leading our present and future planters to plant healthy, stable, and disciple-making churches for the glory of God.